Glorinda’s services
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
At Glorinda, we design and deliver concentrated solar power plants that turn direct sunlight into grid-scale electricity you can dispatch on demand, by day and well into the night.
Concentrated Solar Power
A concentrated solar power plant generates the way a coal or gas station does, with one substitution: the sun’s concentrated heat stands in for the furnace. A field of mirrors focuses sunlight onto a receiver to produce intense heat, the heat boils water into steam, and the steam drives a turbine. What sets it apart from a photovoltaic panel, which turns light straight into electricity, is that CSP makes heat on the way. You may also see it called concentrated solar-thermal.
Your solution can be Energy Storage
"Our solar farm goes dark the moment the sun sets.".
What problem does it solve?
A photovoltaic panel produces only while the sun is on it, and demand does not confine itself to daylight; it climbs into the evening, after the panels have gone quiet. Bridging that gap means holding energy until it is wanted. The obvious way, storing the electricity in batteries, grows more expensive the more you build, which is what strains battery-only projects at grid scale.
A concentrated solar plant has a cheaper route open to it, precisely because it makes heat before it makes electricity: it can hold the heat and convert it to power hours later, and heat is far less costly to store than electricity. That is the whole idea. CSP is solar you can call on at nine in the evening, not only at noon.
Benefits
A high capacity factor
It runs at a capacity factor above fifty per cent, well above what a photovoltaic farm on the same site reaches.
Industrial-grade voltage
Its output is high enough in voltage to serve heavy industrial loads and feed the transmission grid directly.
Decades of service life
The plant runs well beyond thirty-five years with no year-on-year fall in output.
Water it gives back
More than eighty per cent of its process water is condensed and returned to a closed cycle.
How it works
Every CSP plant does the same job. Three choices shape the plant we build, and each is settled by the site and the load, not by a default.
The collector
Two ways to gather the sun into heat. A Solar Tower rings a central receiver with a field of tracking heliostats, reaching around 560°C, the hotter of the two and the choice for the largest plants. Parabolic troughs use rows of curved mirrors feeding a heated tube, covering a wider spread of sizes at a lower temperature. Both feed the same steam turbine.
Whether, and how, to store
A steady daytime load can run straight to the grid. To carry the evening, or run around the clock, the plant stores energy: most cheaply as heat, in hot and cold tanks of molten salt, with a battery system (BESS) added where fast response or a particular electrical profile calls for it.
How much storage
Sized to the demand curve, from a few hours to cover the evening peak up to around fifteen for near-continuous output.
Where mini LNG is used
Mini LNG is sized to the gas source and the offtake it needs to serve, and it applies wherever gas needs to move without a pipeline connecting the two ends.
Oil, gas and petrochemical
Power generation
Agriculture and agro-processing
Municipal
Mining
Marine and heavy transport
Remote industrial and manufacturing sites
Typical usages
- A new utility-scale plant built from the ground up on a strong-sun site
- Storage added to an existing solar plant to extend its output
- Concentrated solar and photovoltaics built together, covering the load across the whole day
- Replacement capacity for an ageing fossil plant on the same grid connection
Two things the design builds in
Minutes and hours point to batteries. Days point to pumped or thermal. Weeks and seasons point to hydrogen.
Once built, the plant has no fuel to buy and nothing to burn, so it runs without the fuel cost or the operating emissions of a conventional station.
How it works
We take on the whole life of a plant, not one stage of it.
01
Feasibility and site study
Assessing the site and the numbers, so a project only goes ahead on a sound technical and economic footing.
02
Engineering and procurement
Producing the detailed engineering design and procuring the equipment to build it.
03
Construction
Building the plant on site and integrating it into one working installation.
04
Commissioning and start-up
Bringing the plant into operation and proving it delivers the output agreed at the outset.
05
Operation and long-term support
Running and maintaining the plant for the long term, under operations and maintenance and service agreements.
Which CSP solution suits your needs?
Selecting a CSP configuration is an engineering decision, not a purchasing one. We characterise the site’s direct sunlight and load curve, run feasibility and pre-feasibility studies, compare collector and storage options on capital and operating cost, and act as owner’s engineer while somebody else builds it if that suits you better.
Frequently asked questions
It runs on the sun’s direct beam, so it needs a site with strong, reliable direct sunlight. Hazy or often-cloudy locations suit photovoltaics better.
To build, yes. But its cost per unit of energy falls as the plant grows, and across a service life measured in decades it can undercut a large photovoltaic plant that has to re-buy its panels along the way.
Projects can be structured under a German authority-backed financing framework, using supply, offtake, tolling, build-operate-transfer, exclusive distribution or joint-venture contracts.
We work to an integrated management system certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001, and the equipment is developed and supplied under the Glorinda brand, with the specification, quality control and development ours.
Headquartered and manufacturing in Wiesbaden, Germany, with a sales office in the Netherlands and branches in Portugal, Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, Africa and CIS.
Take this further
Tell us where the site is and the shape of the demand you need to meet. An engineer reads every enquiry and answers with the questions that actually decide the plant, not a brochure.