The Power Tower, also called the Central Tower has a farm of flat, movable heliostats which focus the Solar Heating energy onto the tower in the centre of this array. Its earlier designs were used to generate steam, which turned the turbines to generate electricity. Now the design has been modified to hold liquid Sodium instead of water. sodium has a high heat capacity that is used to store the energy before using it to boil the water to generate steam and run the turbines – this improved design helps store energy to be used to boil water, day and night for continuous production of electricity.
Another such Solar Lighting / Solar Heating project is Nevada Solar One has 760 concave troughs, with more than 180,000 mirrors, that concentrate the Solar Heating energy onto the rows thermos tubes running laterally through these troughs containing a heat transfer fluid also known as solar receivers.
Tags: solar heating, solar lighting