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U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

U.S. Solar Holdings Final Technical Report

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1183706· OSTI ID:1183706
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2]
  1. U.S. Solar Holdings, Boise, ID (United States); U.S. Solar Holdings
  2. U.S. Solar Holdings, Boise, ID (United States)

This report summarizes the work of the US Solar Thermal Storage LLC (“USSTS”) team on SandShifter subproject for Phase 2 of U.S. Department of Energy’s FOA #DE-FC36-08GO18155.005. This subproject develops a new-to-the-world, disruptive technology which leverages an abundant, inexpensive, and benign material, Sand, for application in Thermal Energy Storage (TES) in association with power generation from Concentrating Solar Thermal (CST) systems. Sand, as a standalone TES media, has a 10 to 25X cost per unit of storage capacity cost advantage over the prevailing technology, molten salt. The work summarized herein suggests that SandShifter, which has a non-linear cost curve favoring higher hours of storage, could likely achieve economics of $15 per kWh-th or less for several hours of storage in high temperature steam- or salt-as-HTF configurations with further technology development.

Research Organization:
U.S. Solar Holdings, Boise, ID (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S); USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Solar Thermal, Biomass Power, and Hydrogen Technologies (EE-13)
DOE Contract Number:
FC36-08GO18155
OSTI ID:
1183706
Report Number(s):
DOE-USS--18155-F
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English