The contract was awarded by the project’s EPC contractor, a joint venture created by the Spanish companies Sener and Cobra.
The equipment will be integrated into the Valle 1 and Valle 2 plants owned by Torresol Energy, a company created by the Spanish Sener (60%) and the Abu Dhabi-based company Masdar (40%). The plants will have an installed power capacity of 50MWe each.
Foster Wheeler has received a full notice to proceed on this contract. The terms of the agreement were not disclosed, and the contract value was included in the company’s first-quarter 2010 bookings. The equipment delivery is scheduled for the first quarter of 2011.
The plants will use Sener’s concentrated parabolic trough technology (SENERtrough) and will have energy storage by means of molten salt tanks that is designed to provide up to seven hours of plant operation without sun radiation, the company said.
The plants are expected to operate approximately 3,500 hours/year, with the potential to eliminate 95,000 tons/year of CO2 emissions.
Eric Svendsen, CEO of Foster Wheeler Energia in Madrid, said: “This award is a decisive step forward for Foster Wheeler’s strategy regarding solar thermal technology.
“It reflects our client’s confidence in the excellent performance of Foster Wheeler and also confirms the high quality standards and features of our design for the demanding heat exchanger equipment required by solar thermal power plants that utilize molten salts and oil as thermal heat transfer fluids.”
