Spanish officials have cleared the way for the development of a 50-megawatt solar thermal energy plant to be built in Alcazar de San Juan.

The project is being developed by Termosolar Alcazar, a joint venture between SolarReserve, a US developer of utility-scale solar power projects and Preneal, a Spanish developer of renewable energy projects.

The Termosolar Alcazar Power Project will use an innovative new, molten-salt, concentrated solar power tower technology. The plant is expected to generate enough energy to power about 70,000 area homes.

Termosolar Alcazar will use SolarReserve’s utility-scale molten-salt solar power tower technology, which features integrated energy storage to deploy electricity on demand, day or night, with dry cooling.

Established in 1996 in Madrid, Preneal has participated in the development and construction of 13 wind farms in Spain, with a total of 440 megawatts of installed capacity. By 2015, the company aims to construct and operate more than 800 megawatts of solar thermal and wind-power projects.

California-based Solar Reserve holds the exclusive worldwide license to the molten-salt solar power tower technology developed by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, a subsidiary of United Technologies Corporation. Since its formation in late 2007, SolarReserve has assembled a concentrated solar power development portfolio of more than 25 projects with a potential output of more than 3,000 megawatts in the US and Europe, with early stage activities in the Middle East, North and South Africa, Australia, China and Latin America. SolarReserve is also developing 1,100 megawatts of photovoltaic projects across the western US.

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