SUN-DT partners will take advantage of the great potential of the promising CSP tower technology together with the hitherto unexplored possibilities offered by digitalisation to execute this project, aimed at increasing the competitiveness of the European CSP tower plants sector, as well as that of its supplier digitalisation companies.

To do so, the project members will jointly mature four complementary and interoperable innovative digital tools: i) a tool for calibration and characterization of heliostats; ii) a Digital Twin of the solar field and the receiver; iii) an Energy Management System for dispatch optimization, and iv) a predictive tool for enhanced Operation and Maintenance(O&M). These digital tools will then be integrated into a single platform capable of processing data collectively to optimize decision-making at the plant level, and tested for validation in 2 experimental test facilities and 2 commercial tower plants.

Two of the world’s largest solar thermal projects, the Khi Solar One plant and the Cerro Dominador plant, operated by two of the world’s leading solar energy players, COX and ACCIONA respectively, have been selected for demonstration purposes in commercial plants. Each of them represents the two possible types of tower plants (circular solar field and north/south solar field), ensuring the versatility of the solutions adopted for all current and future plants. The demonstration period of the tools will be extended to 1,5 years, which will provide more robust test data and will bring the possibility of testing a complete year with its two distinct seasons: summer and winter.

Additionally, the joint maturing of the digital tools and their integration into a common infrastructure for running/coordinating/processing them together will increase the efficiency of the plants by managing multiple elements simultaneously. This will increase the number of data sources, and the amount of shared information for better decision-making.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101234781.