Perspective of concentrating solar power

In this perspective paper, the present status and development tendency of concentrating solar power (CSP) are analyzed from two aspects: (1) Potential pathways to efficient CSP through improving operation temperature to above 700 °C; (2) Technologies for efficient solar collection, thermal storage, and power generation at >700 °C. Based on the analyses, barriers on the way to the high-temperature CSP are summarized. They are: (1) the lack of methodology for heliostat design and field layout optimization, (2) significant performance degradations of solar-thermal conversion, heat storage and transfer in receiver and thermal energy storage due to high temperature, (3) the lack of suitable supercritical CO₂(S–CO₂) Brayton cycle for CSP and mature design methods for S–CO₂ components. To overcome these issues, perspectives on following three aspects are proposed. Firstly, optimization approaches for optimal heliostat size and layout, and game-changing techniques for heliostat structure design should be brainstormed. Secondly, receivers and thermal storage devices designed through efficiency-improving approaches and fabricated by durable materials should be developed to maintain efficient and reliable operation. Thirdly, the developments of novel S–CO₂ cycle and corresponding key components are eagerly desired to achieve efficient thermal-electric conversion. Perspectives from this paper would present possible approaches to efficient CSP.