Thermal Energy Storage Working Group

General Coordination: Esther Rojas, CIEMAT, Spain

Objective

Promoting collaboration on Thermal Energy Storage (TES) to improve its reliability, integration on CSP plants and to develop a common language.

Coordinator: J. Vidal, NREL, USA

Current status:

Working with Chloride Salts
3 Round Robin test performed:
- - Specific heat capacity of sensible materials (Solar salt with nanoparticles) 9 participants, including industry; Achieved agreement in accurately measuring cp with DSC, according to normalized methods ASTM E1269 and MDSCTM in the range of temperatures 200 and 400ºC (SolarPACES 2016).
  - Reaction enthalpy of thermochemical materials.
    - Cobalt oxide: 7 participants, including industry; there was no coherency and agreement in the results obtained by different partners (SolarPACES2016).
    - Perovskites: 7 participants; Some discrepancies in results (SolarPACES2018).

Coordinator: M. Rodriguez, CIEMAT, Spain

Current status:

Identification of critical equipment and related problems (open to new problems that could appear in commercial plants).
On-going definition of tests.
Aligned with task 6.4 of the European project SFERA-III

Coordinator: P. Garcia, CEA, France

Current status:

Identification of key figures.
First draft of Definition of common procedures for testing thermal storage prototypes for STE plants (2016).
Aligned with task 6.3 of the European project SFERA-III