Concentrated Solar Heat to Desalinate Seawater at Saudi Neom City

IMAGE@Solar Water: Heliostats (mirrors) surround a 25 meter tall glass dome to reflect concentrated solar heat (CSH) to a metal grid forming the top half of a “kettle” heating and distilling seawater fed in by covered aqueduct.  Source: Power-Technology Saudi Arabia has appointed the UK-based Solar Water PLC to build the first ‘carbon-neutral’ desalination plant …

Sener Offers to Expand its CSP as South Africa’s Coal Plant Blackouts Continue

Sener’s 100 MW Ilanga CSP1 in South Africa IMAGE@Sener Source: South Africa ITWeb Spanish-based technology and engineering company, Sener, together with its partners, has invested billions of rands in the Ilanga concentrated solar power 1 (CSP1) project,which provides solar-generated thermal electricity to around 100 000 South African households. Billed SA’s first 100% black-owned solar plant, …

Evening Peak Solar CSP Projected to Undercut Gas in Chile’s Open Auctions

Unlike in other countries, Chile’s open auctions have no subsidies or technology restrictions, directly pitting CSP against combined cycle gas turbine power plants for evening peaks IMAGE@Shouhang The Cerro Dominador group is working with strong construction partners on its Likana CSP project to cut costs and beat gas plant prices, buoyed by progress at its …

Bill Gates Funds A Second Concentrated Solar Thermal Startup: Heliogen

IMAGE@Heliogen Building on R&D from IDEALAB, Bill Gates has now invested in his second CSP-based start-up after Malta, with Heliogen. Press Release; Singular scientific achievement takes place at Heliogen’s commercial facility in Lancaster, California PASADENA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Heliogen, the clean energy company that is transforming sunlight to create and replace fuels, today announced its launch and …

Got Ideas on How to Commercialize sCO2 With CSP? Tell Uncle Sam

IMAGE@US DOE The goal of this RFI is to assess how we can accelerate the commercialization of sCO2 integration with CSP. Today, the Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) has issued a new request for information (RFI) about the integration of advanced supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2) power cycles and thermal energy storage with concentrating solar-thermal power (CSP). …

US Lists $30 Million in 2019 CSP Research Awards

One of the three tower receivers at the 377 MW Ivanpah CSP project in California, surrounded by its heliostat field of mirrors  IMAGE@BrightSource On November 6, 2019, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $128 million in funding for 75 projects in this program. Thirteen of these projects will focus on CSP research and development. Concentrating Solar Power …

Logistics Firm Chooses Solar for Steam Washing at Port of Antwerp

IMAGE@Azteq Source: Port Technology News The Port of Antwerp has inaugurated the first Concentrated Solar Thermal (CST) in Europe as part of its efforts to make its operations more environmentally friendly. [Actually, there are many such projects in Europe: for example the many cities with solar district heat from Aalborg. CST (or CSH) provides just …

China Connects Luneng, its 5th CSP Project in Climate Push

Luneng at Haixi in Qinghai Province; China’s 4th tower CSP demonstration project is completed by 2020 deadline IMAGE @CSPFocus Luneng’s 50 Megawatt (MW) tower Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) project with 12 hours of thermal energy storage (in molten salts) connected to the Chinese grid on September 20th. Beginning construction in June of 2017, it took …

Supcon Just Connected 50 MW of Tower CSP to China’s Grid at Record Speed

  Supcon 50MW Gonghe IMAGE@SUPCON Supcon has just completed its second CSP Tower project, the 50 MW Gonghe project at record speed – just under a year and a half. On September 19th, Supcon connected its Gonghe 50MW CSP Project to China’s grid. From contract in mid 2018, to completion yesterday, Gonghe was built in …