Inauguration of TES, the Thermal Energy Storage system for the Santa Barbara thermal power plant
World's first installation of the green solution to make power plants more flexible and efficient
Inaugurated the Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system at the 390 MW Santa Barbara power plant. Proger was contracted by the manufacturer, Israel-based Brenmiller, for project management, supervision, quality control, contract and supplier management services for the installation of the TES in the ENEL combined cycle power plant located in the province of Arezzo.
The TES is a totally green system that allows to increase the efficiency of the power plant, thus reducing consumption and polluting emissions. In technical terms, it is a modular heat exchanger with storage capacity, by means of a mixture of crushed solid rocks, which works in an integrated manner with the thermal cycle of the plant by acting as an “energy buffer”: it can store or return energy by withdrawing or reintroducing steam into the circuit that feeds the steam turbine of the thermoelectric power plant. In this way, the TES ensures more stable and, at the same time, more responsive electricity production with respect to changes in demand, thus increasing the plant’s efficiency and flexibility.
“This project fits perfectly with Proger’s approach to the energy transition,” comments Rocco Marsico, BU Green Energy director, “which cannot disregard an incremental path of optimizing current power generation systems with solutions that are technologically mature, easily installable and therefore sustainable from all points of view“.
