Energy Department awards $72 million for high-temperature concentrating solar power projects

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced Tuesday that it selected recipients for $72 million in awards for projects to advance high-temperature concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies.

CSP technologies use mirrors to reflect sunlight and concentrate it onto a point where it is collected and converted into heat. The resulting thermal energy can be stored and used to generate electricity.

Currently, the leading commercially available CSP technologies can only reach 565 degrees Celsius (°C). The DOE Generation 3 CSP (Gen3 CSP) program is targeting systems that can achieve at least 700 °C. If successful, these projects could reduce the cost of a CSP system by approximately $0.02 per kilowatt-hour. The DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy has set a target of reducing costs by $0.05 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) by 2030.

“DOE has led the world in CSP research,” Daniel Simmons, principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, said. “These projects will help facilitate the next wave of new technologies and continue the effort to maintain American leadership in this space.”

DOE selected three teams to compete to build an integrated CSP system that meets the project’s goals. After a two-year period, DOE will choose one competitor to receive an additional $25 million over the next three years to build their proposed test facility.

The project also includes eight awardees who were selected to develop either component-level technology or utilize unique cross-cutting research capabilities which support the goal of a successfully integrated testing site.

DOE provided an additional $10 million in funding to national labs to support this work.