Concentrated Solar and its Role in Solving Climate Change

Concentrated solar describes a range of technologies that collect and concentrate sunlight in order to make use of its energy by converting it to heat. The idea of concentrated solar goes back at least to Archimedes, who may have (historians like to argue about this) used an array of mirrors to focus sunlight on approaching warships and setting fire to them during the Siege of Syracuse over two thousand years ago. Concentrated solar found some interest after the industrial revolution, and in 1866, Augustin Mouchot used a parabolic mirror to boil water and drive a steam engine for the first time. More recently, since the 1980s, concentrated solar has been in use around the world for producing electricity, this is called Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). CSP has been implemented using a variety of different technologies. The two most common configurations are known as troughs and towers.