Sener has been selected to represent Spain in the prestigious 2011 European Business Awards sponsored by HSBC. It beat off stiff competition to be selected as one of 25 Country Representatives and will now compete for a coveted Ruban d’Honneur in the next round of the competition. Final category award winners will be unveiled in Barcelona on 22 November 2011.
This pre-selection has been obtained in the Innovation category, thanks to the Gemasolar Project, the first commercial - scale solar thermal electric plant in the world applying central tower molten salt receiver with molten salt storage system technology and it is a revolution in the concentrated solar power sector. The award has also considered the excellent professional career of Sener as a technology and innovation company.
Gemasolar is a plant promoted by the company Torresol Energy, located in the Fuentes de Andalucía area in Seville, whose technological innovations have been developed by Sener, which also leads the construction of this state-of-the-art plant.
Gemasolar is the first commercial plant in the world with central tower receiver technology and a molten salt heat storage system. This system allows to continue producing energy throughout 15 hours without sunlight; in other words, at night or during cloudy weather. Additionally, thanks to this storage capacity, a clean source such as solar energy can become manageable, something which, up until today, has been a pending task within the field of renewable energies.
Its new technology, which significantly increases the plant’s efficiency, implies a starting point within the cost reduction strategy in the solar thermal electric industry, a key objective of both Sener and Torresol Energy in order to make clean energy a firm alternative to fossil fuels. Once in operation in the next months, Gemasolar will be capable of supplying clean and safe energy to 25,000 homes, and of reducing CO2 emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year.
The European Business Awards has identified some of Europe’s brightest businesses based on their ability to demonstrate the three core principles at the heart of the Awards program: innovation, business excellence and sustainability. The European Business Awards objective is to raise the visibility and progress of companies who excel in delivering innovation twinned with successful commercial results whilst acting responsibly and positively affecting the social environment they operate in.
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