Technical Challenges and Opportunities for Concentrating Solar Power With Thermal Energy Storage

Concentrating solar power (CSP) provides the ability to incorporate simple, efficient, and cost-effective thermal energy storage (TES) by virtue of converting sunlight to heat as an intermediate step to generating electricity. Thermal energy storage for use in CSP systems can be one of sensible heat storage, latent heat storage using phase change materials (PCMs) or thermochemical storage. Commercially deployed CSP TES systems have been achieved in recent years, with two-tank TES using molten salt as a storage medium and steam accumulators being the system configurations deployed to date. Sensible energy thermocline systems and PCM systems have been deployed on a pilot-scale level and considerable research effort continues to be funded, by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) and others, in developing TES systems utilizing any one of the three categories of TES. This paper discusses technoeconomic challenges associated with the various TES technologies and opportunities for advancing the scientific knowledge relating to the critical questions still remaining for each technology.