Solar thermal energy

After two and a half years of construction, EBL commissioned the world’s first commercial Fresnel solar thermal power plant in March 2012. EUR 167 million have been invested in Tubosol PE2. ‘With Puerto Errado 2, we have taken the plunge where solar energy makes the most sense,’ says Yves Grebenarov, CEO of EBL Infrastruktur Management AG and Head of Electricity Production at EBL (Genossenschaft Elektra Baselland).

The technology used in the PE2 project is fascinating. Some 302,000 m2 of mirrored surfaces divided into 28 rows of solar fields, each 980 metres long, track the incident sunlight in southern Spain and concentrate it on absorber tubes running in parallel. These tubes are heated and transfer this energy to the water flowing through them, which is then converted into steam at 275°C. The steam produced in this way generates around 40,000,000 kWh of green electricity per year in two steam turbines with connected power generators, equivalent to the consumption of an average of 9,000 households. EBL receives feed-in tariffs for the electricity flowing into the Spanish grid, which in turn can be used for other energy-efficient projects at home and abroad.

The operation of Puerto Errado 2 is being continually optimised. For example, cleaning operations for the solar mirrors were fully automated from 2019 to 2021. Robots ensure that any dust that settles is quickly removed, allowing the solar radiation to be fully converted. This measure increases yields and reduces costs.