DOE prioritizes supercritical CSP in latest funding round
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is to provide up to $44 million to CSP-related R&D projects in its latest $125.5 million funding round for solar technologies, the DOE said February 5.
The department is to provide a total of $39 million to one or two projects that build and demonstrate supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) Brayton cycle technology, it said. The systems must achieve thermal energy storage at temperatures of between 550° C and 630° C.
CSP and molten salt technology could help coal-fired generators decarbonize without closing sites, but price support will be needed, experts told New Energy Update.
While many CSP developers are seeking to directly compete with coal-fired power generation, a small group of players see opportunities in working with coal plant operators.
Many governments have sidelined growing climate change concerns and supported coal-fired generation, either for financial or political reasons.
It is rare for an innovation in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) to go from the lab to commercial in just 5 years. The biggest obstacle to advancing potential cost-cutting improvements in novel CSP technologies is getting them deployed in commercial projects. Risks are high when every CSP plant must be built at utility-scale and must make money right away.
A new ceramic particle CSP receiver soon to be tested in the U.S. could lower the cost of energy by up to 20% and accelerate industrial heat deployment through particle transport innovations, Reiner Buck, Head of Solar Tower Systems at German Aerospace Centre (DLR), told New Energy Update.
Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy allocated $750,000 of funding to Sandia National Laboratories to accelerate testing of the centrifugal receiver (Centrec), a new high-temperature ceramic particle receiver developed by the German Aerospace Center (DLR).
Past November 11th, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mizotakis witnessed the text exchange of MINOS 50 MW Concentrating Solar Power project financing Cooperation Agreement. Four major parties of the solar thermal project, namley the financing party, project EPC contractor, project developer, and local construction company signed the Cooperation Agreement.
The novel design, published in Solar Energy journal in September 2019, combines both the solar receiver and the energy storage system in the same unit.
The first CSP ERA NET Joint Call for proposals (2019) will be presented at the CSP Today Madrid event to be held next Tuesday, November 19th. The details of the call and new funding opportunities in the CSP sector will be presented by the CSP ERA NET project coordinator Mr. Cosme Segador Vegas, from Agencia Extremeña de la Energia (AGENEX, Spain).
The tittle of his presentation will be "Funding opportunities for transnational CSP research":
The 2nd workshop within the RAISELIFE project takes place on Thursday, 28 November in Düsseldorf, Germany. Among the speakers will be scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE who will talk about the durability of CSP mirrors and absorber coatings as well as the...
