Guardian delivering solar mirrors for Brightsources's Ivanpah CSP plant

Guardian will supply 160,000 mirrors to the Ivanpah CSP plant

By CSP World on 4 April, 2012 - 13:15

Heliostats being transported in Ivanpah CSP plant

Guardian Industries has just announced that the company’s EcoGuard Solar Boost mirrors are being installed at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California's Mojave Desert. The project, a partnership between NRG Solar (a subsidiary of NRG Energy), Google and BrightSource Energy, will nearly double the amount of solar thermal energy produced in the U.S. today.

Guardian, a diversified global manufacturing company headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan, started supplying the first of 160,000 of its EcoGuard Solar Boost mirrors to ISEGS in November 2011.

"EcoGuard Solar Boost has been proven to withstand the extreme conditions found in the Mojave Desert," said Martin Bracamonte, vice president, Science & Technology, Guardian Flat Glass Group. "The technology used in manufacturing the glass gives it the extra edge in being a more durable and reliable resource to maximize capturing the sun's energy for large-scale use."

The mirrors are mounted over helisotats which track the sun. These helisotats are installed around the tower and they all comprise the solar field.

Guardian's EcoGuard Solar Boost mirrors have an industry-leading reflectivity. In 1978, Guardian Industries delivered one if its first sets of laminated flat mirrors to Sandia National Laboratories, one of the first solar fields in the United States. Today they ha four manufacturing lines specialized in solar mirrors throughout the world.

Ivanpah, a tower power CSP plant, developed by Brightsource, uses the mirrors to track the sun and reflect the DNI (direct normal irradiation) to the boiler atop the tower and heat a molten salt, which is then used to heat water and generate steam (superheated steam) to drive a turbine where electricity is generated.

Located in Ivanpah, Calif., about five miles from the California/Nevada border, on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, Guardian EcoGuard Solar Boost mirrors will help deliver energy from the sun to more than 140,000 homes in California, during the peak hours of the day.