Current and Future Status of Concentrated Solar Power in the EU

Abstract

Concentrating Solar Power is under development in Europe since the 1970s. Presently the work is focused on raising efficiencies and reducing cost. Therefore a wide variety of actions are carried out to strengthen synergies between European researchers, and to give industry the opportunity to implement competitive technologies into the market. The paper gives an overview on recent work on line and point focusing systems, new storage technologies, and the integration into other processes than power production, like fuel production water production or process heat generation.