6 Largest Solar Thermal Power Stations

6. Nevada Solar One, USA

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Nevada Solar One is a concentrated solar power plant, with a nominal capacity of 64 MW and maximum capacity of 75 MW. The project required an investment of $266 million USD and electricity production is estimated to be 134 million kilowatt hours per year.

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It is the second solar thermal power plant built in the United States in more than 16 years and the largest Solar Termal Energy plant built in the world since 1991. It is in Eldorado Valley in the southwest fringe of Boulder City, Nevada and was built in that city's Energy Resource Zone which requires renewable generation as part of plant development permits; Nevada Solar One was approved as part of Duke Energy's larger El Dorado Energy project that built 1 GW of electrical generation capacity. The solar trough generation was built by Acciona Solar Power, a partially owned subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Acciona Energy. Nevada Solar One is unrelated to the Solar One power plant in California.

5. Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center, USA

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The Martin Next Generation Solar Energy Center is a hybrid 75-megawatt (MW) parabolic trough solar energy plant, built by Florida Power & Light Company (FPL). The solar plant is a component of the 3,705 MW Martin County Power Plant, which is currently the single largest fossil fuel burning power plant in the United States. It is located in western Martin County, Florida, just north of Indiantown.

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The Solar Energy Center has an array of approximately 180,000-mirror parabolic troughs on about 500 acres (200 ha) of the Martin County plant. The solar collectors will feed heat to the existing steam plant, generating electricity at a rate of 155,000 MW·h per year (an average of 18 MW). Construction began in 2008 and was completed by the end of 2010.

FPL expects the $476 million solar plant to reduce the combined-cycle power plant's natural gas consumption by 1.3 billion cubic feet (37 billion m³) per year. Over the 30-year life of the project, this is expected to save $178 million in fuel cost and reduce carbon emissions by 2.75 million tons.

4. Extresol Solar Power Station, Spain

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The Extresol Solar Power Station is a 150 megawatt (MW) commercial parabolic trough solar thermal power plant, located in Torre de Miguel Sesmero in the province of Badajoz, Extremadura, Spain. The power station will be formed by three different systems: Extresol 1, Extresol 2 and Extresol 3, of 50 MW each, due to the power limitation of 50 MW per plant established by the Spanish legislation. Extrasol has a thermal storage system which absorbs part of the heat produced in the solar field during the day and stores it in molten salts. Extresol 1 cost around 300 M€ and was inaugurated on 25 February 2009.

3. Andasol Solar Power Station, Spain

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The Andasol solar power station is Europe's first commercial parabolic trough solar thermal power plant, located near Guadix in Andalusia, Spain. Its name is a combination of Andalusia and Sol (Sun in Spanish).

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Andasol is the first parabolic trough power plant in Europe, and Andasol 1 went online in March 2009. Because of the high altitude (1,100 m) and the semi-arid climate, the site has exceptionally high annual direct insolation of 2,200 kWh/m² per year. Each plant (total 3) has a gross electricity output of 50 megawatts (MWe), producing around 180 gigawatt-hours (GW·h) per year (21 MW·yr per year). Each collector has a surface of 51 hectares (equal to 70 soccer fields); it occupies about 200 ha of land. Andasol 1 is able to supply environmentally friendly solar electricity for up to 200,000 people.

2. Solnova Solar Power Station, Spain

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The Solnova Solar Power Station is a large 'Concentrated Solar  Power' power station made up of five separate units of 50 MW each. The facility is located at the Solar Platform, in Sanlúcar la Mayor, in Spain, the same area where the PS20 solar power tower is also located. With the commissioning of the third 50 MW unit, the Solnova-IV in August 2010, the power station currently ranks as the largest 'Concentrated Solar  Power' power station in the world.

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Solnova-I, Solnova-III, and Solnova-IV were commissioned in mid 2010 and are all rated at 50 MWe in installed capacity each. All five plants are built, owned and operated by Abengoa Solar, a Spanish solar power company.

All five power stations, the three commissioned and two under development, will be utilizing parabolic troughs, a technology to use concentrated solar power. The three commissioned power stations are also equipped to support natural gas as its secondary fuel source for power generation.

1. Solar Energy Generating Systems, USA

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Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the largest solar energy generating facility in the world. It consists of nine solar power plants in California's Mojave Desert, where insolation is among the best available in the United States. SEGS I–II (44 MW) are located at Daggett, SEGS III–VII (150 MW) are installed at Kramer Junction, and SEGS VIII–IX (160 MW) are placed at Harper Lake. NextEra Energy Resources operates and partially owns the plants located at Kramer Junction and Harper Lake.

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The plants have a 354 MW installed capacity, making it the largest installation of solar plants of any kind in the world. The average gross solar output for all nine plants at SEGS is around 75 MWe — a capacity factor of 21%. In addition, the turbines can be utilized at night by burning natural gas.

NextEra claims that the solar plants power 232,500 homes and displace 3,800 tons of pollution per year that would have been produced if the electricity had been provided by fossil fuels, such as oil.

The facilities have a total of 936,384 mirrors and cover more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km2). Lined up, the parabolic mirrors would extend over 229 miles (370 km).

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