New Solar Power Towers

Date 17-06-2015 IK4-TEKNIKER

IK4-TEKNIKER is participating in a project to develop an innovative concept of solar thermal power plant configuration that is globally more efficient, more reliable, more manageable and more competitive with respect to the energy market. 

The thermal use of concentrated solar energy at a high temperature is an increasingly more competitive alternative on the energy market worldwide.

This was the context in which the CAPTure (Competitive SolAr Power Towers) research project got going in May 2015. It is an initiative being funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme and is in fact the only one selected to develop concentrated solar energy technology within the sphere of “Developing the next generation technologies of renewable electricity and heating/cooling”.  

The project seeks to significantly cut the costs of this energy (LCOE) through the development of an innovative concept of plant configuration (multi-tower decoupled combined cycle) and its corresponding components. This innovative concept means a plant with greater overall efficiency, and which is more reliable and more manageable, in other words, much more competitive with the energy market in mind.

The project is set to run for four years during which the work of IK4-TEKNIKER will be focussing mainly on the development (design, manufacture, assembly and testing) of an innovative heat exchanger, including the control system of the ensemble as well as a new concept of heliostat.

The project is being led by the National Centre for Renewable Energies (CENER-CIEMAT), with IK4-TEKNIKER as the main collaborating research centre, and has the participation of CIEMAT, and another 10 organisations in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Belgium and Switzerland.


This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 640905