{"id":82023,"date":"2015-03-06T15:39:39","date_gmt":"2015-03-06T13:39:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=82023"},"modified":"2015-03-06T15:39:39","modified_gmt":"2015-03-06T13:39:39","slug":"sa-launches-r8-billion-solar-thermal-electricity-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/82023\/sa-launches-r8-billion-solar-thermal-electricity-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"SA launches R8 billion solar thermal electricity plant"},"content":{"rendered":"

KaXu Solar One, South Africa\u2019s first solar thermal electricity plant, opened near Pofadder in the Northern Cape on 2 March 2015.<\/p>\n

The KaXu Solar One plant will add 100 megawatts of electricity to the national grid \u2013 the equivalent of about 320 gigawatt hours of electricity a year.<\/p>\n

This is enough to power 80,000 houses, and can serve the needs of around 400,000 South Africans.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn practical terms, this is the consumption of all the households in Mossel Bay, Oudshoorn, Knysna and Swellendam combined,\u201d said Economic Development Minister Ebrahim Patel.<\/p>\n

First solar thermal electricity plant in SA<\/h3>\n

KaXu Solar One is the first solar thermal electricity (STE) plant in South Africa. It is also the biggest of its kind in Africa and the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

The plant covers an area of three square kilometres, and is made up of 1,200 collectors. Each collector has 10 modules, and each module has 28 mirrors.<\/p>\n

In total there are 336,000 mirrors on the plant which track the sun.<\/p>\n

STE technology allows energy\u00a0to be stored for up to two-and-a-half hours in molten salt, which means power can be supplied to the national grid when it is needed most \u2013 at peak times after dark.<\/p>\n

\"Solar\"<\/a><\/p>\n

How it works<\/h3>\n

The KaXu solar field has approximately 1,200 mirrored parabolic trough collectors. These collectors are about 25 feet wide, 500 feet long, and 10 feet high.<\/p>\n

The collectors concentrate the sun\u2019s energy onto receiver tubes that contain heat transfer fluid. Electricity is then generated with conventional steam turbines using the heated fluid.<\/p>\n

\"KaXu<\/a><\/p>\n

Renewable energy investment<\/h3>\n

KaXu Solar One forms part of 33 renewable energy plants which have been opened, Patel said, and by the end of the month there will\u00a0be 1,685MW of renewable energy available.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 12 months we have been building plants that will generate almost as much as Koeberg,\u201d said Patel.<\/p>\n

The total investment in the KaXu plant came in at R7.9 billion, with about R1 billion coming from Spanish group Abengoa.<\/p>\n

The balance was supplied by the IDC, Nedbank RMB, the Development Bank of Southern Africa, and the International Finance Corporation.<\/p>\n

KaXu is owned by Abengoa (59%), the IDC (29%), and the KaXu Community Trust (21%).<\/p>\n

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

South Africa\u2019s solar farms<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

SA to get two new major solar plants<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KaXu Solar One, South Africa\u2019s first solar thermal electricity plant, opened near Pofadder in the Northern Cape on 2 March 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":82027,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,9573,8540],"class_list":["post-82023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-kaxu-solar-one","tag-solar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82023","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\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82023"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82035,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82023\/revisions\/82035"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82027"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}