Mintek pyrometallurgy engineer Lina Hockaday is trying a highly focused solar reactor to replace the fossil energy used as part of the steelmaking process
Researcher Pioneers Solar to Heat Crucial Steel Component
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CSP News & Analysis
How Has Spain’s Concentrated Solar Thermal Power Performed?
As prices for Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) with thermal energy storage dropped an astonishing 50% between May and November this year, it seemed that 2017 saw the kind of price breakthrough that could allow CSP to compete with traditional thermal power in supplying...
GlassPoint Brings Gigantic 850 MWth Solar EOR to California
GlassPoint will build an 850 MW (thermal) solar thermal facility in Bakersfield, generating 12 million barrels of emissions-free steam annually for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) replacing natural gas.
How Synhelion’s solar jet fuel started – an interview in 2017
Thermochemical solar fuel manufacturing would be an energy industry with a life of centuries, rather than decades. The feedstock of sunlight, carbon dioxide and water is essentially unlimited. Scientists with the SOLAR-JET Project have demonstrated the first-ever...
All MENA CSP Now 7 Cents or Under Says ACWA Power
ACWA Power’s latest record-low contract signed with DEWA at just over 7 cents per kWh is no outlier, according to CEO Paddy Padmanathan. CSP is a thermal form of solar that typically includes thermal storage in a power block so that it can generate power at any time, not just when the sun shines.
US DOE: CSP Could Provide Needed Flexibility and Reliability to Grid
BY AVI SHULTZ Dr. Avi Shultz is the acting program manager for the United States Department of Energy (DOE) SunShot Initiative Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) team, which supports research, development, and demonstration of solar thermal components and systems that...
Solar Thermal Power Prices have Dropped an Astonishing 50% in Six Months
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) prices dropped in 2017, from under 10 cents per kWh in May, to under 5 cents by October. CSP is a form of thermal solar energy that can power day or night, because its intrinsic ability to store its energy thermally enables it to...
Scientist Devises a Solar Reactor to Make Water and Oxygen from Moon Rocks
With the successful test of this solar reactor design, Denk has achieved the first step, creating H2O on the Moon using solar thermal energy. For the second step, solar electrolysis would break the H2O into hydrogen and oxygen. An aerospace engineer has built a...
How Solar Peaker Plants Could Replace Gas Peakers
Solar can be designed to run only after dark at a competitive price with a current natural gas peaker plant. Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) can be a night-only dispatchable (D-CSP) plant; with its entire solar energy absorbed by day to be delivered after dark to cover the evening peak load on the grid, according to a study funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE).
Solar Flux; from Bug to Feature
Sandia scientists find the optimal way to mop up surplus solar flux on CSP towers Excess solar flux could be harnessed and used to generate additional electricity at a tower CSP plant, by cladding part of the tower containing the receiver with photovoltaic (PV)...
TuNur Night-time Solar Exports to EU for 10 cents – Q&A
Europe already imports energy long-distance: via natural gas pipelines from Russia. TuNur plans round-the-clock solar via HVDC from Tunisia
Sandia Labs R&D Helped SolarReserve hit 6 Cents CSP
Research was key to the low price record of 6 cents for dispatchable solar thermal energy at Port Augusta: SolarReserve According to Kevin Smith, the CEO of California-based SolarReserve; the company that is first to sell CSP at 6 cents/kWh, the record-low CSP...
US DOE Funds Terrafore’s Phase Change Energy Storage Test
The US Department of Energy (DOE) has released funding to the Argonne National Laboratory for a scaled-up round of independent testing of Terrafore Technologies’ innovative encapsulated thermal energy storage in phase change salts, designed to operate in temperatures to greater than 800°C in a single tank that acts as both storage and heat exchanger.
How Port Augusta Got the World’s Cheapest Solar Thermal Power
Most coverage of SolarReserve's 150 MW Aurora solar thermal power plant in Port Augusta completely overlooked its biggest news: the South Australian Government just bought the world's cheapest solar thermal energy. Just 6 cents per kilowatt hour. SolarReserve will...
SolarReserve Breaks CSP Price Record with 6 Cent Contract
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) just reached the US Department of Energy 2020 SunShot goal of 6 cents for dispatchable solar
CSP to be Essential by 2050 …for Germany?
Given Germany’s lack of desert sun, it might seem improbable that thermal solar would be a key component of its low-carbon grid planning under its Energiewende (energy transition). But several papers published in 2016 found that concentrated solar power (CSP) will be essential.
Why Chile Could Lead the World in CSP
With annual solar radiation at 3,500kWh per square meter, akin to what you see in outer space, it is no surprise that Chile is a world leader in solar energy production. The nation is also in a position to lead the world in CSP
Solar EOR a Big Win for GlassPoint
Unlike other CSP developers who leverage the heat of the sun as the “fuel” for a power block that then generates electricity to the grid; GlassPoint’s enclosed troughs are simply employed in the direct production of steam, focusing on what the company sees as an ignored market for heat.
SolarPACES to Optimize Chile’s Clean Energy Grid
Chile will be next to benefit from an analysis; developed in Germany, of optimal clean energy grid options A new computational tool will be used by international researchers at SolarPACES to calculate the best technology mix of generation resources to most...
How an Artist Has Made CSP the “Default” Solar
Images by the award-winning artist Jamey Stillings have become so widely used that it is not uncommon to see news stories about solar energy illustrated by a tower surrounded by mirrors, rather than the much more widely deployed PV.
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- Rethinking pressurized gases for Fresnel solar receivers
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- Ranga Pitchumani – we’ve just started scratching the surface of Gen3 CSP
- Stored solar heat gets an algorithm to ensure a steady supply
- Aluminum melted with Annular Fresnel solar at over 700°C
- Tallying a year’s sun on solar calcination with sCO2 cycles
- Researchers create a digital twin to run DAWN, Synhelion’s solar fuels plant
- A buried solar receiver to melt lunar ice
- Solar vacuum pyrolysis leverages the lunar vacuum to mine oxygen
- PSA advances a solar reactor to extract oxygen from lunar ilmenite
- Solar steam from Glasspoint to decarbonize a California mine
- Startup concentrates solar to melt NASA’s lunar landing pads
- How rotating the solar receiver could cut Trough CSP land use
- New star-shaped solar receiver cuts costs and prolongs tower CSP life
- 3D-printed ceramics tested to maximize thermal energy storage in molten salts
- ARPA-E-winning thermal energy storage in sand wins commercial interest
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