Usage By Commercial Plants
Current commercial plants utilizing parabolic troughs are hybrids; fossil fuels are used during night hours, but the amount of fossil fuel used is limited to a maximum 27% of electricity production, allowing the plant to qualify as a renewable energy source. Because they are hybrids and include cooling stations, condensers, accumulators and other things besides the actual solar collectors, the power generated per square meter of area varies enormously.
The largest operational solar power system at present is one of the SEGS plants and is located at Kramer Junction in California, USA, with five fields of 33 MW generation capacity each.
The 64 MW Nevada Solar One also uses this technology. In the new Spanish plant, Andasol 1 solar power station, the 'Eurotrough'-collector is used. This plant went online in November 2008 and has a nominal output of 49.9 MW.
Read more about this topic: Parabolic Trough
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