File this one under cool stuff that it would be nice if the US had developed. This month in Italy, a new type of Concentrating Solar Power facility was brought online. To me, this is one of the more exciting advances on the solar front.

This report from the Guardian has a bunch of great details (my post just highlights one paragraph). In a nutshell, the advance uses molten salts in place of oil (the usual medium used in CSP power) to store the solar heat. There are many benefits to this process. Since it's inception, CSP technology has nominally answered one of the big complaints about solar generation based on photovoltaics, namely that such systems are only able to produce electricity when the sun is shining. This new system takes those benefits and multiplies them:

With the higher-temperature heat storage allowed by the direct use of salts, the plant can also extend its operating hours well further than an oil-operated CSP plant with molten salt storage, thus working 24 hours a day for several days in the absence of sun or during rainy days.

That in itself is exciting. But the higher operational temperatures also provide another key benefit.

Last but not least, the higher temperatures reached by the molten salts enable the use of steam turbines at the standard pressure/temperature parameters as used in most common gas-cycle fossil power plants. This means that conventional power plants can be integrated - or, in perspective, replaced - with this technology without expensive retrofits to the existing assets.

In my mind, that is huge. This could allow power companies to maximize their current investments while also moving to a sustainable future.

And, as a bonus. Instead of creating toxins, the salts used act as fertilizer if they ever end up in the environment.

This feature also enables a simplified plant design, as it avoids the need for oil-to-salts heat exchangers, and eliminates the safety and environmental concerns related to the use of oils (molten salts are cheap, non-toxic common fertilizers and do not catch fire, as opposed to synthetic oils currently used in CSP plants around the World)

What's not to love? So, while we in America putter around with inane slogans like "Drill Baby Drill" ... the inevitable march to a new sustainable future continues without us.

(h/t Gizmodo)