Watch the replay of CSP Projects Joint Webinar with SFERA-III

The SFERA-III project was invited to participate in a joint webinar on CSP organised by the SOCRATCES consortium on the 25th of June 2021. Watch the replay here!

The SOCRATCES consortium together with MUSTEC, NEXTOWER, and SFERA-III projects organized on June 25th a CSP Projects Joint Webinar with the aim of highlighting Concentrated Solar Power Plants, their potential, and the future within the new Horizon Europe framework.

More than 100 participants registered for the webinar, which was moderated by Ángela Magno, project manager at Bioazul and dissemination leader of SOCRATCES project.

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The webinar started with an introductory session where the participants’ projects were introduced.

The event began with the presentation of MUSTEC “Market uptake of solar thermal electricity through cooperation”, the project was presented by Alexandra Papadopoulou, Senior Researcher at TEESLab, University of Piraeus Research Center, and Dissemination Leader of MUSTEC (Link to presentation).

Then Antonio Rinaldi, Senior Researcher at the ENEA Sustainability Department of Productive and Territorial Systems, introduced NEXTOWER project which works on developing “Advanced material solutions for next generation high efficiency concentrated solar power tower systems” (Link to presentation).

Afterwards, the presentation of the SFERA-III project on “Solar Facilities for the European Research Area” was made by Ricardo Sanchez, EU Project Manager at CIEMAT and Coordinator of the project (Link to presentation).

And next Ricardo Chacartegui, Professor of the Energy Engineering Department of the University of Seville and Coordinator of SOCRATCES project gave an overview done in the project about “Solar Calcium-looping integration for Thermo-Chemical Energy Storage” (Link to presentation).

Finally, Julio Marchamalo, International Project Manager at the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, third party of the Spanish State Research Agency (AEI-FECYT), explained the CSP ERANET – a Public-public partnership in the Concentrated Solar Power technology, for bridging the gap between research and commercial deployment in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) technology (Link to presentation).

As a reminder, the CSP ERANET aims to coordinate the efforts of Member States, Associated Countries and Regions towards achieving CSP SET Plan objectives, by pooling their financial resources to implement joint calls for R&I proposals, resulting in strategic projects with substantial volumes of investment, which cannot be allocated by individual countries or by the European Commission on their own. CSP ERANET members have committed more than 9 million EUR for launching the Cofund 1^st Joint Call for proposals (here you can check the funded projects in this call) and more than 6 million EUR for the Additional Call, coming this September 2021 (we will share more info on this as soon as it will be available).

The second session of the webinar was a round table on the potential of Concentrated Solar Power Plants. This discussion was moderated by Luis M. Romeo, Professor of the Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Zaragoza and as speakers we had:

• Alexandra Papadopoulou, Senior Researcher at TEESLab, University of Piraeus Research Center.
• Antonio Rinaldi, Senior researcher at the ENEA Sustainability Department of Productive and Territorial Systems.
• Eduardo Zarza, Head of the Line-Focus Solar Thermal Technologies Unit at the Plataforma Solar the Almería.
• Ricardo Chacartegui, Professor of the Energy Engineering Department of the University of Seville.

They discussed important questions as:

• What are the niche opportunities for CSP in the electricity systems of the future?
• Which is the biggest barrier to the development of CSP (political, financial, regulation, etc.)?
• How do you see the future development of this technology in the EU context? How can we increase the actual funding resources available for CSP technologies and research?
• In which CSP plant component is most required a performance improvement (e.g. absorbers, mirrors, storage, etc.)?

During this round table, participants discussed the current situation of their projects, the researchers working in this sector, and the concerns that exist in the future of CSPs.