The SFERA-III (Solar Facilities for the European Research Area) project opened, on November 16, the 3rd transnational campaign of proposals for access to concentrated solar thermal power facilities. This call allows free access for researchers to 22 installations of 12 research infrastructures in Solar Thermal Concentration, from eight countries (Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and Turkey).
In Portugal, the Renewable Energies Chair at the University of Évora (CER-UÉ, Portuguese acronym), a member of the SFERA-III consortium, is one of the receiving institutions for participating researchers. In Évora, it will be possible to conduct research at CER-UÉ, at the Solar Concentrator Testing Platform (PECS), at the National Research Infrastructure on Solar Energy Concentration (INIESC), and at the Solar DNI Assessment network. The availability period for each of the four facilities is 8 weeks of access.
This campaign offers access to a wide range of scientific experiments, in research laboratories and infrastructures in various fields, such as the solar thermal electricity generation, solar fuels production, cycles of chemical storage of solar energy, solar water treatment, solar heating and cooling of buildings to improve energy efficiency, modeling and controlling of concentrating solar technologies for power plants and for industrial processes, high value material synthesis and coatings deposits, high-flux photochemistry and photo-physics, and characterization of materials the behavior and properties under extreme conditions.
The campaign is open until January 31, 2021. The conditions of participation are available and more information can be consulted on the website of the SFERA-III project.
SFERA-III is an H2020 project, financed by the Research Infrastructure Program, with a consortium of 15 institutions from nine EU countries, coordinated by CIEMAT-PSA, whose overall objective is to reinforce the sustainability of the activities of the European advanced Concentrating Solar Power research infrastructures, which seeks to carry on with the work developed over eight years in the SFERA 1 and SFERA 2 projects.
