– China has constructed the world’s first dual-tower solar thermal plant near Guazhou County in Gansu Province.
– The plant uses thousands of mirrors to reflect and focus sunlight onto two central towers to generate intense heat. This heat is used to boil water and produce steam that drives turbines to generate electricity.
– It is a concentrated solar power plant that can generate electricity even when the sun is not shining by using molten salt to store the thermal energy like a battery.
– The dual-tower design with moving mirrors allows the plant to maximize sunlight collection, with mirrors directing sunlight towards the eastern tower in the morning and some switching to the western tower in the afternoon.
– The plant is expected to enhance efficiency by 24% compared to single tower designs and can be expanded with more towers.
– It will be part of a larger clean energy complex in Guazhou including wind, solar and thermal plants with an overall annual generation capacity of nearly 2 billion kWh.
– This supports China’s goal of adding 1,200 GW of non-fossil fuel energy sources by 2030 to reduce carbon emissions by 1.7 million tons annually from the plant alone.
Source: TCD
