Several comments... Disclaimer, I work in this space.
a) Surprised that on HN no one has commented on the similarities with Heliogen: https://www.heliogen.com/ This US-based company backed by Bill Gates and Bill Gross similarly focuses on high-temperature heliostat applications, e.g. green hydrogen and concrete etc. They even have similar hexagonal-mirror heliostats.
b) Why these CSP startups so often focus on moon-shot 'super hard' applications like the above baffles me. There are LOTS of great applications for lower temperature solar thermal systems - which are much easier to build and operate.
Our plastic-molding systems are just one example: http://lm.solar
c) It's a little odd to be doing CSP in Germany - Heliostats need collimated light (non-diffuse light, e.g. light that casts a shadow) and Germany has pretty low DNI compared to, say, Morocco. I know the article says they plan to deploy commercially to Spain, but even a test system would be super hard to operate with frequent haze, high cloud layers, etc. To be clear, not saying PV-solar is impractical in Germany - PV can harvest diffuse light just fine.
I wish them luck, but there are likely more practical, impactful uses for CSP.
PS Re the 'sunlight is free' comments... yes but if your process is very inefficient and/or requires a huge heliostat array then CapEx goes way up (which has to be financed = cost) and then you get into needing automated cleaning robots to keep your array working well (see Ivanpah - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility ), etc.
The cascading effects of moon-shot application => huge CSP system => problems (high CapEx, huge physical sites, permitting problems, need for automated cleaning etc) are exactly why we're working on industrial uses for SMALL heliostat arrays. And why grid-scale CSP (electric generation) systems generally get trounced by PV+battery systems.
"A clean energy company wants federal permission to use Arizona's sunshine and water to create carbon-free hydrogen fuel in one of the state’s more stressed rural groundwater basins".
Last year, Americans bought more than one million fully electric cars, trucks and SUVs. Interactive charts show where adoption is strong and where it's lagging.
I've toured our local MRF and was shocked at how good it was at robotic / magnetic separation. Incredibly fast AI trained 'pickers' pulling material off a belt (sorting by visually distinct plastic types, e.g. PET vs opaque plastics, paper, etc), combined with some human labor and magnetic extractors. Very high capture rates for all plastics except films - those remain hard to sort / grab. I was not expecting this level of performance...
NASA is conducting tests on what might be the greatest challenge of a Mars mission: the trauma of isolation. But how many of these simulated missions do we really need to do?
