Technology
Concentrated Solar Thermal with molten-salt storage
High-temperature solar heat captured by a heliostat field, stored in molten salt, and released on demand as firm power or process heat — day and night.
High-temperature solar heat captured by a heliostat field, stored in molten salt, and released on demand as firm power or process heat — day and night.
Sunlight is concentrated, stored as heat in molten salt, and released on demand — so the plant keeps delivering firm power and process heat long after the sun goes down.
Thousands of individually tracked mirrors concentrate sunlight onto a central receiver at the top of a tower, raising the working fluid to temperatures approaching 565°C.
Hot molten salt flows from the receiver into insulated tanks. Storage duration scales by adding more salt and steel — the cheapest part of the plant. 8–14 hours is standard.
When power or heat is needed — day or night — hot salt generates steam to drive a turbine. The synchronous generator provides grid inertia at no extra cost.
A battery's cost rises almost in a straight line with the hours it must run. Molten-salt storage adds hours simply by adding salt to a larger tank — the cheapest part of the plant. Batteries win the sprint of one to four hours; thermal storage wins the marathon of eight to fourteen hours and beyond.
Thermal storage scales cheaply with duration — salt and steel, not chemistry. A mining load runs all night, and that overnight block is where this technology delivers.
The steam turbine delivers grid strength that PV and batteries cannot — frequency response and fault current included at no extra cost.
Stored solar heat can be delivered directly as high-temperature process steam — cheaper than electrify-then-reheat for many mineral processing applications.
Lowest total cost as storage duration and heat demand grow — plus synchronous grid strength and diesel/gas displacement at remote sites.
China's tower-CSP fleet represents approximately 1.7 GW across 27 plants as of end-2025 (SolarPACES / CSTA China Blue Book). These are not demonstration units — they are commercial plants delivering power to the grid, with years of operating data.
We offer a no-cost desktop opportunity screen — CST benchmarked against alternatives with a clear go / no-go verdict.