Which French facility is one of the world’s largest solar furnaces?

The Odeillo Solar Furnace in France is one of the world’s largest solar furnaces.

Built in the Pyrénées-Orientales, the facility uses a large field of heliostats to reflect sunlight toward a curved parabolic mirror. The mirror concentrates the light into an intense focal point capable of producing temperatures above 3,000 degrees Celsius.

Odeillo opened in 1970 and became a major research centre for high-temperature solar materials science. Researchers have used concentrated sunlight to study ceramics, metals, chemical reactions and extreme thermal processes.

A solar furnace is not the same as a solar-thermal power tower. Both concentrate sunlight, but Odeillo is primarily a research installation rather than a conventional electricity-generating station.