A Swiss startup is working on commercializing two routes to solar jet fuel – to market first by 2022, and by 2030, from direct air capture of CO2 and H2O
At Synhelion, Solar Jet Fuels Get Ready for Take-off
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CSP News & Analysis
Developers and Utilities Mull Solar Storage for a 100% Clean Energy Southwest
As electricity grids include more intermittent renewables to meet 100% clean energy goals – utilities look beyond batteries to CSP+TES
A New Way to Dry Cool Solar Thermal Power Plants – with Underground Air
A completely new way to dry cool solar thermal power plants, inspired by commercially available underground heat pumps used to cool buildings
Clean Tech investment challenge in commercializing innovations like HELIOtube
HELIOVIS has been running a demo plant in Spain for two years demonstrating their novel low-cost blow-up plastic tube solar collector for CSP. The small startup is fighting hard to get the industry-scale financial backing needed to introduce the technology and to make...
Irrigation Water Can First be Used to Cool a Solar Thermal Power Project
Wet cooling of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants would be preferable if there was plenty of available water, because it promotes greater thermal efficiency. However, most CSP tends to be built in very arid regions, and so for environmental reasons, developers...
“Star” Receiver Could Cut Tower CSP Cost 11%
A star shape allows for double sided flux exposure in the receiver, a way to allow for increased flux density limits in standard tower CSP
Brightsource Innovates a Solar-cured Coating for DEWA Tower CSP
Testing laboratories in Germany, France and Spain have confirmed the effectiveness of a new high-performance (97% absorbance) optical coating developed by Brightsource Energy, that can be “solar-cured” directly atop the receiver of tower CSP, like Brightsource is...
A Novel CSP Heliostat Goes from Lab to Market in Just 5 Years
The innovative pentagonal Stellio heliostat has gone from lab to commercial deployment in China’s Hami CSP project in record time
NREL Awarded $2.8 Million to Develop a Long-Duration Thermal Energy Storage Technology
Surplus solar or wind to heat thermal storage would be a win-win, meeting changing market needs to store renewables – while transitioning fossil energy
Rebirth of SolarReserve’s 450 MW Likana Brings CSP Supply Chain Hope for Chile
This week, the Cerro Dominador Group/EIG Global Energy Partners bought the Likana Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project from US-based SolarReserve, which was unable to complete the project. SolarReserve had already developed Likana by accomplishing the preliminary...
Sodium-based Vast Solar Combines the Best of Trough & Tower CSP to Win our Innovation Award
At the 2019 SolarPACES Conference, Vast Solar took the SolarPACES Technical Innovation Award for their use of high temperature sodium-based HTF in tower CSP, presented in their paper: Vast Solar: improving performance and reducing cost and risk using high temperature...
Japan and Australia Test Solar Hydrogen Component
For countries such as Japan or South Korea with poor DNI and little space for wind and solar, the value of hydrogen is that it can be made overseas with renewable energy, then stored and shipped, and used to produce electricity, heat, or propulsion. This way,...
Solar steam could heat MENA Region industries for less
"But even though the costs, the lifetime returns, and the speedy pay-back proved so competitive, during the three year study, Cuadros found that small and medium businesses were loathe to actually purchase and own novel technology." Only the deep pockets of the oil...
Q&A: How Risk Mitigation Finance Can Cut CSP Costs
Cutting risk in financing will be the next key to further cut CSP costs, according to the author of Non-recourse project financing for concentrated solar thermal power published in the journal Utilities Policy. Dr. Steven Geroe teaches Energy and Environmental Law and...
Novel CSP Design Combines the Solar Receiver with Thermal Energy Storage
Researchers propose combining a solar receiver with energy storage within one unit on the ground, by using a beam-down optical reflecting system
Add Hydrogen Combustion to a Solar Reactor for Carbon-Free Mining and Mineral Processing
Iron, nickel, alumina and copper mining processes are among the industrial processes that require heat at between 700°C and 1000°C. The advanced concentrated solar thermal (CST)reactors being developed by researchers globally can attain temperatures this high (and...
Could China’s Global Grid Idea Help Grow CSP?
China has an ambitious proposal for a global HVDC grid to transfer renewable energy throughout the world. Interconnected regional electricity networks would be connected to a backbone of HVDC lines that would become a globe-spanning super grid by 2050. Advancing the...
Solar green hydrogen process that cuts costs
A preliminary study of the average cost of a novel process for producing solar hydrogen in several locations in Australia finds it could come close to the US DOE renewable hydrogen target of $3 per kilogram. The way that hydrogen is reformed from natural gas is a...
Designing Solar Furnaces to Make Biochars without Air Pollution
Charcoal might seem like a very low tech product, but lithium batteries, water filtration and super-capacitors are among its high tech end uses, and the requirements for these different purposes are actually very exacting. Solar researchers in Mexico are investigating...
Start-Up VC Invests in Beam-Down Concentrator for Solar Fuel
“Our “back of the envelop” communication with researchers is that $3 per gallon of gasoline equivalent (GGE) per kilogram of hydrogen could be obtainable,” said Al Maaitah.
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CSP News & Analysis
- 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
- Sandia’s Gen-3 particle-based CSP demo to debut this fall
- Optimizing the safety factor in high temperature solar absorbers
- Finding an ideal channel geometry inside compact flow gas receivers
- New neural network tool speeds up O&M for Trough CSP
- Vast Energy advances world’s-first solar-powered green methanol demo
- New AI perfects heliostat aim to boost solar tower power
- Solar hydrogen from sulphuric acid recycling to get an industry trial
- A new trigeneration study builds on recaptured waste heat
- Two ways water derailed PG&E’s Ivanpah CSP contract
- Future atmospheric attenuation impacts on central solar tower plants
- Solar syngas produced at moderate temperatures to speed market adoption
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