Marcelino Sánchez Ph.D.
Director, Solar Thermal Energy Department National Renewable Energy Centre (CENER)
Dr. Marcelino is the Director of the Solar Thermal Energy Department of CENER with more than 27 years of international research experience in R&D projects in the area of solar thermal energy, especially in projects related to Concentrating Solar Power Technologies (CSPT). During these years he has been working for both public institutions and private enterprises, in Spain and abroad, leading research groups in different working environments with remarkable success. He has leaded and participated in a large number of national and international R&D projects, most of them EU funded. Although this experience covers a wide range of developments on different CSPT, his professional career has been more focused on the research and development of solar tower technology covering a wide range of key components from receivers (Open Air, Pressurized Air, Molten Salt, Saturated Steam and Water/Steam) and heliostats (glass/metal, stressed membrane), working from research at laboratory scale to the design, construction and evaluation of commercial solar demonstration plants, unique in its kind, and including the development of experimental prototypes. He has held, among others, the following positions: R&D Director at Abengoa Solar New Technologies; Responsible of the High Concentration Working Group at CIEMAT; Solar thermal expert at Solargen Europe Ltd; Technical consultant for Energy for Sustainable Development Ltd. He has participated and participates in numerous expert groups, and committees, having been selected by the European Union several times to assist the Commission as International Expert. He is author of eleven patents (ten of which are related to innovative solar energy concepts) as well as frequent reviewer of scientific journals as “Applied Energy“, “Journal of Solar Energy Engineering” and of “Solar Energy”.
He is also Member of the Management Board of the European project STAGE-STE (Scientific and Technological Alliance for Guaranteeing the European Excellence in Concentrating Solar Thermal Energy) and Leader of the work package 12 - Point focusing CSP Technologies. In addition to this, he is Member of the Steering Committee of EERA JP-CSP (European Energy Research Alliance – CSP program) and Coordinator of the Subprogram 6 – Point Focusing CSP Systems. He was actively involved in the promotion and creation of this subprogram within EERA JP-CSP.