ABSTRACT
The D.C. section of the 480 kWp EUCLIDES-THERMIE demonstration plant, the world largest using concentration and the first subsidised by the European Commission, was completed on November 27th, 1998. One inverter, connected to a pair of arrays and injecting power into the grid, was already operative by that time. Currently a monitoring station and seven inverters, one per each pair of arrays are operative. The EUCLIDES ™ plant consists of 14 arrays, 84 meters long, each with 140 linear parabolic mirrors and 138 receiving modules series connected. The collectors are parabolic troughs with one axis tracking, oriented North/South and parallel to ground. The receiving modules were manufactured by BP Solar Ltd., and the rest of the sub-systems were developed by IES in a previous JOULE IV project. ITER was responsible of the mirror and structure set-up, overall installation, site preparation. inverter fabrication and grid connection. The objective of this paper is to describe the installation of the whole plant, to present the initial performance and to asses the cost per Wpeak of this technology. The cost analysis promises that 3.84 ECU/W, all included for grid connection, is achievable at 10 MW/year production.
