A new 280MW solar power plant is planned for the Arizona desert near Gila Bend, around 70 miles southwest of Phoenix. Named the Solana Generating System, the new facility will be built by Spanish-based solar energy company Abengoa Solar and is expected to begin producing power in 2011. It will be among the largest solar power plants in the world, producing enough power at full capacity to power 70,000 households while avoiding more than 400,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. 

The system will also have the ability to store energy, allowing power production to continue into the evening. The facility will use miles of parabolic trough-shaped mirrors to capture the sun’s heat and focus it upon a length of “absorber” tubing. A fluid passed through the tubing collects the sun’s heat, and the hot fluid is used to boil water to steam, which then spins a turbine to produce electricity.

Arizona Public Service (APS), the state’s largest utility, has agreed to purchase the energy from Abengoa over the next 30 years, costing the utility a total of about $4 billion, while providing an estimated $1 billion in economic benefits to the state of Arizona. The plant’s builder, Abengoa Solar, has built a demonstration solar trough plant in Spain and is building two 50-megawatt solar trough plants there.

In addition, the company is currently operating the world’s first commercial solar power tower plant, which uses a field of flat mirrors to focus sunlight onto a thermal collector at the top of a tall tower. The facility, called PS10, produces 11 megawatts of power, and Abengoa Solar is currently building PS20, which will produce 20 megawatts of power.

For more details about the Solana Generating System check out the press release from Abengoa Solar.

You can read about other solar energy developments in construction by visitng the solar energy page.