The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) issued a request for information (RFI) to better understand the opportunities to deploy supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) based turbomachinery for concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP) plants.
Electrical power generation based on sCO2 as the working fluid has the potential to yield higher thermal efficiencies at lower cost than state-of-the-art steam-based power cycles. Next-generation CSP system designs use sCO2 turbine power cycles, instead of steam, which are smaller than conventional turbomachinery technologies, to more efficiently convert solar thermal energy to electricity and reduce the cost of CSP technology.
SETO seeks feedback from members of the renewable energy industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other relevant organizations on two topic areas:
Topic Area 1: sCO2 Turbomachinery Sub-Component De-Risking: Gaps in technology development to improve equipment performance and reliability.
Topic Area 2: sCO2 Turbomachinery Market: Opportunities and challenges for power generation and energy storage applications.
Feedback provided through this RFI will help SETO identify key challenges, address gaps, and support more widespread deployment of sCO2 technologies in CSP applications.
Additional Information
The deadline to submit your responses to this RFI is January 31, 2024 at 5 p.m. ET. You must email your response to SETO.RFI.CSP@ee.doe.gov as a Microsoft Word (.docx) attachment. Responses must be provided as attachments to an email. Attachments larger than 25MB should be compressed (i.e., zipped) to ensure message delivery. Only electronic responses will be accepted.
Please identify your answers by responding to a specific question or topic, if applicable.
The DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will not respond to individual submissions or publish publicly a compendium of responses. A response to this RFI will not be viewed as a binding commitment to develop or pursue the project or ideas discussed.
Please provide the following information at the start of your response to this RFI:
Company or institution name
Company or institution contact
Contact’s address, phone number, and e-mail address
