Ranga Pitchumani is the George R. Goodson Professor in mechanical engineering and also served as the Chief Scientist for U.S. Department of Energy’s grand challenge program called SunShot. As an initiative of the federal government, this program successfully reduced the cost of solar power implementation and expanded its ubiquity across the country.

In a new interview with SolarPaces, Pitchumani looked at the pace of a technology known as concentrating solar power (CSP). Unlike the familiar use of solar panels to channel the sun’s rays into electricity, CSP is a method of focusing solar energy to generate intense heat that can be stored or used to generate power as in a thermal power plant.

Newer approaches use particles to capture and store heat at much higher temperatures for deployment in energy production, and this fresh approach is one of several Pitchumani is pursuing in his Advanced Materials and Technologies Laboratory.  He explores the progress to date and future potential of the technology in this interview.