Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) is one of the most promising forms of renewable energy. However, it has one important drawback: the high initial investment costs, which makes it less competitive than other renewable alternatives. This situation worsens as, despite their youth, some of the first CSP operating plants are facing troubling issues with one of their key elements, the molten salts mega tanks, which constitute the core of the CSP’s Thermal Energy Storage (TES) areas. These are usually large stainless-steel tanks, costing not less than €10M. The high temperatures and corrosion to which these tanks are subjected endanger their durability. Recently, some settlements and even breakages of these tanks in commercial plants have been reported.
To tackle these problems, InCrescendo proposes TANKRETE: a cylindrical tank with an isolating foundation system, all manufactured with thermal concretes. This solution is based on the unique combination of innovative materials (structural-accumulative and isolating concretes), together with InCrescendo’s wide experience in thermal-structural designs of tanks completely constructed with concrete. TANKRETE enables its immediate applicability, being perfectly compatible with current commercial plants’ technologies and systems.
Increscendo is currently working with the leading companies in the field (ABENGOA, SENER, ACCIONA and COBRA among others). In 2014, after 4 years in direct contact with thermal solar developments around the world, we decided to take the next step in the energy storage designs, improving not only the long-term durability of the elements and the carbon footprint of the materials to be used, but also optimizing the budget of the whole system. This is the origin of our idea to improve the TES area with a determined commitment to research and innovate.
Tankrete is a high-potential/high-risk project. We have the customers net and we have raised their interest. However, due to the high investment that the purchase requires, they ask for a more adequately sized pilot unit to be tested closest to real commercial plants conditions. The key goal of this project is to confirm our preliminary data through a Feasibility Study, and then we will pursue the pilot unit construction to reach the pre-commercialization and pre-industrialization stage.
