Letter to the Editor: Concentrated Solar (CS) thermal melting versus photovoltaic (PV) based electric melting

We compare two solar based methods for providing the process heat for glass melting namely concentrated solar (CS) thermal melting and photovoltaic (PV) based electric melting. The CS system requires PV back-up and both methods require additional energy storage. The results of this investigation suggest that the PV-all electric method is more favourable due to the substantially smaller area of land required for the collection of the required solar energy for similar size glass production capacities.