Spotlight on Solar Thermal Power Tower Technology – eSolar
Power Tower Technology
A field of sun-tracking heliostats reflects solar heat to a thermal receiver mounted atop a central power tower. The focused heat boils water within the thermal receiver and produces steam. The plant pipes the steam from each thermal receiver and aggregates it at the turbine, powering a power generator.
The steam then reverts back to water through cooling, and the process repeats.
A small and mass-manufactured heliostat is the building block of the eSolar™ solution.
eSolar designed the heliostats for deployment in pre-fabricated “heliostat sticks” that can be installed easily with a minimum of training.
Low wind profile design allows fields of eSolar™ heliostats to be installed faster than any competitive CSP solutions.
Thousands of systematically spaced heliostats combine to form the eSolar™ modular field, comprised of north and south facing mirror sub-fields. Both mirror fields concentrate sunlight to a thermal receiver mounted atop a central tower.
The sub-field design optically optimizes the layout to maximize the harvested thermal energy.
A 46 MW eSolar™ power unit consists of 12 towers (each with its own north-south heliostat sub-field), a turbine generator set, and a steam condenser. 46 MW power units fit on approximately 100 hectares (250 acres). eSolar can construct multiple 46 MW units scalable to any required size of output.
Here is video of one of the Towers in Operation:
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