{"id":77235,"date":"2015-01-17T12:00:03","date_gmt":"2015-01-17T10:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=77235"},"modified":"2015-01-16T15:55:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-16T13:55:26","slug":"sa-to-get-two-new-major-solar-plants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/77235\/sa-to-get-two-new-major-solar-plants\/","title":{"rendered":"SA to get two new major solar plants"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Department of Energy has announced the construction of two new concentrating solar power (CSP) plants, to be built in the Northern Cape.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kathu Solar Park and Redstone Solar Thermal Power project, both of which have 100MW capacity, are part of the third round of the government\u2019s Renewable\u00a0Energy Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (REIPPPP).<\/p>\n

As reported in November, the Redstone CSP project<\/a>\u00a0will become the largest solar plant in South Africa when completed \u2013 overtaking the 96MW\u00a0PV Jasper plant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The advantage of the CSP technology being used in the two projects over conventional solar power is that, besides not producing harmful emissions, it is able to provide electricity at night through stored energy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 100MW project with 12 hours of full-load energy storage will be able to reliably deliver a stable electricity supply to more than 200,000 South African homes during peak demand periods, even well after the sun has set,\u201d said the team behind the Redstone project, SolarReserve.<\/p>\n

CSP\u00a0uses thousands of mirrors to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto a central point \u2013 in Redstone\u2019s case a 550-foot tower \u2013 to generate heat.\u00a0Within the tower,\u00a0fluid flows through piping which forms the external walls \u2013 this fluid absorbs the heat from the concentrated sunlight.<\/p>\n

In SolarReserve\u2019s technology, the fluid used is molten salt which is heated from 500 to over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (260 to 540 degrees Celsius), and is then stored in a thermal storage tank.<\/p>\n

When energy is needed,\u00a0high-temperature molten salt flows into a steam generator, as water is piped in from the water storage tank, to generate steam. This steam is then used to drive a turbine, which produces electricity.<\/p>\n

\"Jasper-solar-power-project\"<\/a>SolarReserve has partnered with Saudi water and power company\u00a0International Company for Water and Power Projects (ACWA Power) to build the Redstone plant, which is scheduled to be completed in early 2018.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Kathu Solar Park is being built by a consortium\u00a0led by GDF SUEZ, comprising the Sishen Iron Ore Company Community Development Trust, Investec Bank, Lereko Metier, and the Public Investment Corporation.<\/p>\n

In December 2014, Energy Minister\u00a0Tina Joemat-Pettersson said that an additional\u00a03,600MW will be announced in the\u00a0REIPPPP, which will add to the existing\u00a021 renewable projects providing 1,076MW to the grid.<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on MyBroadband<\/a><\/p>\n

More on solar in SA<\/h3>\n

Jasper solar project vs Eskom\u2019s Medupi coal power station<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Africa\u2019s largest solar farm goes live in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

R80 million solar plant opens in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Department of Energy has announced the construction of two new concentrating solar power plants, to be built in the Northern Cape.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":39086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,2960],"class_list":["post-77235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-solar-energy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77235"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77241,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77235\/revisions\/77241"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}