Concentrated Solar Power

Star Catcher Industries has secured US$12.25 million in seed funding for its ambitious plan to build the first “space-based energy grid.” A network of satellites would gather and concentrate solar energy and beam it to other satellites in orbit.

EPFL engineers have built and tested a solar reactor that generates hydrogen gas from sunlight and water. The system is not only highly efficient at producing hydrogen, it also captures the “waste” products of oxygen and heat to put them to use too.

Taking carbon dioxide, water and sunlight as its only inputs, this solar thermal tower in Spain produces carbon-neutral replacement versions of diesel and jet fuel. It's a pilot plant, proving a new all-in-one sustainable fuel production process.

A new type of hybrid solar energy converter can use energy from the Sun to create both electricity and steam. The device reportedly has high efficiency and runs at low cost, allowing industry to make use of a wider spectrum of solar energy.

California-based Heliogen has reaching temperatures of more than 1,000° C (1,832° F) with its concentrating solar thermal system, expanding the technology's potential from electricity generation to various industrial processes.

Scientists at the German Aerospace Center have tested a solar reactor concept known as CONTISOL, which also contains a thermal energy storage system to allow it to run day or night.

What is set to be the world's largest single-site solar park is getting a little larger, with the government of Dubai approving a 700-MW extension to the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park.

Swiss researchers have created a system that stores heat captured during summer for use in winter, with the added benefit that the captured energy can be physically transported anywhere it may be needed.

In a real case of strange bedfellows, one of the largest solar plants in the world is being built in Oman to boil water to use in oil production rather than to generate electricity.

A new thermochemical system is able to store energy from concentrated solar power plants indefinitely and then release it at record efficiency, in what could be an important step toward a greener energy grid.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have developed a new nanoparticle-based material that promises to improve the efficiency of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants with its ability to absorb and convert over 90 percent of the sunlight it captures into heat.

Looking rather like a 10-meter (33 ft) tall sunflower, IBM's High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT) system can produce enough power, water, and cooling to supply several homes.