A collaborative project between the International Energy Agency (SolarPACES programme) and Solar de Almeria - a collaborative platform - will soon begin to feed solar electricity into Spain’s electricity grid, the IEA announced in the September 2006 edition of its OPEN Energy Technology Bulletin.
It will be Europe’s first commercial solar power-plant of its sort, highlighting solar electricity's emergence as an increasingly viable source of energy, according to its promoters.
The plant will run on Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSP), a technology that produces electric power by converting the sun's energy into high-temperature heat using various mirror configurations. The heat is then channelled through a conventional generator.
The new advance is due in part to the evolution of existing technologies and in part to a ministerial ruling by the Spanish government in March 2004 which removed economic barriers to the grid-connection of renewable energy.
Spain has set an overall target for 29.4% of its electricity to come from renewable energy sources by 2010. By then, it predicts that some 500 megawatts (MW) will be provided by Concentrated Solar Thermal Power (CSP).
The trend is not confined to Spain. Greenpeace/ESTIA/SolarPACES scenarios published in 2005, predict that solar thermal technology is destined to move from being a relatively modest renewable energy source to a significant contributor in 2040 (meeting 5% of the world’s demand and avoiding some 50 million tonnes of CO2 a year), alongside current market leaders like hydro and wind power.
