Europe’s first parabolic trough power plant is in construction in Andalusia in the province of Granada, Spain. The Concentrating Solar Thermal Power (CSP) plant will produce 50MW of electricity to begin with and is due for completion in mid-2008. The project has been named Andasol with 3 phases named Andasol 1, Andasol 2 and Andasol 3.

The site is located on the Plateau of Guadix, Province Granada in Spain.


Parabolic trough courtesy of Flagsol GmbH

Andasol 1 will supply electricity for around 50,000 homes and will avoid 172,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

The location is particularly condusive to a high number of sunny days, sited in a high location 1,100m above sea level and in a desert location, the Marquesado Valley offers a high annual direct insolation of 2,200 kWh/m²yr.

The power plant itself covers 549,300m² and the parabolic trough solar field is made up of over 1,000 EUROTrough collectors arranged in 168 parallel loops. It will be capable of generating almost 182 million kWh per year.

The Andasol 1 Power Plant will be built, owned and operated by a partnership comprising Milenio Solar S.A., Solar Millennium, Flagsol GmbH, INABENSA Instalaciones Abengoa S.A., EMO Orodjarna d.o.o., sbp GmbH, CIEMAT and Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt.

The Andasol 1 project is the first of a 3 stage process that will see a further 100MW added to the power plant in 50MW lots. Andasol 2 will be scheduled to finish in March 2009 and Andasol 3 has a planned start date some time in the first quarter of 2008. With each phase taking around 2 years to complete, the estimated end-date for the entire project is 2010.

The company behind the design of the Andasol plants is Flagsol GmbH who have developed a process that uses a two-tank molten salt storage system providing 7 hours of continuous solar electricity.

One of the project partners involved with Andasol, CIEMAT, is also joint developing the 17MW Solar Tres Power Tower CSP project in Spain with SENER Group.

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