Department of Energy The same visionary scientists responsible for pioneering space exploration are also behind a national effort to commercialize concentrating solar power (CSP) plants with integral energy storage. After years of research, testing, and validating the technology, in late 2015 scientists working on the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project (Crescent Dunes)—a Nevada-based CSP plant—successfully reached commercial operation. The journey to commercialization began nearly three decades ago. Back in the 1990s, a group of scientists at Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne worked with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to develop breakthrough technology to collect the sun’s thermal energy and then store it in molten salt. From 1994 to 1999, Rocketdyne…