Miraah

Miraah is a solar plant that is under construction for the production of steam in Oman.^[1] In July 2015, Petroleum Development Oman and GlassPoint Solar announced that they signed a $600 million agreement to build the 1 GWth solar field. The project will be the world's largest solar field measured by peak thermal capacity.^[1]

Quick facts

• Energy production: 1,021 MW thermal
• Daily steam output: 6,000 tons
• Total area: 3 km² (740 acres)
• Technology: GlassPoint enclosed trough
• Number of Glasshouses: 36
• Construction Starts: 2015
• First Steam: 2017
• Gas Savings: 5.6 trillion Btus per year
• CO2 emissions reduced: 300,000 tons per year

Overview

Miraah will be one of the world’s largest solar plants.^[2] The solar thermal facility will harness the sun’s energy to produce steam used in oil production. Once complete, it will deliver the largest peak energy output of any solar plant in the world. The scale of this landmark project underscores the massive market for deploying solar in the oil and gas industry.

The 1 GWth project will reduce the amount of natural gas used to generate steam for thermal enhanced oil recovery (EOR). In thermal EOR, steam is injected into an oil reservoir to heat the oil, making it easier to pump to the surface. Miraah will generate an average of 6,000 tons of solar steam each day, providing a substantial portion of the steam required at the Amal oilfield operated by Petroleum Development Oman (PDO).

The mega project dwarfs all previous solar EOR installations and is more than 100 times larger than the pilot project built by GlassPoint for PDO in 2012. The pilot was completed safely, on time and on budget, and has been operating successfully for more than two years. The pilot exceeded PDO’s expectations for steam delivery and system reliability, paving the way for this significant expansion.

The enclosed trough solar field uses curved mirrors to focus sunlight onto a pipe filled with water. The concentrated sunlight boils the water to create steam, which is fed directly to the oilfield’s existing steam distribution network. The steam generated is exactly the same quality, temperature and pressure as steam produced by burning natural gas.

A glasshouse protects the solar array from harsh oilfield conditions like wind and dust storms. As a result, GlassPoint can use lightweight and inexpensive components inside the glasshouse. Automated washing reduces costs further and preserves scarce water resources.

The technology is proven and easy to scale by building projects in standard glasshouse modules. GlassPoint’s production-line approach constructs several glasshouses in parallel and commissions them in modules of four for rapid deployment. That means solar steam generation will begin as soon as the first glasshouse module is completed in 2017.^[3]

References