An intriguing coupling of solar concentrator and heat storage promises a revolution. The main invention seems to be some unique kind of cheap and efficient insulation for heat storage. Sadly all the articles I found in English don’t seem very reliable. The most elaborate of them is still somewhat vague on details, mentioning awards, unnamed billionaire investor and focus on electricity generation (why? how?). So it could also be an unsuccessful experiment now switched to money generation mode. But let’s have some hope.
There’s a longer documentary in Serbian - maybe some of you can comprehend it and provide some more insights:
Revisiting Sergey Yurko’s content, I found a deeper explanation about this project in russian. The main takeaways:
- This system is based on hot air, heated to around 800 degrees Celsius;
- Hot air storage is the main invention. Even if it is several times worse than the inventor claims, it would still be extremely effective. He estimates that the lowest temperature in the storage would drop to around 300 degrees in February/March. Here’s a screenshot from his estimations:
- Sergey speculates on electricity generation in this system by using a stirling engine, which would work at ~10% efficiency.
- He even made estimations for using such systems as a replacement for district heating of Helsinki, openly calculating that building such a system could pay off in 13-14 years. Helsinki was chosen as a very inconvenient case close to north pole. I expect, open data about district heating demands also played a role in this choice. For electricity generation here he calculates regular steam turbines, operating at efficiencies 25 to 30%.
