US banks $737 million on molten-salt solar power in Nevada

Concentrating solar power (CSP) is currently more expensive than energy from photovoltaic (PV) solar panels, but it promises one significant perk over PV: its potential for being combined with energy storage that keeps producing electricity long after the sun stops shining.

That’s exactly the kind of perk developers of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project in Nevada are hoping to deliver. And their plans received a boost this week thanks to the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) decision to approve a $737-million loan guarantee for the project … despite the extra scrutiny now being aimed at any federal investments in the wake of the Solyndra bankruptcy.

Being built by Tonopah Solar Energy and sponsored by SolarReserve, the Crescent Dunes project is a 110-megawatt (MW) concentrating solar power tower that will use molten salt as the medium for both primary heat transfer and energy storage. Once completed, it would be the first facility of its kind in the US and the largest molten salt tower in the world.

The plans call for construction of a 640-foot tall solar power tower structure partnered with up to 17,500 heliostats (tracking mirrors) that will annually produce enough electricity to power over 43,000 homes. The high-temperature thermal storage using molten salt technology will provide up to 10 hours’ worth of equivalent energy storage, so even during nighttime or cloudy conditions, the solar power plant will still feed electricity into the grid.

The project will be located near the town of Tonopah, on 2,250 acres of land leased from the Bureau of Land Management.

With some of the highest levels of solar irradiation in the US, Nevada is an ideal location for further development of CSP projects. CSP has an edge over large-scale solar photovoltaics in desert regions because the performance of solar PV cells declines as temperatures increase. With CSP, the hotter the temperature, the more efficient the system.