While heating something that hot using “passive” components (is a laser really passive?) is awesome, is it really useful? 5500K is considerably hotter that, say, the combustion chamber of a rocket, and those chambers need active cooling. And even 1500K is plenty hot that the Carnot efficiency of the heat engine part will be high.

Also, a solar pumped laser needs cooling, just like a heat engine! Just from first principles, you can’t have a gadget at thermal equilibrium that magically produces an excess of light at its output frequency — this would violate the second law of thermodynamics.

And if you imagine a model three-level laser, exposing all three transitions to bright light will pump the nonlasing intermediate transition (overfilling level 2, thus reducing the population inversion in a laser lasing on the 3 -> 2 transition, or pumping useful level 2 atoms back up to level 3 in a laser lasing on 2 -> 1) and will actively un-pump the lasing transition in any variety of laser (because light in the wrong mode will cause a population-inverted transition to emit into that same wrong mode by simulated emission).

In the way that that will make you click the link.

It's a weird way to phrase it. It's a solar generator that shares it's turbines with a conventional generator.

I guess that they're using multiple smaller towers? This does reduce the complexity of the tracking and alignment systems.

I’m very sceptical about its potential for generating electricity cheaper than PV + BESS but for process heat it seems plausibly more efficient since CSP is 50-90% efficient for thermal transfer (without the electricity generation step.)

If I understand the article correctly, there is no boiling water, it uses hot air only. It says the concentrated solar generates air up to nearly 1000 degrees, and that's used to heat up compressed air to run through a turbine, with the eziting air at around 250 degrees. Burning fuel would replace the initial source of hot air. Burning fossil fuels to get hot air and then dumping 250 degree air to the environment doesn't seem very efficient, but the article doesn't mention anything about the efficiency of the process with either source.

Does say the hot air at the end can be used for industrial processes, so it might not be completely lost

> to boil water

Brayton cycle so no water needed. It seems as if the concept has not changed since https://www.rostinternational.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10...

Advanced new power generation technique!

Look inside, it’s boiling water to spin turbines.

"The first installation will be"

It also hasn't been built yet. Let me know when they have one working prototype. Until then, it is just a concept on a drawing board.