Innovative design enlarges storage capacity of world's first dual-tower solar thermal plant

Transcript

00:00In the vast Gobi Desert in northwest China's Gansu province, a shimmering solar project

00:12has just started trial operations. Billed as the world's first dual-tower, single-unit,

00:18concentrated solar power, or CSP, plant, the facility uses 27,000 heliostats to track the

00:26sun like a field of high-tech sunflowers. They're made of ultra-clear glass with 94% reflectivity

00:33and need to be cleaned often. The energy they capture is stored in two massive tanks containing

00:40molten salt with a storage capacity of 600,000 kilowatt hours of electricity. Compared with

00:47traditional single-tower CSP plants, the dual-tower allows for greater energy capacity and storage

00:54capabilities. The solar thermal power plant is a central part of a larger clean energy project

01:00in the region that's expected to generate 1.8 billion kilowatt hours of clean electricity annually.