The rapid expansion of photovoltaics (PV) in various countries has created a significant surplus of electricity during midday hours, but industrial sectors such as the food industry maintain a constant demand for steam. The aim of a recent study, conducted by Vietnamese researchers (Hoang and Nguyen, 2026), was to investigate the feasibility of integrating high-frequency induction heating (IH) with molten salt thermal energy storage (MSTES) to convert excess PV electricity into industrial steam.
To control the system under dynamic photovoltaic conditions, a cascaded PID control model was implemented in MATLAB/Simulink. To evaluate the system’s performance, three metrics were introduced: electromagnetic coupling efficiency (ηem), heat transfer efficiency (ηth), and overall system efficiency (ηsys ).
The results demonstrate that an optimized four-pipe configuration using molten salts and operating at 12–100 kHz achieves ηem ≈ 85%, ηth ≈ 96%, and ηsys ≈ 82%. Furthermore, according to the authors, compared to the traditional PV + battery energy storage system (BESS) + boiler setup, the proposed system (PV + IH + MSTES) offers similar efficiency but with a 60% lower heat cost and a longer lifespan. Finally, unlike conventional biomass boilers, the system produces no emissions and enables flexible cogeneration of heat and electricity from renewable PV inputs. These results demonstrate that the MSTES system with IH is a technically sound and economically superior Power-to-Heat solution for industrial steam production, offering a promising path toward decarbonization for countries with high PV penetration.
References: A.T. Hoang & B.T. Nguyen, Applied Thermal Engineering, 288, 2026, 129632
