Why Vast plans to include methanol production in their CSP project Methanol is used to make many chemicals, but what makes producing green methanol most interesting for the future is that the shipping industry, finally having to deal with climate emissions, considers...
The Crescent Dunes CSP project in the US was the first of a kind: The first tower CSP with thermal energy storage at full-scale; 110 MW. (Above about 150 MW, the distances of the solar field encircling the tower receiver has optical limits) It was developed by the...
Synhelion's solar receiver achieves a temperature of 1,500°C and higher. That's unprecedented. Even the Gen3 particle-based solar receiver being pilot-scale tested now at Sandia - and the DLR CentRec receiver licensed to Heliogen - operate at the (relatively!) lower...
Green ammonia could be made sustainably using solar thermochemistry instead of the way it is made today in the fossil-fueled Haber-Bosch process, which taps fossil energy for the thermochemistry and the heat and the high pressure it requires, while emitting almost...
One of the new CSP projects Three Gorges Renewables is building is a novel dual-tower design at Guazhou, in Gansu Province
Ten years ago, GlassPoint CEO Rod MacGregor bucked the typical business plan for solar developers, both PV and CSP (How CSP works): Sign an electricity contract with an electric utility to sell your solar power by the kilowatt-hour for 25 years and try to get...
Xavier Lara’s consultancy AELIUS Energies SLU to champion green ammonia for shipping before an audience of major shipbuilders in Qingdao China
Fractal steel texturing could solve the corrosive effect of higher temperature solar salts in tomorrow's Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) We recently caught up with Dr. Ranga Pitchumani, who was the Chief Scientist for the SunShot Initiative, Founding Director of its...
Solar even under grey skies 365 days a year: Typically, simplicity equals low costs. But the creators of a multi-technology thermochemical energy storage system for Gen3 concentrating solar power (CSP) claim that their complex design would bring costs down by enabling...
Heat-recovery ideas for solar reactors existed as theories “but not to actually go to the lab, build a device and try to make it work.”
The molten salt mixture deployed in today’s commercial CSP plants for thermal energy storage is liquid at 565°C and degrades at higher temperatures. Yet higher temperatures would increase thermal efficiency. So how can we develop a molten salt mix that can reach...
Three years ago, Abengoa thermal energy storage engineer Cristina Prieto exchanged the relatively secretive world of commercial CSP for academia. Now, as the professor for a newly created thermal energy storage discipline at the School of Engineering at the University...
Tower CSP thermal storage initially had a tank leak problem. Vast Solar says they have the solution
Adding nickel to ceria can yield solar syngas at lower temperatures - at just 700°C Solar thermochemistry researchers at the University of Florida and Synhelion tried a new way to generate syngas, the precursor to hydrocarbon fuels like jet fuel or diesel. Solar...
Goal: ensure the quartz window never exceeds 300°C, despite solar receiver temperatures above 1500°C – keeping thermal efficiency over 50%
A solar thermal energy storage breakthrough – single tank thermal energy storage avoiding thermocline thickening has been tested successfully
Tower CSP needs talented engineers in optics, robotics and AI to advance heliostat technology and cut costs.
Hybrid PV-CSP in Chile A new study from energy engineering consultancy Fraunhofer - for Chile compares the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of hybrid solar with gas. Comparison between Concentrated Solar Power and Gas-Based Generation in Terms of Economic and...
Solar energy record - 12 days, 24 hours a day In a solar energy record for round-the-clock power generation, Mongolia's Wulate 100MW trough CSP project ran continuously for 12 days, generating pure solar energy without batteries; due to the thermal energy storage in...
SolarSteam was recently picked by Foresight Canada as one of the country’s most investable clean tech companies. The start-up uses concentrating solar thermal to produce hot water and steam for use by industrial and institutional clients that need to meet an initial...
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