Synergies

The Competitive Solar Power Towers (CAPTure) project aims to increase plant efficiencies and reduce levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) by developing all relevant components that allow implementing an innovative plant configuration. This plant configuration is based on a multi-tower decoupled advanced solar combined cycle (DSCC) approach that not only increases cycle efficiencies but also avoids frequent transients and inefficient partial loads, thus maximising overall efficiency, reliability as well as dispatchability, all of which are important factors directly related to cost competitiveness on the power market.

The cooling demand is growing worldwide with a wider variety of use, including industry. The objective of HYCOOL is to minimize emissions of gases with high Global Warming Potential into the atmosphere (CO2, SO2 and NOx) by maximizing exploitation of renewable energy systems in industrial refrigeration. HYCOOL will use the latest available developments in both Concentrated Solar Panels and Thermal Storage fields to develop two innovative Hybrid Solar System concepts based on solar steam for cooling generation: one for chemical industrial processes, and one for small food industry.

Within INSHIP, Coordination and Support Actions (CSA) and a wide variety of Research and Development Actions (RnD) are combined into the establishment of an ECRIA (European Common Research and Innovation Agenda) on Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP). For this purpose the major European research institutions developing SHIP related research have gathered in INSHIP Consortium in this H2020 funded initiative tasked to accelerate the maturity of SHIP in Europe.

The project MinWaterCSP addresses the challenge of significantly reducing the water consumption of CSP plants while maintaining the overall cycle efficiency. Its objective is to reduce evaporation losses and mirror cleaning water consumption for small- and large-scale CSP plants through a holistic combination of next generation technologies.

MOSAIC project aims to exceed the goal of the Strategic Energy Technology (SET) Plan – European Commission of producing CSP electricity at a cost below 0.10 €/kWh. To exceed this goal a commercial CSP plant of > 1GW of nominal capacity is foreseen, in which high nominal capacity of CSP plant is reached in a modular way where each MOSAIC module delivers thermal energy to linked thermal energy storage systems that supply their energy to a high capacity power block (>1GW). This modular configuration guarantees reliability, flexibility and dispatchability per the needs of the electrical grid while reduces significantly the specific cost of the Power block (€/MW installed).

SOCRATCES is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of Ca-Looping (CaL) process based upon the reversible carbonation/calcination of CaO, one of the most promising technologies for thermochemical energy storage (TCES). The wide availability of natural limestone (almost pure CaCO3) and its low price are key factors for the feasibility of the CaL process. The global objective is to develop a prototype that will reduce the core risks of scaling up the technology and solve challenges; further understand and optimise the operating efficiencies that could be obtained; with the longer-term goal of enabling highly competitive and sustainable CSP plants.

SHIP2FAIR - Solar Heat for Industrial Process towards Food and Agro Industries commitment in Renewables, will foster the integration of solar heat in agro–food industry. SHIP2FAIR, developed by 15 partners from all over Europe, with the support of EC, will demonstrate tools and methods to develop industrial solar heat projects during their whole life-cycle. Validation will take place at 4 real sites: spirits distillation, ham-cooking, sugar boiling and wine fermentation and stabilization.

SOLWATT targets to significantly reduce the water used by CSP plants (by 35% for wet cooled & by 90% for dry cooled). The project proposes to demonstrate the efficiency of innovations on solar field cleaning, power-block cooling, water recycling system, and plant operation strategy. Among these are solutions to reduce solar field water cleaning needs, an operation and maintenance optimizer software, a MEE water recovery technology and a cooling concept for the turbine condenser.