Solar Millennium AG, Erlangen, is an international company in the renewable energy sector, with a focus on solar-thermal power plants.
After establishing the project company for the parabolic trough power plant Ibersol the Flagsol GmbH, a joint venture of Ferrostaal and Solar Millennium AG, has received order to execute the early construction works together with Ferrostaal AG and the Spanish company Duro Felguera. The solar power plant will feed power into the Spanish grid as from 2013, and will supply about 150,000 people with environmentally friendly electricity.
Already on Monday María Dolores Aguilar, Vice President of the Junta de Extremadura, José Luis Navarro Ribera, Minister of Industry, Energy and Environment of the Junta de Extremadura and Miguel Ángel Gallardo Miranda, the mayor of the city of Villanueva de la Serena laid the foundation stone for the parabolic trough power plant at a festive ceremony.
Thanks to a thermal storage Ibersol will provide predictable and reliable solar power even after sunset. Extremadura, with an annual direct radiation of around 2,080 kilowatt hours per square meter is an excellent location for solar energy. Ibersol will produce 170 million kilowatt hours of electricity annually and will avoid around 150,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year in comparison to modern coal-fired power plants.
In addition to Ferrostaal AG (50%) and Solar Millennium AG (34%), the ExtremaSol Kraftwerks GmbH (16%), a holding company of I.C.M. InvestmentBank-Gruppe, Berlin, also holds an indirect share in the Ibersol power plant project, which is also known under the name of Extremasol 1 in Spain. Negotiations regarding the entry of further investors are already well under way. The power station will be built by a consortium consisting of the partners Flagsol GmbH, Ferrostaal AG and Duro Felguera SA.
At the same time, Ferrostaal and Solar Millennium work on another solar power plant in Spain to be completed this year. The plant called Andasol 3 delivers an output of 50 megawatts and will supply together with its immediately adjacent sister projects Andasol 1 and 2, climate-friendly electricity for about half a million people. Thanks to its thermal storage also these power plants are able to provide solar power after sunset.
Solar Millennium AG, Erlangen, is an international company in the renewable energy sector, with a focus on solar-thermal power plants. Together with its subsidiaries and associates, the Company specializes in Parabolic Trough power plants and has managed to take a globally leading position in this field. Solar Millennium strives to further extend its expertise in the area of solar-thermal power plants with the aim of achieving and securing sustainable technology leadership.
As such, the Company covers all important business sectors along the value chain for solar-thermal power plants: from project development and financing to the technology and the turnkey construction and operation of power plants. In Spain, Solar Millennium has developed Europe’s first Parabolic Trough power plants, these were realized with partners. Additional projects are planned around the world with an overall capacity of more than 2,000 megawatts: the current regional focus is on Spain, the US, India, China, the Middle East and North Africa.
Solar-thermal power plants generate electricity by converting solar radiation into heat energy. In a Parabolic Trough power plant, trough-shaped mirrors concentrate the incidental radiation onto a pipe in the focal line of the collector. Its absorption heats a fluid heat medium in the pipe, generating steam in the power block through a heat exchanger. As in conventional power plants, the steam powers a turbine to generate electricity. By integrating thermal storage, electricity can be supplied on demand, even after sunset.
