Category: News

SOLWATT project has been selected as the winner in the national phase of the Quality Innovation Award in the Potential Innovations category.

The jury highlighted that the project meets the five characteristics that were valued: novelty, usefulness, learning, customer orientation and effectiveness. The award was delivered on Tuesday, November 27, at a ceremony held in the auditorium of CSIC, in Madrid, with the presence of several authorities.
The National Association of Centers of Excellence-CEX has recognized eight Spanish organizations in the national phase of the Quality Innovation Award, QIA, a competition created in 2007 by Excellence Finland to promote innovative projects in companies and organizations, share experiences and give local and international recognition to the best ones, with the ultimate goal of increasing the competitiveness of companies and the participating countries. The other organizations awarded in the other categories were Biocurve, AMADIX, the Royal Academy of History, the consortium of Teruel Airport, Ficosterra, Qualityfry and Textil Santanderina. These eight organizations will compete on February 27 in Beijing to win the international prize in the categories in which they participate.

 

The M6 meeting of the SOLWATT project will take place in Bilbao, Spain on 28^th and 29^th November 2018. The organizer of this meeting is IK4 Tekniker.

A two day meeting has been planned in order to review the already done work and to discuss further progress of the SOLWATT project. During this semiannual meeting, several technical sessions will take place, where technical issues arising during the previous phase of the project will be discussed. Planning of the further steps and actions will be also discussed during these technical sessions.

SOLWATT project will be presented during the WASCOP CSP Workshop dedicat to the topic of  “Water Consumption in CSP plants”. The workshop will be held at hotel Hyatt Regency Casablanca, Morocco, on the 3rd October 2018 as a side event to Solar Paces 2018.

 

SOLWATT will be presented  by Arnaud Bruch (CEA) within the section dedicated to the upscaling of innovative solutions for water saving at CSP.

Full programme of the workshop can be foudn here.

Registration for the event is required and can be found here.

On 16 – 17 May 2018, SOLWATT kick-off meeting took place in Prague, Czech Republic.
This meeting, organised by AMIRES s.r.o., served mainly as opportunity for presentation of the project´s main objectives and parts, introduction of the individual partners and also for the start of the very first technical discussions. A first Generally Assembly meeting was also held to make some important decisions for a smooth progress of the project.

SOLWATT project has been launched on 1st May 2018 and will last for four years until April 2022.

SOLWATT targets to significantly reduce the water used by CSP plants (by 35% for wet cooled & by 90% for dry cooled). The project proposes to demonstrate the efficiency of innovations on solar field cleaning, power-block cooling, water recycling system, and plant operation strategy. Among these are solutions to reduce solar field water cleaning needs, an operation and maintenance optimizer software including soiling forecaster, a MEE water recovery technology running on otherwise dumped heat from the solar field, and a cooling concept for the turbine condenser storing excess heat when ambient is too warm, then releasing it during cool night times.

The solutions will be implemented at two CSP operational sites, “La Africana” parabolic trough plant in Spain and “Ashalim” central receiver plant in Israel, to demonstrate significant reduction in water use while making CSP more cost effective, and achieving near-to-market status.

The solutions are best applied together, but each will also bring water and cost savings on its own, thanks to their ability to fit any kind of CSP plant; dry, wet, or hybrid cooled, existing or future ones, tailored to location and policy framework. Their application will save more than 0.5 M€/year of operational cost for a 50 MW CSP plant.

Regarding competition on water resources and humanitarian issues, the social acceptance of CSP will be increased by detailed analysis of case studies and education of local population to the benefits of solar energy. The targeted savings of water and operation costs will increase CSP’s competitiveness compared to other renewable energy and the electricity market in general, as well as its acceptance within local communities, achieving a big step forward in the SET plan goals for CSP technology by 2020. The consortium, led by TSK Electrónica y Electricidad S.A. (Spain), is made up of 13 partners from 6 European countries plus Israel, including 5 industrials partners, 2 SMEs, 5 RTOs and one University.