Email from CSP Focus China 2022, Nov 2&3 in Beijing The development of CSP is entering into a fast track in | Continue reading
“What we're doing with software on our heliostats is the way our human body works too. We don't have stiffness in our arm but we have eyes and eyes allow us to put our fingers in a very exact place with feedback.” View from behind the receiver tower over the | Continue reading
Much of the research covered at SolarPACES in concentrated solar power (CSP) is advanced by international post-docs and professors, but as the need for climate solutions advances, it is drawing the attention of younger researchers with STEM backgrounds in mathematics, physics and … | Continue reading
Source: email from Sunny Sun; CSPFocus China Three Gorges New Energy has issued the bidding announcement on the EPC of two 100MW CSP projects, both are located in Qinghai province, northwest of China. According to the announcement (in Chinese), both projects are planned to start … | Continue reading
Acwa Power's Redstone project construction is well underway and is currently in its ninth month of construction, with commercial operation scheduled to start in Q4 2023. The engineering works for the project is over 58% completed, whereas procurement and construction works stan … | Continue reading
The SolarPACES Task IV:Solar Heat Integration in Industrial Processes advances international research into industrial processes requiring heat at up to about 500°C. But as solar research in processes requiring heat at up to 1,500°C is maturing, Task IV has now prepared Technolog … | Continue reading
Namibia to follow Moroccan clean energy policy to cut CSP developer risk | Continue reading
Yet another use for industrial solar heat - drying wastewater sludge - attracts study at six-minute solar collector maker Absolicon | Continue reading
At the 2021 SolarPACES Conference, NamPower generation projects head Grant Muller laid out the national power company’s now finalized plans for a CSP project in Namibia, for between 50 MW and 130 MW, with storage. After 4 years of preparations, it is ready for its first CSP aucti … | Continue reading
Biomass gasification using steam and oxygen is an already mature technology for extracting hydrogen, which requires heat at above 700°C. To generate the heat for gasification, traditionally, some of the biomass itself is burnt. But this combustion emits several greenhouse gases, … | Continue reading
A new paper to be published in the journal Energy Conversion and Management: X: Using Concentrating-Solar-Power Plants as Economic Carbon-Free Capacity Resources - develops an approach to assessing the capacity contribution from CSP plants with thermal energy storage in a future … | Continue reading
The Solar Energy Technologies Office Fiscal Year 2021 Photovoltaics and Concentrating Solar-Thermal Power Funding Program (SETO FY21 PV and CSP) funds research and development projects that advance PV and CSP to help eliminate carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector. On O … | Continue reading
At the annual SolarPACES Conference (held virtually for the second year) Cerro Dominador’s CEO Fernando Gonzalez answered questions from the international network of concentrated solar power (CSP) researchers and developers attending about exactly what happened in the recent Chil … | Continue reading
Spain to launch a third renewable auction - to include Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) - before the end of 2021 October 4, 2021: The Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge plans to launch a third renewable auction before the end of the year. According to … | Continue reading
Out-of-this-world engineering challenges of manufacturing on the Moon hold promise for Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) | Continue reading
Seramic Materials 100% recycled ceramic stores heat at temperatures up to 1250°C for thermal energy storage or high temperature CST processes | Continue reading
Cerro Dominador, a subsidiary of EIG Partners, has just bid the 450 MW Likana tower CSP plant it procured from SolarReserve several years ago at under 4 cents/kWh. Was the record low bid enabled by cost reduction in tower CSP heliostat solar fields? To learn the current status of … | Continue reading
Hot CSP with long duration storage in Bauxite particles can top off the 100% renewable grid says Sandia lead solar researcher Cliff Ho | Continue reading
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 to try three different pathways to re … | Continue reading
What if the molten salts in the thermal energy storage tank could simply be heated directly by concentrated solar energy? | Continue reading
SHANGHAI, June 11, 2021 /PRNewswire Shanghai Electric announced positive results of the first molten salt tank hydro test for the Parabolic Trough Plant-II which forms part of the 1GW Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai. The test was carried out on May 9, and its s … | Continue reading
SolarPACES 2021 – First Announcement and Call for Papers September 27 - October 1, 2021 SolarPACES (Solar Power and Chemical Energy Systems) is pleased to announce the SolarPACES 2021 conference to be held from September 27 - October 1, 2021 as an online event. SolarPACES is the … | Continue reading
PRESS RELEASE ACWA Power has led South Africa’s largest renewable energy project Redstone CSP to financial close The ZAR 11.6 billion Redstone concentrated solar power (CSP) plant will power 200,000 households upon completion Commercial operation scheduled to start in Q4 2023 Joh … | Continue reading
DOE workshops educate regulators on long duration energy storage (LDES) A Federal energy project funded through the US Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity has initiated workshops designed to help state utility regulators determine best practices in policies to enable … | Continue reading
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 labora … | Continue reading
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 molten salts with their … | Continue reading
Under a new integrated resource plan published by the government in December 2020, Botswana plans to build 200 MW of CSP capacity by 2026. The procurement process will start this year, it said. The plan, which received the backing of Botswana and Namibia government officials and … | Continue reading
HelioHeat's 1,000°C heat at just 1 Cent/kWh potentially ends the use of fossil energy for the production of steel, cement, food and chemicals | Continue reading
Research - and deployment - of low cost and sustainable energy storage technologies are crucial to the long term survival of humans | Continue reading
“They are performing kind of like Swiss clocks. The owners here are very satisfied how the plants are performing,” he noted. | Continue reading
“With the asymmetry of flux levels from the solar field; why not make the receiver also asymmetric to fit better with that,” she explained. | Continue reading
Solar thermal technologies advance among 19 quarterfinalists for $9 million DOE Desalination Prize | Continue reading
A state of the art assessment of day or night solar thermochemistry at very high temperatures 1,000ºC to 2,000ºC | Continue reading
[Note: SolarPACES previously interviewed the author of this guest post, Kevin Sara, on his firm's plan to ship solar energy from CSP plants in Tunisia to the EU] Why is Bill Gates backing a Concentrated Solar Power company? What is oil major ENI doing with a CSP start-up? Why ha … | Continue reading
When Bernie Sanders proposed building publicly owned renewables it was dismissed as pie in the sky. But a US agency once did exactly that | Continue reading
Ministers representing almost 80% of global energy consumption and carbon emissions: "Accelerating Clean Energy Technology Innovation" post-pandemic | Continue reading
The China Dunhuang Dacheng 50MW molten salt linear Fresnel CSP project plant has now officially begun commercial operation on June 19, 2020. To celebrate the occasion of commercial operation of the first ever molten salt Fresnel CSP occasion, the developers and contractors held a … | Continue reading