Atira promotes solar thermal power, desalination in Cyprus

Atira, a Limassol-based energy company, hosted a public presentation on the benefits of solar thermal power.The event was attended by representatives of the Institute of Energy, the Energy Regulator, the Cyprus Institute, the Electricity Authority of Cyprus, the Water Development Department, as well as MPs and business people.
The aim of the presentation was to demonstrate within the prevailing water shortage in Cyprus and the need to increase the use of renewable energies – in this case solar energy – for the combined generation of electrical power and drinking water.
SPG reported that a new module of a solar thermal plant was built and tested in Spain last year. The 1500 square meter facility built by German industry group MAN Ferrostaal uses SPG’s Fresnel technology which allows solar thermal power stations to be built much more cost-effectively than in the past. At present, a kilowatt hour of power from solar thermal power stations cost significantly more than power from coal or gas power stations. Using this new technology, electricity generated by solar power should drop to the same level as electricity from fossil-fuel power stations by the year 2020.
The new solar boiler uses moving lines of mirrors to focus the sunlight onto an absorber pipe which is heated up to 450 degrees Celsius and turns water into steam which in turn generates power by means of a steam turbine.
The residual heat from the turbine outlet can be utilized in a thermal desalination process (multi effect distillation), thus, squeezing out most of the solar energy harvest to produce drinking water from sea water. To this end, the Fresnel technology offers an ideal complement for a desalination plant. Fresnel technology is comparatively simple to build, cost-effective to procure and reliable to operate.
Solar thermal power stations with a total output of more than 1,000 megawatts are already being planned in Spain and some have already been built. The price of electricity has on average doubled throughout Europe between 2003 and 2007 and a reversal of this trend is not anticipated at the moment. In the light of future oil and gas prices and the necessity to reduce CO2 emissions, the potential of solar thermal power stations is gaining significance in politics, economics and research.