A Great Experience at SolarPaces REPA
Recovered LinkedIn post about SolarPaces REPA, the Guide System for ball joints in CSP plants and operational improvement in solar fields.
Recovered from an original LinkedIn post.
Originally published on June 12, 2024.
- SolarPaces
- CSP
- solar thermal
- operations
- ball joints
- solar field
Recovered from LinkedIn. Original text translated faithfully, with minimal formatting changes for web reading.
🔆 A great experience at SolarPaces REPA! 🔆
Yesterday, together with my Cobra colleagues José Carlos Cancho Vera and Miguel Naranjo Delgado, we had the honour of attending the SolarPaces conference at the Plataforma Solar de Almería. I want to sincerely thank the organisers, Loreto Valenzuela from CIEMAT and Eckhard Lüpfert from DLR, for making this incredible meeting of the solar thermal sector possible.
My colleagues presented the innovative “Guide System” for articulated assemblies made up of three simple ball joints. This system ensures that the ball joints, when moving to absorb the expansion of the absorber tubes, do not exceed the movement angles recommended by the manufacturer.
As a result, the ball joints are not forced and their lubricating graphite package remains in its ideal position, achieving smoother movement and avoiding blockages for much longer.
🔧 This development is crucial, since the blockage of rotary joints has been one of the most recurrent problems in CSP plants in recent years, causing numerous incidents, spills, breakages and even serious fires.
In addition, our ball joints are subject to numerous gradients caused by production limitations and setpoints, due to fluctuating market prices and the continuous restrictions imposed by the grid operator, REE.
🎉 Congratulations to the Cobra STC team for this simple and effective solution. The “Guide System” is easy for customers themselves to install, cold, without cuts or welding, in a matter of minutes and at a cost lower than that of a new ball joint.
We continue moving forward in improving the efficiency of our CSP plants! 🌞
#SolarPaces #RenewableEnergy #CSP #Innovation #Sustainability #STCobra #PlataformaSolarDeAlmería #SolarEnergy #GrupoCobra
