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PRESS DOSSIER 2018

www.torresolenergy.com

Torresol Energy the future of solar thermal energy

Gemasolar the world´s most innovative commercial solar plant

Valle 1 and Valle 2 Torresol Energy plants in operation in Spain

Torresol O&M

Technology

SENER an engineering and technology group

Pictures in the cover: Gemasolar (picture on the left) and Valle 1 & Valle 2 (picture on the right) solar thermal plants, owned by Torresol Energy. Copyright SENER.

INDEX: Gemasolar and Valle 1 & Valle 2 plants operation schemes.INDEX II: Timeline. 10 years leading solar thermoelectric energy.

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Further information:

Oihana Casas. Corporate Communication.

Tel.: +34 918077318 Mobile : +34 679 314 085

Email: [email protected]

4- Press Dossier 2018

Torresol Energy, the future of solar thermal energy

Torresol Energy has as mission to promote technological development, construction, operation and maintenance of large Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants around the world.

Each of Torresol Energy’s new projects will introduce and test new technologies to make concentrated solar energy an economically competitive option and a real, viable, ecological and sustainable alternative to traditional energy sources. Conserving the environment for future generations is one of Torresol Energy’s main commitments.

Torresol Energy has focused on three projects in the South of Spain: the innovative 19.9 MW (17 MWe) CSP Gemasolar plant, which is the first commercial plant in the world to use molten salt thermal storage in a central tower configuration with a heliostat field located in Fuentes de Andalucía, Seville, and that started commercial operations in May 2011. Torresol Energy’s other two projects include two 50 MW twin plants and use SENERtrough© technology located in Cadiz (Spain). These two projects started commercial operations in January 2012.

Besides, Torresol Energy created the company, Torresol O&M, which specializes in the operation of solar thermal plants using central tower technology or parabolic trough collectors. Torresol O&M’s expertise in the solar thermal area over the past few years stems from the highly specialized team of professionals in the company.

SENER owns 60% of Torresol Energy and Masdar owns the remaining 40%. The Spanish company, SENER, will continue to contribute to Torresol Energy’s success with its rich experience in developing state-of-the-art technology, as one of the world’s leading engineering and construction firms.

Founded on 11 March, 2008, the Torresol Energy group celebrates on 2018 its tenth anniversary.

Press Dossier 2018 - 5


Gemasolar, the world´s most innovative commercial solar plant

The Gemasolar plant, located in the town of Fuentes de Andalucía (Seville, Spain), is the first of its kind in the world.

Gemasolar is the first commercial concentrated solar power plant with central tower receiver and molten salt storage technology. Its efficiency is significantly superior to other thermoelectric solar plants in commercial operation today. Highlighted among its many innovations are the molten salt receiver, the heliostat pointing mechanism and the control system. Furthermore, the plant has a storage system which allows it to continue producing electricity for 15 hours without sunlight, meaning it can continue to operate during the night or during cloudy weather. Thanks to this storage capacity, a clean source of energy such as solar power can become manageable, and capable of responding to the grid’s demand.

Thus, this plant represents a starting point for the cost reduction strategy in the thermosolar energy sector, one of Torresol Energy’s key objectives in converting this clean energy into a solid alternative to fossil-fuel energies. Gemasolar, a unit with 19.9 MW power (17 MWe), is capable of supplying 80 GWh of clean, safe energy annually, to supply 27,500 households. Furthermore, the plant is capable of reducing annual CO2 emissions by more than 28,000 tons.

Besides, the plant’s most cutting-edge equipment has been developed by SENER. This company has been responsible for leading the EPC (Engineering, Procurement & Construction) and commissioning works of the plant as well as for supplying all the technology for Gemasolar and the basic and detail engineering design.

System Operation

Concentrated solar power uses direct solar radiation: mirrors concentrate the sun’s rays at a point around which fluid is circulating. In turn, the heat in this fluid is used to generate water steam, which moves a turbine. In central tower plants, the heliostats (flat mirrors) reflect solar radiation onto a receiver located at the top of a tower in which the fluid is flowing.

In this innovative plant developed with SENER’s technology, this hot fluid not only generates steam, but it also stores surplus heat in tanks containing molten nitrate salts. In the tower, these salts are used directly as the heat absorption fluid: they flow from the cold tank, by means of a pump, to the receiver at the top of the tower, where they are heated to a temperature of 565 °C, after which they descend to the heat exchanger where they generate steam. When excess energy is received, i.e., when the received heat radiation is more than enough to cover the demands of the turbine, a part of these salt is stored in a hot tank, which can store heat allowing it to be used at times with low solar radiation, when the plant does not receive enough heat to generate steam directly. The stored salt


can then supply this heat and continue generating steam.

Solar Field

The solar field is composed of 2,650 heliostats, which were assembled in just 7 months. These heliostats are distributed in rings around the tower, with the furthest heliostat approximately 1 km from the tower.

Each heliostat consists of a 120 sqm reflective surface, which is continually repositioned throughout the day, depending on the position of the sun and the weather conditions (wind, clouds, etc.). To operate correctly, this solar concentration technique requires a very high degree of pointing accuracy, which is achieved with a high-precision, two-axis actuation mechanism in every heliostat. Due to the quantity, their effect on the operation of the plant, and their resulting impact on energy production, these two-axis actuation mechanisms are a critical component of this type of plant with a central receiver tower.

At Gemasolar, SENER has designed, manufactured, and supplied the high performance, two-axis actuation mechanism that controls the heliostat movement and accurate pointing. It is characterized not only by its high degree of precision, but also by its high load capacity, low maintenance, reliability, and long service life.

Central Tower and Receiver

The Gemasolar tower is 140 m high and boasts a unique element: a high-efficiency cylindrical receiver, located at the top of the tower, which has been designed and patented by SENER. The Gemasolar receiver is capable of absorbing 95% of radiation in the solar spectrum and of transmitting this energy to the molten salt compound that circulates in its interior.

Gemasolar’s Main Advantages• High thermal storage capacity: - Due to the storage system, the turbine operation is not immediately affected by a cloud or by a sudden high speed wind. A cloud will affect the production 6 to 15 hours later. - The turbine will not stop every night, which extends its life. - The turbine power can be managed. The time to supply the grid can be chosen, whether to reduce the output during the night, at valley time or to increase it during times of peak demand. - It maximises the asset’s utilization.

• Low operational risk: - No moving piping system and no thermal oil. - All fluids are concentrated in a small area, which reduces thermal loses and maintenance costs. - The same fluid is used for both heat transfer and storage, resulting in less thermal exchange.



• Highest cycle efficiency: - The molten salt reaches extremely high temperatures, which maximizes thermodynamic efficiency.

Recognition and Awards

Gemasolar has awakened a great interest among among media worldwide and political authorities, representatives from several governments of the European Union, United States, Latin American, Australia, China and Africa have visited its facilities from the beginning of construction and have requested information on its progress.

Gemasolar has also been recognized with several national and international awards, from the DE-SERTEC Award 2014 to the Award of Merit in the Major civil engineering projects category from the International Federation of Consulting Engineers FIDIC, the US CSP Today award in the ‘Commer-cialized Technology Innovation USA 2011’ category, to the European Awards for Sustainable Energy 2011, where Gemasolar was a finalist in the Production category. In 2012, Gemasolar was a finalist project in the European Business Awards for the Environment.

Its activity in the municipality of Fuentes de Andalucia contributed to the City Hall receiving the Clean Technology Recognition in the XVII edition of the Ones Mediterrània awards, which are awarded every year by the Mediterrània-CIE foundation.

In addition, Torresol Energy has obtained the CSP Today Seville award in the CSP Dispatchability Solution category both in 2012 and in 2013, as well as the CSP Today 2011 awards ‘Best commer-cialized technology’ and ‘Development of the most efficient project’.

In the same vein, SENER has won the top prize for Innovation in the 2011 European Business Awards, thanks to Gemasolar and also received the European Business Awards for the Environ-ment/Basque Division for this project, being awarded in the category of Sustainable Development Process. Recently, SENER has also honoured with the Engineering of the Year award in the first edition of The European Energy Awards 2013 granted by The European magazine. This company has also been granted by the CSP Today 2011 award in the categories ‘Best engineering firm’ and ‘Best dispatchability Solution’ and the US CSP Today 2011 ‘Engineering of the year’ Award, thanks to the innovations developed at Gemasolar.

Setting for international campaigns

Besides, numerous institutions and companies have used this scenario as a setting for their inter-national campaigns and events, among them Louis Vuitton, Mercedes Benz, Ford, Peugeot, Sony and J Model Management, that have linked themselves to Gemasolar’s image as a global icon for innovation and sustainability.


Local Community Relationships

Since the beginning of this project, Torresol Energy has cooperated closely with the City Hall of Fuentes de Andalucía, as well as with social actors in the local community, materialized in initiatives for ecouraging the renewable energies culture in the town, such as events, conferences, school contests, guided tours at the plant...

Besides, this renewable energy project has created almost 1,800 direct jobs during its construction works and another 50 qualified jobs for its operation and maintenance. More than a half of those positions have been filled by people from the local community, intensily involved in the Gemasolar project. True to its founding commitment to protect the environment for future generations, Torresol Energy has sought to be, through Gemasolar, an active player in sustainable development for Fuentes de Andalucía. This same philosophy can be applied in all its projects, both in the Valle 1 and Valle 2 plants, located in San José del Valle, in Cádiz, and in future projects of the company.

Technology: testing facilities for new developments

To improve the technology and thereby reduce the investment costs of these plants, Gemasolar has been testing new prototypes of SENER in-house technology, such as the HE54 heliostat, an improvement of the previous model, that features certain improvements, such as greater reflective surface (178.5 sqm as opposed to 115.7 sqm) and a highly precise solar hydraulic tracker system that uses the SENER group’s space technology.

The new heliostat allows a global reduction in the solar field total cost, as size has been optimised from the perspective of features and manufacture. SENER has already installed the HE54 heliostat in the NOORo III solar field, in Morocco, a plant that inheritates Gemasolar’s central tower and molten salt receiver configuration.



Valle 1 and Valle 2, in Cádiz (Spain)

Valle 1 and Valle 2 plants, two identical 50 MWe parabolic trough plants, are the second and third projects of Torresol Energy. Located in San Jose del Valle (Cadiz, Spain), both plants are equipped with thermal storage which allows them to continue producing electricity, at nominal power, even when there is no solar radiation for up to 7.5 hours. The technology used in the plants has thereby turned solar power into a source of manageable energy capable of supplying electricity to networks based on demand, regardless of whether it is day or night or if the weather is cloudy.

The installation of the twin plants covers 400 hectares and represents 1 million sqm of mirrors. Each of these plants, with 50 MWe power, is capable of supplying 145 GWh of clean, safe energy annually for 40,000 households. Together, the two plants cut CO2 emissions by 95,000 tons/year.

Both plants use the latest trough technology - the SENERtrough® parabolic trough collector system. The solar radiation is concentrated onto a central collector pipe through which thermal oil runs. The pipes are fitted with high-precision optical sensors that follow the sun’s movement. The hot oil vaporizes water in a steam turbine which then drives an electrical generator that injects the energy into the grid.

The SENERtrough® system has improved the mechanical characteristics of the troughs and its main achievements include a significant lower steel weight and fewer assembly hours required than similar collectors. This is significant, considering a standard 50 MW solar plant uses 90,000 m of parabolic troughs, comprising about 15,000 tons of steel.

Valle 1 and Valle 2 represent a total investment value of 700M€, the largest private outlay made to date in the province of Cadiz. In 2009, Torresol Energy secured 540M€ project finance loans for the construction of these plants. This financing received one of the most important prizes in the field of structured financing in Europe - the ‘Deal of the Year 2009’ award in the ‘Clean Technology’ category, as part of the Project Finance Deal of the Year awards given by the Euromoney agency.

Construction on Valle 1 and Valle 2 officially began in December 2009, and was completed in December 2011. It should also be noted that roughly 4,500 workers worked over 2,700,000 hours to build and launch the twin projects.Commercial operations of the plants started in January 2012 and, since then, a team comprised by 80 specialised professionals carries out the operation and maintenance works.

Technology: testing facilities for new developments

To improve the technology and thereby reduce the investment costs of these plants, the Valle 1 and Valle 2 projects have been testing new prototypes of SENER in-house technology, such as a loop with the SENERtrough®-2 collector system. These are meant to improve the efficiency of future commercial plants. In particular, the SENERtrough®-2 system, that iSENER is already installing


in projects in South Africa (Kathu Solar Plark CSP Plant) and Morocco (NOORo II), allows a 20% reduction in the number of loops required in a parabolic trough plant, while maintaining the same efficiency of the plant’s performance. Therefore, it cuts down the cost of the solar field.



Torresol O&M

Torresol O&M (TOM) is a company created by Torresol Energy, highly specialized in running solar thermoelectric plants. It is formed of a team of highly-qualified professionals, whose mission is to efficiently operate and maintain both plants with central tower technology and those with parabolic trough collectors. The combined experience of a large number of professionals over the past few years attests to the knowledge of Torresol O&M in the thermosolar arena.

Torresol Energy’s plants are extremely energy efficient, and have exceptional characteristics of availability and dispatchability (capacity to generate electricity according to the needs of the grid, thanks to thermal storage, which allows it to manage production on demand), which places the plants at the cutting edge of thermosolar energy generators worldwide. The high level of technology in Torresol Energy’s plants involves the installation of a significant amount of equipment and electromechanical and control systems, whose proper operation and maintenance is essential for the optimal running of the plants.

To do this, our objective at Torresol Energy is to not only use benchmark thermosolar technology, but also with the knowledge and specific techniques that allow us to operate and maintain this type of facilities in an optimal and efficient way.

The solutions applied by Torresol Energy in its solar thermoelectric plants are at the forefront of concentrated solar power (CSP). Proof of this can be seen in the Gemasolar plant, the first commercially-operated plant with the technology of a central tower with a molten salts receiver and a thermal storage system, based on solutions developed by SENER.

The combined experience of members of Torresol O&M is also used to train second-generation plant operators, such as those that SENER is building in Morocco and South Africa.


Technology

At Torresol Energy we are committed to a new future of power generation systems based on solar thermoelectric or concentrated solar power (CSP) plants, whose primary source is inexhaustible. Our plants also store heat to achieve manageable renewable energy, offering a high value for the electricity system due to the fact that it does not need to have a back-up supply of fossil fuels.

Power demand has largely been sustained, for more than a century, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas and petroleum products.

The need to find new energy sources is motivated by:- The high cost and difficulty in guaranteeing the supply of these traditional sources.- The increasing demand of energy caused by global economic growth and, in particular, that which comes from emerging economies.- The increase in global warming.

Solar power, a reliable alternative

The sun represents one of the most promising sources of energy for replacing fossil fuels. Solar power is abundant, inexhaustible and free, and is more predictable than wind power. Thus, solar power has been highlighted as being one of the technological options that will significantly contribute to covering the worldwide energy demand with high ‘environmental returns’.

The energy value of solar radiation can be exploited directly, or converted into other forms of useful energy using solar technologies. Solar power offers a large number of technological options with developments that must be strengthened. In the specific case of solar thermoelectric energy, the operations of the first commercial plants in Spain has consolidated the market of large-scale thermal storage systems, which sets this renewable energy apart from other renewable sources.

In this regard, the technological evolution of solar power and the price increases of fossil fuels, in the medium and long term, will allow for competitive solutions from thermosolar plants or hybrid plants with other fossil or renewable energies.

A clear example of the development of solar power in Spain, combining four determining factors: a significant technological background, thanks to research and development projects carried out in the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA); an abundant solar resource; legislation in force that allowed for reasonable returns from the promotor’s investments; and an industrial sector that is interested and involved in R&D and innovation projects.

And so, in Spain, concentrated solar power (CSP) set off on a similar path to wind energy, allowing it to become one of the energies of the future, and consolidating a position of global leadership for Spanish companies.



SENER, an engineering and technology group

SENER has a long track record of projects, international experience and a team comprised of thousands of professionals who are the co-creators of the innovations that have marked its past and will shape its future. Founded in 1956, today is a private engineering and technology group which seeks to offer its clients state-of-the-art technological solutions and enjoys international prestige for its commitment to innovation, its quality and for its independence.

SENER has almost 2,500 professionals across its centers in Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, South Korea, Chile, China, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates, Spain, the United States, Morocco, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom and South Africa. The group’s operating revenue exceeded 910 million euros (2016 data).

SENER provides innovative solutions and devotes an investment in R&D that reached more than 24 million Euros in 2016, representing almost 11% of the Group’s total incomes.

SENER accomplishes Engineering and Construction activities and has industrial holdings in companies working in the field of Energy and Environment.

In Engineering and Construction, SENER has become a benchmark engineering company at home and abroad in the sectors of Aerospace, Infrastructures and Transport, Renewables, Power, Oil & Gas, and Marine.

On the other hand, through its Energy and Environment Area, SENER has promoted different projects, in which it also has stock options and contributes with its own technology, in renewables energies and waste to energy, Such as Torresol Energy, Zabalgarbi and Ecolube.

SENER expertise in CSP.

SENER has become a technology leader worldwide in the concentrated solar power (CSP) sector. In total, SENER has been involved in 29 solar plants, most of them turnkey projects, in Spain, the USA, South Africa, and Morocco, which together represent an installed capacity of more than 2,000 MWe and CO2 savings of more than one million tons annually. This confirms the company’s position as a leader in the solar thermal energy market, both in the number of projects in its portfolio and because of the technological solutions it has developed. Some of its projects are veritable technological milestones, such as Gemasolar and Valle 1 and Valle 2, in Spain, and the NOORo complex in Morocco, where SENER also forms parts of the building consortium, for NOORo I, NOORo II and NOORo III. In the solar power sector, SENER is known as one of the top companies due to its continual advances in innovative technology. SENER develops and tests new prototypes of its in-house technology in


every project with the aim of improving technology to reduce investment costs of CSP plants.

SENER’s three large contributions to solar thermal technology have been: • Firstly, the consistent use of thermal storage used in parabolic trough plants and central tower plants. These plants can continue producing power throughout the night using heat stored from the sun. • Secondly, improvement in efficiency, by reaching optimal (high) temperatures for the steam turbine directly from the concentrated solar heat• Thirdly, lowering costs with industrialized designs and processes

All of SENER’s projects showcase state-of-the-art technological trends observed throughout the world in this industry. These are, without a doubt, the plants of the future.

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