Testing and Demonstration

One distinguishing characteristic of the ARES group is its excellent testing, infrastructure and demonstration facilities that are spread across the established laboratories of the group. Within this framework, ARES group currently centres its foci around the following:

1. Testing and demonstration capabilities with respect to CSP systems and components:

• Thermal receiver testing (contact Marios Georgiou)
• Heliostat testing including reflector characterization, field reflectivity assessment, testing of sun tracking algorithms, aimpoint control (contact Kypros Milidonis)
• Solar Stirling Dishes testing (contact Marios Georgiou)
• Thermal Desalination techniques (Multiple Effect Distillation, Forward Osmosis) (contact Marios Georgiou)
• Linear Fresnel testing (contact Alaric Montenon)
• Qualitative and quantitative flux measurement testing (contact Kypros Milidonis)

2. Testing and demonstration of renewable energy polygeneration concepts through RES-based microgrids (CSP / Wind / PV) including thermal and battery storage components.

All established laboratories of the ARES group have access to solar radiation and meteorological measurement stations to enhance the testing capabilities. In the case of PROTEAS, the facility is equipped with a state-of-the-art Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) station. (contact Kypros Milidonis)

The current participation of the ARES group in relevant European research projects (e.g. SFERA III,  and StoRIES, as well as in previous projects (e.g. INSHIP, NESTER, STS-MED and SMART-GEMS) enables transnational access to the group’s infrastructures, making it particularly easy for groups outside CyI and outside Cyprus to collaborate in research with CyI. Apart from Academic research, the infrastructures are also available to relevant local and global industries for testing.