Abstract: This work presents the design and techno-economic analysis of a 100 MWe concentrated solar power (CSP) system using a supercritical CO2 power block with 700 °C input temperature. Aiming to leverage the relatively higher efficiency of small heliostat fields and potential multi-build discounts, a
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
Abstract: This study analyzes the technical performance, costs and life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of the production of various fuels using air-captured water and CO2, and concentrated solar energy as the source of high-temperature process heat. The solar thermochemical fuel production pathway utilizes a ceria-based
Abstract: Over the past few decades, inorganic nitride materials have grown in importance in part due to their potential as catalysts for the synthesis of NH3, a key ingredient in fertilizer and precursor to industrial chemicals. Of particular interest are the ternary (ABN) or higher-order
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
Abstract: Advanced power cycles—such as the supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) cycle—have the potential to reduce the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) of concentrated solar thermal power (CST) plants by significantly boosting their overall solar-to-electric efficiency. To successfully integrate these cycles into CST plants, the industry
𝗥𝗲𝗴𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝟰𝘁𝗵 𝗦𝗙𝗘𝗥𝗔-𝗜𝗜𝗜 𝗗𝗼𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘂𝗺 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗦𝗰𝗵𝗼𝗼𝗹 📅 11 – 15 September 2023 🔎 Focus topic summer school: Smart CSP: how smart tools, devices and software can help improve the design and operation of concentrating solar power technologies. 🗣 💻 DLR
Solar hydrogen is a component of the thermochemical solar fuels that Synhelion is developing commercially, such as aviation fuel The solar thermal green hydrogen technology beginning to be commercialized by Synhelion has now received a nod from the US DOE with funding announced today: Press
40 Projects Across 21 States Will Advance Technologies to Decarbonize American Industry and Help Create Good-Paying Jobs WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today announced $135 million for 40 projects that will reduce carbon pollution from the industrial sector and move the nation
Abstract: New analysis is presented identifying strong potential for Concentrating Solar Thermal technology (CST) to be a cost-effective contributor to future sources of net zero-emissions, high temperature industrial process heat relative to other emerging options. Nevertheless, significant further development of the technology is needed to
Abstract: Catalytic sulphur trioxide splitting is the highest-temperature (850–900 °C), endothermic step of several sulphur-based thermochemical cycles targeted to production of hydrogen or solid sulphur. The demonstrated capability of centrifugal particle solar receivers of heating particle streams at such temperatures, can allow for “allothermal” implementation of
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 temperatures up to
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 of Seville, she can be
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
Abstract: Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is an electricity generation technology that concentrates solar irradiance through heliostats onto a small area, the receiver, where a heat transfer medium, currently a fluid (HTF), is used as heat carrier towards the heat storage and power block. It has
The pilot at Sandia will demonstrate its next-generation high-temperature concentrated solar technology that can be used for energy storage, power production, industrial process heat, or solar fuel production. Press Release WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) celebrated the groundbreaking of its Generation
[Ed: the novel STELLIO heliostats seen here, and used in this Hami Tower CSP project, won the SolarPACES Innovation Award for 2015] MASERMIC and SBP Sonne have completed the commissioning of the 50MW HAMI tower solar plant located in CHINA, XINJIANG province. It is based
Tower CSP needs talented engineers in optics, robotics and AI to advance heliostat technology and cut costs.
Abstract: Leveraging solar thermal energy to drive the chemical looping reforming of methane (CLRM) is a promising method of efficiently and selectively reforming methane to produce syngas using renewable energy. In this work, the role of catalytically active nickel in reaction kinetics, conversion, selectivity, and
Background: Concentrated solar thermal energy uses thermal energy storage. And China currently has 30 CSP projects under construction with thermal energy storage. Various options of energy storage are described in patented solutions in the field of solar energy. They include such technologies as those using
1414 Degrees has reached a major milestone in the development of its SiBox Demonstration Module. Construction is almost complete, meaning that the company is now confident enough to move forward with the installation of its thermal energy storage media (silicon) and is expecting to
With innovation in its core component – the volumetric absorber – the Open Volumetric Receiver (OVR) can reach 90% efficiency and beyond
A “hot solar” tower fuel plant for thermochemical aviation fuel from H2O + CO2 is finally getting news coverage. What was your breakthrough?
A novel solar open air receiver is paired with a Brayton combined cycle power plant, combining these two technologies for the first time
Winners of the 2022 SolarPACES Awards: SolarPACES Chair Gilles Flamant presented the award to Dr. Christoph Falter, on behalf of Bauhaus Luftfahrt, Dr. Johannes Grobbel, on behalf of DLR, Dr. Alon Lidor, on behalf of ETH Zurich and Dr. Charles-Alexis Asselineau, on behalf of IMDEA
Out-of-this-world engineering challenges of manufacturing on the Moon hold promise for Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST)
Innovating new energy technologies is more akin to making a movie with a cast and crew of thousands than the stereotype of the one lone inventor in a garage coming up with the whole thing alone. An example is the US Department of Energy grant
[This “only pre-commercial” and “over 6 hours” storage RFP would favor thermal energy storage concepts currently near commercial readiness.] The New York State Energy Research & Development Authority (NYSERDA) is calling for project submissions to advance, develop or field-test energy storage technologies that can address
A perovskite may be more cost-effective than ceria for solar-driven thermochemical hydrogen production, a new paper suggests. One perovskite formulation that works at a slightly lower temperature than ceria is explored by Xin Qian in the paper Outstanding Properties and Performance of CaTi0.5Mn0.5O3–d for Solar-Driven
Sandia’s National Solar Thermal Test Facility launches R&D Voucher Program to further Concentrating Solar Power technologies January 29, 2021 9:21 pmPublished by Kelly Sullivan Sandia National Laboratories is currently seeking applications from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and individuals to further technologies related to Concentrating
Press Release: schlaich bergermann partner (sbp) The German solar engineering consultancy schlaich bergermann partner (sbp) supplied the EuroTrough solar collector for the 100MW Urat CSP project in Inner Mongolia, the largest commercial parabolic trough project in China. The Urat project was developed and realized as part
The MIT team estimates their thermal “battery” designed for long duration – 100 hours or more – would be half the cost of today’s cheapest grid-scale energy storage; pumped hydro. A very intriguing idea for long-duration gigawatt-scale grid thermal energy storage proposes to store renewable
One of the ways to cut costs in thermal energy storage, whether standalone or as part of tower Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is to use heat transfer fluids able to reach higher temperatures, and with a wider working range between hot and cold than today’s
Swedish startup Azelio will see its long-duration Thermal Energy Storage (TES) technology used at the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Complex (MBR) in Dubai, UAE. Recycled aluminium alloy is used as a phase change material to store heat which is then converted to electricity.
Research – and deployment – of low cost and sustainable energy storage technologies are crucial to the long term survival of humans
“With the asymmetry of flux levels from the solar field; why not make the receiver also asymmetric to fit better with that,” she explained.
What if the more bankable trough technology could run on molten salt, like the more efficient tower CSP? Wouldn’t that leverage the best of each technology?
Abengoa plans to “bolt-on” novel low-cost storage to some of the first Spanish trough CSP plants, that were built without storage
Two teams of solar researchers have developed a novel solar reactor and thermochemical process for making solar hydrogen that can generate in addition carbon black and graphite as well as carbon nanotubes. Working over a six-year period, the teams first developed the specific solar reactor,
Colocating PV and CSP to share the CSP thermal storage could be widely applicable as energy grids become more saturated with renewables
A completely new way to dry cool solar thermal power plants, inspired by commercially available underground heat pumps used to cool buildings
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 commercial sales.
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
The innovative pentagonal Stellio heliostat has gone from lab to commercial deployment in China’s Hami CSP project in record time
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 modular arrays and sodium heat
“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.
China could be the first to deploy s-CO2 in CSP The world’s initial Concentrated SolarPower (CSP) plants continue to use the legacy steam cycles of conventional thermal plants. But steam cycle is a mature technology with temperature-based efficiency limits, hampering the potential to raise efficiency
The tower form of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is very young technology. Less than a gigawatt is deployed globally, making it a nascent technology at the “Cambrian explosion” stage; multiple innovations are still being explored to cut costs. (How tower CSP works) A new economic
Instead of running air conditioners on fossil-fueled electricity, University of Bergamo researchers Guiseppe Franchini and Antonio Perdichizzi propose an alternative cooling technology; using a thermal form of solar energy to provide solar district cooling in the Saudi Kingdom. Their study of the economics of solar
September 2023 Manager, Solar Thermal Testing and Demonstration We are seeking a highly motivated manager to lead the Solar Thermal Testing & Demonstration Department within the Renewable Energy Technologies Group (Org 8920). The Group conducts fundamental and applied R&D to improve performance, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness
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.
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.
Introduction and Overview: SolarPACES will continue its current activity to support the further cost decrease of concentrating solar technologies by the development of internationally recognized standards for components, systems and processes. Foster appreciation for the value of CSP dispatchability: The recently extremely fast deployment of
Latest Online: 2015 Crescent Dunes: 110 MW SolarPACES-NREL database: All plant details on this CSP project 110 MW Crescent Dunes, tower CSP with 10 hours of storage, operational 2015-2019, and since 2021 Latest CSP in Development Sandia Gen-3 Particle-based CSP Research by the DOE has resulted
Latest Online: 2018 Ouarzazate NOOR I,II and III: 550 MW SolarPACES-NREL database: All plant details on this CSP project: NOOR I, NOOR II, and NOOR III Earliest Online: ISCC 20 MW inaugurated in 2013: Ain Beni Mathur CSP Potential Country data Morocco has set a target
Latest in Development: 2023 Vast Solar 30 MW CST (solar fuels production) Latest Online: 2016 Sundrop Farms 36 MW CST: SolarPACES-NREL database: All plant details on this CSP project The Sundrop project uses tower CSP for onsite greenhouse agricultural production since 2016. CSP for electricity
For countries or institutions interested in a membership in SolarPACES, the attached documents from the International Energy Agency (IEA) can provide you with all the background information. Review the steps to join the SolarPACES international research collaboration (pdf): Participate in IA About the IEA framework
The annual SolarPACES Awards honor the personal engagement of individuals and institutions that significantly contribute to the deployment of CSP technology. Two types of Awards can be given: 1. Technology Innovation Award Application Deadline: 31 July, 2023 For innovations relevant to a more rapid deployment
