Last December, Shandong Electric Power Construction Corporation III (SEPCO III), a major Chinese construction and engineering company, entrusted the design and provision of a molten salt thermal solar receiver to equip its 50 MWe solar tower in Haixi in the province of Qinghai, to the Liège company CMI.
CMI Group has enjoyed fruitful commercial relations with China since the start of the 20th century. In particular, the group has sold many recovery boilers, galvanisation lines, paint and ovens for the steel industry there. Over the past few years, its energy sector, CMI Energy, has optimised solar receiver technology for towers and offers high quality molten salt thermal solar receivers for towers. SEPCO III is known for its interest in CSP energy (Concentrated Solar Power) in China and abroad. It designs, builds, operates and owns power stations. Therefore, it is only natural that it was seduced by the quality of the know-how, reliability and flexibility of CMI, leading it to sign a contract with this company based in Seraing.
The renewable energy power plant in Haixi combines several renewable energies with photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, etc. at a unique site and offers 12 hours of thermal energy storage. In order to ensure the availability of electricity and its night-time production, the best thing is to stock solar energy in molten salt, a low-cost fire-resistant and non-polluting fluid. It is the CMI receiver which, from the top of the solar tower, will convert solar energy into thermal energy by heating this molten salt that will then be stored in a reservoir.
