The major trend in Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is currently the development of molten-salt plants. These supply power to the electrical grid from thermal energy storage, typically for up to 12 hours, increasingly in tandem with photovoltaics or wind turbines. Another trend is research into very high-temperature CSP technology, which would provide heat for cement and steel production or even mining. Both of these avenues for CSP are promising, but ambitious, high-powered designs using novel technology may well play into the traditional weak points of a sector, producing more white elephants like Crescent Dunes, or simply taking a very long time to finish R&D. For example Heliogen wants to use “air” as its Heat Transfer Fluid, something which has been…