With the rapid development of renewable energy in China, photovoltaics and wind power have become familiar things in the lives of ordinary people. However, there are probably not many people who know about CSP.

On September 19th, Dubai time, an area of 44 square kilometers, the world's largest photovoltaic solar thermal power generation project to date broke the long deserted Dubai desert. The first trough collector of the 950 MW photothermal photovoltaic hybrid power project undertaken by Chinese companies was successfully assembled on the same day. After the project is completed, it will not only provide clean electricity to more than 320,000 households in Dubai, but also reduce carbon emissions by 1.6 million tons.

On the same day of September 19, CEC's Qinghai Republic 50 MW molten salt tower solar thermal power generation project and Luneng Haixi multi-energy complementary integration and optimization national demonstration project 50 MW CSP project were successfully connected to the grid. To add a new sample to boost China's energy transformation. Since its development in 2005, China's CSP industry has grown from scratch, and has already achieved considerable capacity scale. The scale effect has gradually emerged, which has had a positive impact on the structural optimization of the industry and the reduction of costs.

What is solar thermal power generation?

Speaking of solar thermal utilization, in fact, everyone is no stranger, solar water heaters on the roof of China is a typical scene of solar low heat application, and solar thermal power generation is a way of solar high heat application.

Solar power generation mainly includes photovoltaic and photothermal. PV uses silicon panels to convert solar energy directly into electrical energy. Photothermal converts solar energy into thermal energy, which uses thermal energy to generate superheated steam to drive the unit to generate electricity. The principle of CSP and CR is basically the same. The back-end technology equipment is exactly the same. The difference is that the former uses solar energy to collect heat, while the latter uses coal, natural gas to obtain heat.

The potential for developing solar thermal power in China is enormous. According to the data, from the perspectives of solar energy resources, land conditions and water resources, Delingha and Golmud in Qinghai Province, Jiuquan and Zhangye in Gansu Province, Alashan League in Inner Mongolia, Bayannaoer, Hami and Turpan in Xinjiang, etc. It has the superior resource conditions to support the construction of a 10 million-kilowatt solar thermal power generation project, and the installed capacity of commercial CSP projects with construction conditions is 235.3 GW.

With photovoltaics and wind power, why should we develop light and heat?

Compared with other renewable energy sources, CSP is the only clean energy form that is expected to replace thermal power as the basic power. It solves the “biggest problem” in the new energy field – energy storage, thus achieving continuous, stable power output. Controllable, and direct output of AC, and network friendly.

Ma Zhongfang, deputy director of the China Society of Engineering Thermophysics and director of the Key Laboratory of Heat Transfer Enhancement and Process Energy Conservation of the Beijing University of Technology, said that in the field of energy storage, chemical storage (batteries) are basically used. Scale, long life, low cost." The “smelting salt heat storage” of CSP is a physical energy storage method that can store millions of kWh of energy through tens of thousands of tons of high-temperature molten salt.

At the same time, although solar thermal power generation is a new energy technology, it is closely integrated with traditional industries and has strong industrial radiation. Huang Xiang, chief engineer of China Huadian Engineering (Group) Co., Ltd., said that the raw materials of CSP are mainly glass (mirror), steel (bracket), concrete (storage), chemical materials (molten salt), etc. Digesting excess capacity such as steel, glass and cement has become a new direction, new fulcrum and new impetus for economic development.

China has mastered a number of core technologies

Although the history of CSP development in China is not short, until 2016, the National Energy Administration launched the first batch of 20 CSP demonstration projects with a total installed capacity of 1.35 GW, which officially opened China's CSP. The commercialization process has led to the rapid development of a number of materials, equipment manufacturing and power station construction enterprises.

Up to now, a total of 4 projects in the first batch of demonstration projects have been completed and put into operation, and the cumulative installed capacity of CSP projects connected to the grid has reached 320 MW. It is expected that before the end of this year, China is expected to re-connect 4 projects with a new installed capacity of 250 MW.

“Although China's solar thermal power generation started late, some technologies have already taken the lead in the international arena.” Sun Rui, vice president of the Electric Power Planning and Design Institute, told reporters that through the first batch of demonstration projects, the independent innovation of related enterprises has been broken, and many breakthroughs have been made. The core technology has formed a complete industrial chain, and the current localization rate of equipment exceeds 90%.

According to statistics, as of the end of 2018, China has 6 production lines for trough glass mirrors, 10 production lines for trough vacuum heat absorption tubes, 5 production lines for mechanical transmission boxes, 2 production lines for hydraulic transmission, 3 production lines for thermal oil, and molten salt production lines. 3, 5 heliostat production lines, 3 trough collector production lines, and 3 tower heat absorber production lines.