eSolar Targets Solar Electricity Less than The Price of Coal and Has 2 Gigawatt Project in China

eSolar, a global provider of reliable and cost-effective concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, and Penglai Electric, a privately-owned Chinese electrical power equipment manufacturer, today announced a master licensing agreement to build at least 2 gigawatts (GW) of solar thermal power plants in China over the next 10 years.

The deal was signed in the Chinese State Council building with government officials in attendance and represents the country’s largest CSP project. Groundbreaking of the first 92 megawatts (MW) will take place in 2010.

Penglai Electric plans to develop 2 GW of power plants by 2021 using eSolar’s proven solar thermal technology. The solar thermal power plants will be co-located with biomass electricity generation facilities. Penglai Electric will leverage local manufacturing to source some of the equipment. In total, the plants will eliminate 15 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.

1. How Our System Works
Power tower Technology -A field of sun-tracking heliostats reflects solar heat to a thermal receiver mounted atop a central power tower. The focused heat boils water within the thermal receiver and produces steam. The plant pipes the steam from each thermal receiver and aggregates it at the turbine, powering a power generator. The steam then reverts back to water through cooling, and the process repeats.

2. Patented Heliostat Design

The eSolar Building Block- A small and mass-manufactured heliostat is the building block of the eSolar™ solution. eSolar designed the heliostats for deployment in pre-fabricated “heliostat sticks” that can be installed easily with minimal skilled labor. Low wind profile design allows fields of eSolar heliostats to be installed faster than any competitive CSP solutions.

3. Modular Field Layout

Cost-Based Design- Thousands of systematically spaced heliostats combine to form the eSolar™ modular field, comprised of north and south facing mirror sub-fields. Both mirror fields concentrate sunlight to a patented dual-port eSolar™ receiver atop a central tower. The sub-field design optically optimizes the layout to maximize the harvested thermal energy.

4. Scalable Units

The eSolar Solution- A 46 MW eSolar power unit consists of sixteen towers (each with its own north-south heliostat sub-field), a turbine generator set, and a steam condenser. 46 MW power units fit on approximately 200 acres, or 80 hectares. eSolar can construct multiple 46 MW units to scale to any size to meet customer needs.

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