The solar power plant "Archimede"

The story of the ENEL plant begins in the late 70s; in fact the first plant (320 MW) built in 1979 and the second one in 1980 work both with fuel oil. The plant Archimede, owned by ENEL, was inaugurated on 14th July 2011. By a decree of Region Sicily the two sections have been transformed in a combined cycle gas facility. On December it was provided with an environmental management system in accordance with the recognized environment quality standard UNI EN ISO 14001.
The Archimede project is under development: it is the first concentrated solar power plant to use molten salt for heat transfer and storage which is integrated with a combined-cycle gas facility. It uses technology developed by ENEA, which produces electricity even at night and in all weather conditions avoiding the typical discontinuity of other renewable energy sources: sunlight is concentrated by a system of mirrors (the parabolic collectors) then a pipe carries the molten salt fluid used as heat transfer fluid in solar field; the thermal energy is then stored in a hot tank and is used to produce high pressure steam to run steam turbines for electricity generation, reducing the consumption of fossil fuels and, as a result, enhancing the environmental performance of the combined cycle plant. Archimede solar power plant produces 5 megawatts of electricity, alternative to that produced by the combined-cycle gas system. This should: produce additional electricity using solar power; spare 2.070 tons of petroleum every year; cut CO2 emissions by 3.250 tons per year. The solar thermal power plant consists of 432 mirrors (parabolic collectors) on a field of about 30,580 square meters.