Renewable Energy

Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)

A CSP Plant produces electricity by using mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto receivers which produce steam to generate electricity.

What is "CSP (Concentrated Solar Power)"?

The CSP System consists of three major units (refer to the figure on the next slide)

  • Solar Field: Converts solar energy into thermal energy
  • Heat Storage: Stores thermal energy using molten salt as a heat-storage medium
  • Power Block: Generates electricity through a steam turbine with steam produced by solar energy


Traditional technologies used in a fossil-fuel power plant can be applied to the power block, which utilizes solar thermal energy instead of fossil fuel.

Thermal energy storage is one of the most attractive aspects of CSP when compared with other renewable energy resources, as it allows precise controllability and stability of electrical supply even during the hours of darkness.

Capabilities

Molten Salt Parabolic Trough Concentrated Solar Power

Chiyoda is promoting this new Molten Salt Parabolic Trough CSP (MSPT-CSP) technology, which can operate at temperatures of up to 550 degree Celsius by changing only the heat transfer fluid (HTF) from hot-oil to molten salt.The merits of MSPT-CSP system are:

  • Higher steam cycle efficiency will be achieved by higher steam temperature
  • Low cost due to less volume required for heat storage
  • Molten salt, used as both heat transfer fluid and heat-storage medium, will allow for a more simplified plant design (oil-MS heat exchanger is not required)

Demonstration Plant in Italy

Chiyoda built demo plant in Italy to develop new generation CSP technology- Molten Salt Parabolic Trough Technology (so called MSPT-CSP). Demo Plant was built on 2013 and finish operation on 2015 after successful data acquisition. Chiyoda will continue to develop CSP project based on expericence achieved from demo plant.