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Several comments... Disclaimer, I work in this space. a) Surprised that on HN no one has commented on the similarities with Heliogen: https://www.heliogen.com/ This US-based company backed by Bill Gates and Bill Gross similarly focuses on high-temperature heliostat applications, e.g. green hydrogen and concrete etc. They even have similar hexagonal-mirror heliostats.
b) Why these CSP startups so often focus on moon-shot 'super hard' applications like the above baffles me. There are LOTS of great applications for lower temperature solar thermal systems - which are much easier to build and operate.
Our plastic-molding systems are just one example: http://lm.solar
c) It's a little odd to be doing CSP in Germany - Heliostats need collimated light (non-diffuse light, e.g. light that casts a shadow) and Germany has pretty low DNI compared to, say, Morocco. I know the article says they plan to deploy commercially to Spain, but even a test system would be super hard to operate with frequent haze, high cloud layers, etc. To be clear, not saying PV-solar is impractical in Germany - PV can harvest diffuse light just fine. Funny that the photo of the solar tower / target in the article shows an overcast sky! Global Solar Atlas gives annual average DNI of @ 1000 kWh/M2/year at Jülich, which is way low.
https://globalsolaratlas.info/detail?c=50.922093,6.361102,11... I wish them luck, but there are likely more practical, impactful uses for CSP. PS Re the 'sunlight is free' comments... yes but if your process is very inefficient and/or requires a huge heliostat array then CapEx goes way up (which has to be financed = cost) and then you get into needing automated cleaning robots to keep your array working well (see Ivanpah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility ), etc. The cascading effects of moon-shot application => huge CSP system => problems (high CapEx, huge physical sites, permitting problems, need for automated cleaning etc) are exactly why we're working on industrial uses for SMALL heliostat arrays. And why grid-scale CSP (electric generation) systems generally get trounced by PV+battery systems. |