John Cockerill is the world leader for the design and supply of thermal solar receivers in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) tower plants using molten salts. The company constantly improves its products and solutions based on its return of experience from its projects and intensive R&D programs. Moreover, John Cockerill develops synergies between its Solar and Thermal Storage business and its Hydrogen business. Today we have the opportunity to interview Pedro Cabanillas, Business Development and Sales Manager at John Cockerill, to better understand the strategy and standing of John Cockerill in today’s CSP markets and decarbonization solutions.
Q. Hello Pedro, it is a pleasure having you here at Protermosolar. Those in the industry have heard about the performance of your equipment in different CSP projects, however, we would like to learn more from you directly.
R. Thanks for having me. First of all, I would like to express our gratitude to Protermosolar. We joined the association almost two years ago and so far, the job done by the entire team is very beneficial for the industry and the associates.
Going into the details, in addition to our water-steam receiver in South Africa, we have two receivers into commercial operation: Cerro Dominador, in Chile, and Haixi in China. Both are performing well. In Chile in particular, we deployed a team to provide extended services to the owner and we are monitoring the receiver in order to keep improving our design. In Dubai, with the Dewa project, we are wrapping up the commissioning stage, and we expect to reach full commercial operation in the next months. Lastly, in Redstone, in South Africa, we are about to complete the mechanical erection. Cold commissioning shall start soon.
I would like to use this opportunity to highlight the enormous challenges we encountered for these two projects, Dewa and Redstone, as they happened during the pandemic. Our teams did a fantastic job to overcome travel and sanitary restrictions, supply chain issues, lockdowns, etc.
Q. That sounds like a great challenge. So now, what are the lessons learnt from those projects and experiences?
R. There are many. On some projects, we adapted our procedures, and the majority of them allowed us to improve our products. Cerro Dominador was our first pioneer thermal solar receiver with molten salts and it has been successfully operational. We adapted our design to reduce heat losses, facilitate erection and reduce costs. We adapted some manufacturing procedures, such as welding, in order to improve the quality of our equipment. In the monitoring portion, cameras and software are now more accurate than before. Additionally, we also developed our own coating instead of purchasing it from a third party. Now with projects in commercial operation and available data, we are focusing on lifetime and reliability improvements.
These projects also allowed us to staff a great, well qualified and talented team for our next projects. Several of our engineers have already five large-scale projects under their belt. That is highly valuable and even more considering that our technology has been broadly in the market for less than ten years.
Q. Excellent Pedro. It seems that you can count on a great team. So now, which markets are you monitoring for future projects?
R. John Cockerill has a global footprint and is set to be a solution provider for decarbonization and sustainable growth.
Among the areas with enough CSP potential in terms of solar resource, we are specifically careful with markets with a high penetration of intermittent renewables and ambitious plans for fossil fuel plants retirement or replacement: we may be reaching the tipping point in some regions where it will be challenging to integrate more intermittent renewable sources if we do not deliver a dispatchable solution like CSP (and some of the upcoming auctions in those places are reflecting that trend already). In this sense, countries like Australia, Chile or India are key countries in terms of CSP for John Cockerill. Storage should plat a relevant role there as well and our experience in CSP storage is key too.
We are closely monitoring other places where the driving factor is different. For example, places where the industry is decarbonizing and wants to tackle its heat consumption while reducing costs and improve efficiency. In those places, like Europe, our applications for energy storage and steam production are the perfect fit. This market is evolving even quicker than CSP because the tipping point of some industries is there: “I have PPA’s in place for renewable electricity, but I need to secure long-term energy for heat not depending on fossil fuel prices?” And we have developed efficient solutions to help industries decarbonize: self-generated electricity, auto-consumption, energy storage, sell it to the grid, … by using PV’s combined to batteries, hydrogen production, etc.
Q. Finally; what are the main lines of action of John Cockerill concerning new or existing solutions?
R. On our existing solutions in CSP and storage (receiver and steam generator) as I commented before, we focus on the consolidation of our receiver design with real data from operational plants. We focus as well on lifetime analysis: specially regarding corrosion and material behavior (stress, fatigue…). Beyond integrity, we are also paying attention to performance where our new coating together with machine learning strategies for prediction and optimization are the main axis. In terms of diversification, in the mid-term, we plan to market our electric heaters for molten salt. Power to X technologies are set to boom. That is why electric heaters associated with molten salt storage, a proven technology for a duration of six hours and beyond, are going to be an essential link.
Beyond CSP and large scale storage, we are also tackling the market of Small Modular Reactors with our solutions for storage, heat transference and steam generation around the molten salt loop. This is a promising market to be set in the next decade, and John Cockerill has an important role to play.
Finally, we are very active in terms of new solutions for decarbonizing the industry, mostly in green heat solutions. Our large- or small-scale thermal receivers, using different fluids such us molten salts, water or air, are an essential link in those solar applications. Storage using solid media, or small-size steam generators are also key elements of our solutions for the industry to reduce emissions and improve long-term energy supply.
For further information, have a look at John Cockerill’s website:
https://johncockerill.com/en/energy/solar-thermal-storage/
