GE Technology Selected for First Gas/Wind/Solar Power Plant

(Brookhaven National Lab)

GE says it will provide the basic technology for a power plant in Turkey that generates electricity with a combination of natural gas, wind, and solar power. The plant, to be built by MetCap Energy Investments, a Turkish development company, is expected to provide power for more than 600,000 homes when it goes online in 2015.

The project will develop what GE calls the world’s first integrated renewables combined cycle (IRCC) power plant. A combined-cycle power plant achieves greater fuel efficiency by taking waste heat from the gas turbine, converting it to steam, then feeding the steam to a turbine to provide additional energy output.

An IRCC plant takes the combined cycle technology further by adding renewable wind and solar resources to produce additional energy with no increase in emissions. The solar portion of the project is developed by eSolar in Burbank, California, using utility-scale concentrating solar power.

In eSolar’s design, sun-tracking heliostats reflect solar heat to a thermal receiver mounted on a central tower. The focused heat boils water in a thermal receiver and produces steam, which aggregates at a turbine to power a generator. The steam then reverts back to water through cooling, and the process repeats.

eSolar announced yesterday investments in its company by GE and MetCap Energy. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Read more: Report: Concentrating Photovoltaic Solar More Competitive

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