As heavy industries face escalating pressure to slash carbon emissions, the COOPERANT project stepped forward with a compelling blueprint for manufacturing sector decarbonization at the Thermal Energy Storage Days (TEDS2025) in Vitoria-Gasteiz.
Patricia Royo, representing project coordinator IDENER.AI, anchored COOPERANT’s presence at this major industrial-academic summit. Delivering a highly targeted technical poster presentation, Royo introduced the international audience to a specialized application of the project’s technology: Solar Heat for Industrial Processes (SHIP).
The presentation, titled “Addressing SHIP in the incoming 3rd generation CSP-TES: the COOPERANT concept,” shifted the traditional conversation around solar power from basic electricity generation to high-value, high-temperature industrial heat.
The Massive Challenge of Industrial Heat
While residential electricity grids are steadily transitioning to wind and conventional solar photovoltaics (PV), the industrial sector remains notoriously difficult to clean up. Heavy manufacturing—such as chemical processing, food production, and material refinement—requires a constant, reliable stream of intense heat. Historically, this has kept factories tethered to fossil fuels like natural gas.
Royo’s presentation detailed how COOPERANT’s incoming “3rd Generation” Concentrated Solar Power and Thermal Energy Storage (CSP-TES) system can step into this gap. By focusing sunlight to reach extreme temperatures and utilizing advanced, hybridized storage materials, the COOPERANT concept proves it can capture thermal energy during peak daylight hours and deliver it to factory floors at a steady, uninterrupted rate—24 hours a day.
Fusing AI with Hardware for Commercial Viability
A key point of interest among the industry delegates in Vitoria-Gasteiz was COOPERANT’s multi-layered approach. The project doesn’t just innovate on the physical level with high-performance storage materials; it acts as a digital architect.
Through the integrated COOPERANT-AI tool, the system uses deep learning algorithms to predict factory heat demand alongside real-time weather fluctuations. For industrial operators at TEDS2025, this digital integration is the missing link that moves experimental solar hardware into a reliable, commercially viable utility that can seamlessly plug into existing factory infrastructure.
By establishing CSP-TES as a viable solution for the SHIP market, COOPERANT continues to position itself as a vanguard of the European clean energy transition, proving that the future of heavy industry can be powered entirely by the sun.
- Scientific Resource: To review the technical abstract and design parameters presented in Vitoria-Gasteiz, access the official repository on Zenodo: DOI 10.5281/zenodo.15075435
- Join the Community: Stay updated on how we are decarbonizing heavy industry. Follow our journey on Instagram: @COOPERANTproject