Crete gets go ahead for solar plant to power 13,000 homes

The Greek regulatory agency has given the nod to a solar power plant to be built on the island of Crete.

Nur Energie, the company behind the plant, has been given the go-ahead and awarded a 38 megawatt Electricity Generation Licence for the Crete Concentrated Solar Power plant, which is claimed to be the first in Europe to feature BrightSource Energy's proprietary LPT 550 solar technology system.

This should produce electricity for approximately 13,000 homes and reduce carbon emissions by 35,000 tons annually.

BrightSource Energy's LPT 550 will do this by using thousands of small mirrors - called heliostats - to reflect sunlight onto a boiler, which sits atop a tower, to produce high temperature steam. The steam is then piped to a conventional turbine which generates electricity.
Source: Tech Eye

The Crete project is a hybrid solar-oil power plant. BrightSource's power tower will generate about 32 megawatts with the remaining 16 megawatts produced by fossil fuels. That will allow the power station to run around the clock and smooth out spikes in electricity demand. At peak output, the project will have the capacity to power about 13,000 homes on Crete, BrightSource said.

During the hot summer tourist season, electricity demand can more than double on sunny Crete, which makes solar power plants a particularly good fit for the island's electricity grid.

Crete has installed 160 megawatts of wind power with another 60 megawatts planned to come online. The island also has approved the construction of 90 megawatts’ worth of photovoltaic farms. In the coming years, renewable energy should be able to satisfy much of Crete’s electricity demand.
BrightSource Energy