Fast-track project delivery allows customer to maximize revenues from feed-in-tariffs.
ABB has delivered an integrated automation solution that controls production at China’s first commercially operated concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. Fast completion of the project enabled the plant to become the first to produce power in the Government’s CSP initiative while also beating the deadline to qualify for the maximum feed-in tariff.
Located at Delingha in central China and operated by China General Nuclear Power Group, the 50-megawatt plant, which is equivalent to the power produced by 45,000 tonnes of coal a year, started producing renewable power on 30 September this year. It is one of 20 demonstration plants in a government initiative to establish CSP commercially and boost the country’s growing capacity to produce emission-free renewable energy.
China is already the world’s largest producer of solar photovoltaic (PV) power but generates little with CSP. Whereas PV converts light from the sun into electricity, CSP uses the sun’s heat to produce steam and generate power. Unlike PV plants which operate only during daylight, CSP plants can store the heat and use it at night.
The brain of the CSP plant is the ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus distributed control system (DCS), which unifies all the plant’s production processes into a single user-friendly system. These include the parabolic troughs which collect and intensify the heat, the heat transfer system which transports the heat to molten salt tanks where it is stored, and the power block where the electricity is generated and fed into the transmission grid.
The ABB solution includes unique precision control of the parabolic troughs, which enables each one to harness maximum heat as the sun passes overhead.
