POWER September 2023 - S8

EMPOWERING CLEAN ENERGY
SOLAR & OTHER RENEWABLES
DOE Breaks Ground on Next-Generation
Concentrating Solar Power Pilot
T
he Department of Energy (DOE)
has broken ground on the Generation
3 Particle Pilot Plant
(G3P3), a novel concentrating solar
power (CSP) facility at Sandia National
Laboratory that will use sand-like ceramic
particles instead of molten salt
to produce and store high-temperature
energy.
When completed in 2024, the
thermal pilot
" multi-megawatt "
solar
project will utilize an existing heliostat
field at Sandia's National Solar Thermal
Test Facility (NSTTF) in Albuquerque,
New Mexico, to concentrate sunlight on
a gravity-driven particle-based receiver
and heat the receiver's ceramic-based
particles to more than 700C. Along with
potentially enabling at least six hours of
particle-based energy storage, the system
will notably demonstrate heating
of a working fluid-supercritical carbon
dioxide (sCO2
a highly efficient sCO2
)-to 700C or more, using
Brayton cycle to
generate electricity.
" If successful, this type of solar
power plant could provide 100 MW of
power continuously, around the clock,
at low cost " and " showcase storage
technology that could provide one
gigawatt of storage for one hour at a
single plant, " the DOE said on Feb. 17.
The pilot could also pivotally prove
that a particle-based CSP plant can
achieve the DOE's goal of making
electricity-plus-storage from CSP at
$0.05/kWh.
That would be a " game-changer, "
Alejandro Moreno, acting assistant secretary
for the DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency
and Renewable Energy (EERE),
said. " This pilot facility will demonstrate
how CSP systems can meet the challenges
of providing long-duration energy
storage while reducing costs and
complexity for solar thermal technology.
At the same time, it also provides
a pathway to commercialization for industrial
process heat, " he said.
A CSP Pilot Five Years in the
Making
The G3P3 pilot's recent groundbreaking
culminates a five-year, $100 million
federal research effort to develop a
" next-generation " of CSP technologies
that will be efficient and cost-competitive.
The pilot is part of the DOE's
2017-initiated Generation 3 CSP funding
project, which evolved from the
agency's 2011-launched SunShot
Initiative.
Overseen by the DOE's Solar
Energy Technologies Office (SETO), the
Generation 3 program evaluated three
technology pathways-liquid, solid particle,
or gaseous/supercritical fluid-
that could enable high-temperature
(and high-efficiency) CSP plants.
A key Generation 3 program objective
has been to demonstrate an integrated
system-not just on a component level,
as was pursued under SunShot-to
8 Supplement to POWER & RE+ 2023
prove out new technologies and reduce
risk, as well as to demonstrate CSP's
reliability, cost-competitiveness, and
flexibility.
In May 2018, the DOE awarded $62
million under a competitive solicitation
to 11 projects in two areas. About $9.4
million went to Sandia for the first two
phases of G3P3 under the " Integrated
Gen3 Systems " topic area. The award
considered Sandia's successful development
and demonstration in the early
2010s of a 1-MWth high-temperature
directly irradiated falling particle receiver
system prototype. The national
laboratory said the prototype installed
at its NSTTF achieved particle temperatures
of more than 800C with continuous
recirculation.
Sandia
immediately
kicked off
Phase 1, which spanned 18 months over
2019 and 2020, working on risk mitigation
related to receiver, storage, heat
The G3P3 concentrating solar-thermal pilot facility at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico will use
sand-like ceramic particles instead of molten salt. The particles, which can withstand temperatures greater
than 800C, can be used to transfer and store heat or power a supercritical carbon dioxide (sCO2
) turbine. " If
successful, this type of solar power plant could provide 100 MW of power continuously, around the clock, at low
cost, " the DOE said. Source: DOE
" This pilot facility will demonstrate how CSP systems can
meet the challenges of providing long-duration energy storage
while reducing costs and complexity for solar thermal
technology. At the same time, it also provides a pathway to
commercialization for industrial process heat. "
-Alejandro Moreno

POWER September 2023

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