A Infraestrutura INIESC no Contexto da EU-SOLARIS: Actividades e Perspectivas Futuras

ABSTRACT INIESC (National Research Infrastructure in Solar Energy Concentration), composed by the poles of Évora (UEVORA-CER) and Lisbon (LNEG), is the national reference infrastructure for medium and high temperature solar technologies. Funded in 2017, INIESC has been driving the development of concentrating solar technologies and their applications in different domains: process heat, thermoelectric generation, energy storage or renewable gases - accompanied by training and technology transfer activities. The European Commission has established the European Research Infrastructure for Concentrated Solar Power (EU-SOLARIS ERIC), the result of collaboration between five European countries, including Spain, France, Germany, Cyprus and Portugal as an observer country. With the aim of establishing conditions for research into concentrated solar technologies and applications, covering diverse areas such as thermoelectricity, solar thermochemistry, materials, desalination and thermal energy storage, EU-SOLARIS ERIC is recognized as the European reference infrastructure in this field. Portugal is represented in ERIC EU-SOLARIS by the constituent institutions of INIESC. This article presents a description of the activities carried out at INIESC, the results already achieved, as well as its participation in ERIC EU-SOLARIS, giving an overview of the present and future vision of this infrastructure. KEYWORDS: Solar Energy, Infrastructures, INIESC, EU-SOLARI, ESFRI