From 1985 through 1991, nine commercial parabolic trough plants with capacities from 30 to 80 MW have been implemented in the Mojave desert in California, with a total installed capacity of 354 MW. We have delivered all the 2.5 million square meters of high precision parabolic reflector panels to these plants.

These nine plants have supplied by 2001 over 11,000 million kWh of clean solar electricity to the grid - half of the world’s total solar power production.

The solar fields are operating with nearly 99% annual availability. Thanks to the 94% energy reflectivity and optical precision of our reflector panels, the daily solar-to-net electric efficiency exceeds 20% during clear summer days. Below are shown the daily patterns of radiation on a summer day, the thermal output efficiency of the solar field with our reflector panels, and solar-to-electric efficiency of solar electric production. As a result, these solar thermal plants are at the leading edge of commercial solar electricity production in the world.

Parabolic Trough Plants consist of long parallel rows of modular solar collectors. Tracking the sun from East to West by rotation on one axis, our high precision reflector panels concentrate the solar radiation coming directly from the sun onto an absorber pipe located along the focal line of the collector. A heat transfer medium, a synthetic oil like in car engines, is circulated through the absorber pipes at temperatures up to 400°C and generates live steam to drive the steam turbine generator of a conventional power block.

To improve performance and reliability and to further reduce costs, we have optimized and qualified an entire loop of  SKAL-ET  collectors at the Kramer Junction SEGS plants in California.

Using the same key components, that have been fully proven in the commercial plants in California, a completely new collector structure was developed for the SKAL-ET, that improves now the mechanical stiffness and optical performance of this collector, reducing at the same time weight and cost.

With this technology in our hands, we can offer turnkey supply, detailed engineering or licensing of the SKAL-ET technology.