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Flexible automated manufacturing of RST Facets: High Performance Solar Reflectors for CSP industry

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - AUTO-RST (Flexible automated manufacturing of RST Facets: High Performance Solar Reflectors for CSP industry)

Periodo di rendicontazione: 2021-10-01 al 2022-09-30

Energy generated by solar concentration using tower technology is increasing worldwide, but the performance/cost ratio of the available systems in the market is still not good enough. Today’s great challenge of the CSP sector is to achieve a more efficient use of this technology. AUTO-RST will remarkably enhance the optical quality to values lower than 0.6 mrad for any operational conditions and will be able to produce the first facets of up to 7sqm. This will allow to reduce the solar field investment by 15% (around 23M€ out of 156M€), disrupting the existing tower thermosolar market.
CSP has traditionally been competitive on a large power-plant scale. This is starting to change as CSP is one of the few alternatives to generate renewable high temperature heat, but the CSP sector needs to accommodate to the specific needs of this industry. The flexibility in geometry and size that the RST facet bring along is a key aspect in meeting these specific requirements.
There has been a growing interest from the industry to explore the solar concentration options to generate heat for their industrial processes. Industrial process heat has always been regarded as an application with huge potential, not only because of the needs for the industry to transition to more sustainable future but also because it is the industry that features the biggest energy demand across all consumers (37% of global energy consumption, from which only 9% is met with RE). The tipping point came with the recent energy crisis that made evident to all energy players, that on top of the environmental concerns, there is a big risk in continuing to rely on energy resources that are not under our control. Under this situation, the market conditions are such that for many applications a solar-driven heat system is just more competitive in cost than a traditional gas-fired boiler. Tewer is convinced that CSP can deliver solutions well below 40 €/MWh for plants demanding more than 1.5 kg/s of steam. The objective in the mid-term is to engage with industrial consumers to seek and create win-win business opportunities through an energy as a service business approach.
•Sales: in 2022/2023 TEWER needs to sell at least 700.000m2: Q-Energy ordered of an initial batch of 650 RST facets to replenish the stock in Gemasolar plant. This is of outstanding importance because it represents the first direct supply to the market, providing the company with its first commercial reference in a real plant. Additionally, a potential supply of 30,000 m2 for a full plant replacement is being discussed. Similarly, Abengoa has kept the interest in procuring an initial batch of 7,500 m2 with the potential eventual procurement of 107,000 m2 (25,000 facets) in Khi Solar One CSP Project in South Africa.
•Engagement of at least 5 clients and a network of value-adding partners in each major CSP market areas by 2022: The case evaluated in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with ABInBev did not result in a fruitful case scenario, because of site specific limitations. However, the detailed assessment was very valuable to better understand the needs for heat in the industrial processes, and most importantly it led to the realization that the supply of solar heat for heat processes could be optimal for many industrial settings. The business development team has engaged in pursuing industries where the heat demand is intensive (e.g. Eiffage Infraestructuras and Aviserrano SL).
•Enter the Chinese, LATAM and MENA markets: Tewer participated with the execution of the parabolic trough assembly line in 2019, in the 1st phase of the 20 CSP Chinese Project from 2016. Last year China announced 11 CSP projects with thermal energy storage by 2024, but there has not been much news and Chinese CSP players are not actively engaging with foreign companies anymore. Tewer has kept actively pursuing penetration in MENA, and a very interesting opportunity arose in Israel for the expansion of the existing Negev Ashalim plant.
The novel value proposition of AUTO-RST stands on: High optical quality (up to +53%); Ground-breaking design which drastically minimizes the variance of its physical characteristics and performance across the changing temperature working conditions; High reflectance (+1-2%); High stiffness and adaptability to different heliostat solutions; Solar mirror fully supported by the foam which absorbs energy impacts and reduces the risk of breaking during hailstorms.

PROGRESS BEYOND THE SOA IN AUTOMATED MANUFACTURING PROCESS
Unique and Innovative onsite design and manufacturing process which allows to produce big facets of up to 7 sqm, with spherical curvature and slope error better than 0.6 mrad with a cost lower than 25 €/sqm
Flexibility to define different curvatures with minimum adaptations on the system
Flexible and Scalable design with nominal sizes of up to 7 m2
Integrated quality control with a full surface scan on every fabricates facet
Demonstration of the potential degree of automation of the future commercial RST lines

TECHNOLOGICAL RESULTS (TRL6-7 to TRL9)
New generation of final RST’s representative series with implementation and certification of the improvements and technological upgrades, made in the flexible automated pre-series production representative process and validated on real operational environment, available to the professional market from Q12023
Scale-up the flexible automated manufacturing process for the RST facet: Management of the foam components, injection, movements, tempering process, maturation process and optical quality control process
Demonstrate the capacity to produce RST facets with consistent performance and sizes up to 7m2
Reduce the production cycle time from 2 hours per facet down to 15 minutes, approximately
Reduce the manufacturing cost to achieve the target cost of 25 €/m2

COMMERCIAL& BUSINESS RESULTS
-Sales: in 2022/2023 TEWER needs to sell at least 700.000m2: Q-Energy ordered an initial batch of 650 RST facets to replenish the stock in the Gemasolar plant. This represents the first direct supply to the market, providing our first commercial reference in a real plant. Additionally, a potential supply of 30,000 m2 for a full plant replacement is being discussed. Abengoa has kept the interest in procuring an initial batch of 7,500 m2 with a potential procurement of 107,000 m2 (25,000 facets) in Khi Solar One CSP Project in South Africa.
-Engagement of at least 5 clients and a network of value-adding partners in each major CSP market areas by 2022: The case evaluated in Santa Cruz de Tenerife with ABInBev did not result in a fruitful case scenario because of site specific limitations, but the detailed assessment was very valuable to better understand the needs for heat in industrial processes, and led to the realization that the supply of solar heat for heat processes could be optimal for many industrial settings, which has led to engagement with industries where the heat demand is intensive (e.g. Eiffage Infraestructuras and Aviserrano SL).
-Enter the Chinese, LATAM and MENA markets: Tewer participated with the execution of the parabolic trough assembly line in 2019 in Chinese 1st phase comprising 20 CSP. Last year China announced 11 CSP projects with thermal energy storage by 2024, but Chinese CSP players are not actively engaging with foreign companies as in phase 1. Regarding MENA, a very interesting opportunity arose in Israel for the expansion of the existing Negev Ashalim plant.
Pilot line erected system
Pilot Line 3D design
RST on site
RST on site
Pilot line erected system
RST facet integrated in a real heliostat