Australia’s first concentrated solar power plant edges closer to reality
Plans to build a concentrated solar power project in South Australia have edged closer to a final investment decision by the end of the year, with developer Vast Solar signing up Worley as an engineering partner on the first-of-its-kind pro...
DOE announces 7 awards to cut heliostat costs
The U.S. Department of Energys (DOEs) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Sandia National Laboratories, co-leads of the Heliostat Consortium, announced seven awardees from a request for proposals (RFP) aimed at achieving DOEs go...
Why Concentrated Solar Power is the kind of solar that could replace natural gas plants
Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is a dispatchable form of solar CSP power plants, like photovoltaic (PV) solar farms, are 100% solar and have stable prices, as both sell their projected generation over a 25-30 year period in a contract at a ...
Assessing the sustainability impacts of concentrated solar power deployment in Europe
Considering that CSP could be promoted in Europe, additional installed capacity will have positive or negative impacts on the economy, society and the environment, or trigger higher or lower energy supply dependence from non-European econom...
Heliostat Consortium Unveils Funding Awards to Facilitate Affordable and Accessible Heliostat Deployment
The Heliostat Consortium, led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories, has announced seven awardees from a request for proposals aimed at reducing the cost of heliostats and creating new market opportuni...
Concentrated Solar Power + thermochemical storage for solar under grey skies 365 days/yr
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 the delivery of ...
Why Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) beats Photovoltaic (PV) at less than 3 USD cents per kWh
The cost of renewable energy is dropping every year, and this year we saw record low cost Photovoltaic (PV) projects such as the 800 MW project in Dubai offered at 2.99 US$ cents/kWh. So how is it that concentrating solar power (CSP) is sti...
Each MW of concentrated solar power can replace each MW of natural gas and achieve the decarbonization of the electricit
Each MW of solar thermal power can replace each MW of gas and achieve a total transition of the electricity sector, which would imply the substitution of current natural gas plants, as can be seen from the study carried out by Protermosolar...
Vast Solar gains partner for solar methanol export
Vast Solar has executed a letter of intent (LOI) with German energy company Mabanaft GmbH Co. KG for potential offtake and equity investment in Solar Methanol 1 (SM1), Vasts world-first green methanol demonstration plant. Vast is a concentr...
Pros and Cons of Concentrated Solar Power
In the previous article, I described the essential principles of thermosolar technology or concentrated solar power (CSP). In this article, I analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this technology in order to understand what factors hi...
CSNP 100MW Parabolic Trough CSP plant exceeded the design value in generation
As the largest parabolic trough CSP plant in China and one of the first batch of national CSP demonstration projects, CSNP 100MW/1000MWh Parabolic Trough CSP project have created multiple world records, e.g. for the fastest in molten salt m...
The power generation of Qinghai Gonghe 50MW CSP Plant reached a new high
Recently, according to the latest statistics of POWERCHINA RENEWABLE ENERGY CO.,LTD, the cumulative power generation of its Qinghai Gonghe 50MW CSP Project reached 6,909MWh in April, 2023, and refreshing the record of monthly power generati...
Why heat-recovery for solar reactors matters
In this solar technology, highly concentrated solar energy directly heats a solar reactor and drives a thermochemical process, using carbon dioxide and water as the raw materials to produce syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide....
Mohammed bin Rashid Solar Park enhances UAE’s stature as renewable energy pioneer
The UAE is a pioneering country in developing the renewable and clean energy sector and finding alternatives to conventional energy sources. The country is continuing its efforts to achieve its objectives for the next 50 years, which includ...
Oxygen fix for high-temperature molten-salt degradation (and corrosion) at 620°C
The molten salt mixture deployed in todays commercial CSP plants for thermal energy storage is liquid at 565C and degrades at higher temperatures. Yet higher temperatures would increase thermal efficiency. So how can we develop a molten sal...