Patents for thermal energy storage have soared over the last eight years, according to the patent filing source patsnap. We’ve covered stand-alone thermal energy storage using solid materials like sand, bricks, concrete, slag and ceramic waste, and delivered as hot...
Researchers at GE Aerospace Research and Sandia National Laboratory have successfully fabricated and tested a 3D-printed silicon carbide (SiC) volumetric solar air receiver, achieving a temperature of 1390°C on-sun. The goal of the three-year program, now completed,...
Like most countries, China favors domestic suppliers for its renewable energy projects. As a result, virtually all companies supplying components for the country’s complex concentrated solar power plants are Chinese. However, it is not impossible for a Western company...
China has really been building out CSP at a rapid pace in the last few years, overtaking what the US ever built commercially through 2015 (1.5 GW), and now China is second only to what Spain built in the last decade, 2.3 GW. As of mid 2026, China has a relatively new...
An interview with Lauri Myllyvirta, co-founder and lead analyst of the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, an independent research organization headquartered in Finland with staff across Europe and Asia, about China’s 15th Five-Year Plan. SK: I was surprised...
Steel production accounts for roughly 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and nearly 70% of that comes from coal-fired blast furnaces; the dominant way the world has made iron for centuries. The Electric Arc Furnace (EAF) could decarbonize steelmaking because it...
With China’s massive state-owned enterprises (SOE) like China General Nuclear, PowerChina and Three Gorges (famous for the 22MW dam) completing 26 full-scale concentrated solar power (CSP) projects in the last few years, and with even more than that under...
Concentrated solar power researchers have long known that porous ceramic “volumetric” receivers can deliver very high temperatures. What a new study from Cranfield University shows is that the internal shape of the cavity impacts heat retention. After testing...
At Perth's Curtin University in Western Australia, Lina Hockaday is leading a team researching the use of waste brine to upgrade iron ore in a different way, so it can be used to make green steel. Right now, most of Western Australia’s Pilbara region iron ore is...
During a trial run in April, 2026, one of the most recent new CSP projects in China, the 100MW tower CSP project at Tangshan Haitai's 1 GW Qiquanhu PV Industrial Park, set an operation record. It ran continuously and safely around the clock for 96 hours straight, with...
Two California electric utilities have moved to exit long-term contracts to buy power from Ivanpah, a unique first-of-its-kind utility-scale solar tower project that has delivered only around 70–80% of its projected annual generation since it began operating in 2014....
Replacing the standard two‑tank molten salt system with a single tank using a thermocline could cut capital costs and halve thermal tank losses in concentrated solar power (CSP) plants. But how big can a single tank safely be built when hot and cold molten salts share...
Performing the solar hybrid sulfur cycle right at the copper smelter could generate the oxygen and hydrogen to make the copper industry green Northern Chile is known for having the best solar resource in the world for concentrated solar thermal (CST). And this region...
PROMES-CNRS researchers have further advanced their lithium-ion battery recycling using concentrated solar heat. The team has now shown they can recover 76% of the lithium and up to 99.3% of the cobalt at 1100°C. Working with the French battery recycling company SNAM,...
The background For decades, gases have been largely overlooked as heat-transfer fluids in concentrated solar receiver systems, mainly due to their poor heat transfer capability and the high pumping power required. Early research on gaseous heat transfer fluids in...
Volateq has successfully deployed faster drone scans to inspect ball joints in a 100 MW solar plant. The firm is addressing the challenge of staying on top of O&M with a drone-based inspection system capable of scanning an entire solar field in one hour, with...
In a video call from the US, SolarPACES caught up with Ranga Pitchumani, Editor-in-Chief of Solar Energy, a leading journal in the field. Dr. Pitchumani was the Chief Scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), SunShot Initiative, Founding Director of its...
A new paper from researchers at PROMES-CNRS in France presents a control strategy to reliably deliver a precise thermal power from concentrated solar to meet industrial heat requirements. The objective was to design a proof-of-concept algorithm for operating a...
Solar researchers at Fraunhofer Chile have designed, built, and tested a complete solar collector and crucible system for melting and recycling aluminum, heated by Annular Fresnel solar collectors. In Annular Fresnel, each mirror is flat, like a Fresnel mirror, but...
Solar calcination + sCO2 cycle In a year-round California-based study, a Chilean research team has continued to advance a potentially more cost-effective and efficient form of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) that leverages limestone's heat generation during...
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