DOE Awarding $56 million for CSP
A total of 21 research projects for advancements in technology for concentrating solar power technologies are being awarded funding by the DOE.
The research projects, conducted in partnership with private industry, national laboratories and universities, support the Energy Department’s SunShot Initiative, a collaborative national effort to make solar power cost-competitive with traditional energy sources by the end of the decade.
These awards will help speed innovations in new components to lower costs, increase operating temperatures and improve the efficiency of CSP systems. The 3-year applied research projects announced today will focus on achieving dramatic improvements in CSP performance, while driving progress toward the SunShot goal of 75 percent cost reduction, so that this promising technology can deliver more clean, renewable energy to millions of homes and businesses across the country.
The projects will develop innovative concepts for potential performance breakthroughs and demonstrate new approaches in the design of collectors, receivers, and power cycle equipment used in CSP systems. Each of these subsystems is critical to CSP operation: the collectors collect and concentrate the Sun’s energy onto the receiver; the receiver accepts and transfers the heat energy to the power cycle; and the power cycle converts the heat energy into electricity. Developing low-cost collectors, high-temperature receivers, and high-efficiency power cycles are critical to subsequent power system integration, engineering scale-up, and commercial production for clean electricity generation.
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