The Cyprus Institute (CyI) (https://www.cyi.ac.cy) is a non-profit research and educational institution of international composition, governed by a Board of Trustees comprising world-renown scientists and prominent political and entrepreneurial Leaders. The Institute is characterized by a novel philosophy on interdisciplinary research and education, and cutting-edge infrastructure to materialize it, which support a scientific, technological and innovative orientation aiming at world-class standards of excellence. Research at CyI is carried out in cross-disciplinary Centres that address problems of great scholarly relevance, global significance and regional focus. Shared infrastructures incorporating state-of-the- art technology support the research activities of the four CyI-Research-Centres, the Energy, Environment and Water Research Center (EEWRC), the Science and Technology in Archaeology and Culture Research Center (STARC), the Computation-based Science and Technology Research Center (CaSToRC) and the Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C).

The Energy, Environment and Water Research Centre (EEWRC) was established as the first research centre of CyI in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The EEWRC focuses on societally relevant issues of Energy & Renewables, Water and Natural Resources.

The Energy Division of the EEWRC is embedded in a range of relevant European and International Networks and committees such as ESTELA, EERA, ESFRI WG etc. It focuses on achieving a low carbon economy via the adoption of measures for energy efficiency and the employment of renewable energies to reduce the dependence on hydrocarbon energy sources. The Energy Division consists of a Sustainable Built Environment Group (SuBE), an Energy Planning and Analysis Group (EPA) and a Solar Energy and Desalination Group (SED) from which the researchers participating within VariFocalLH are members. The SED group is the leader in CSP research in Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region, and among others, it operates the flagship ‘’Platform for Research, Observation and TEchnological Applications in Solar energy’’ (PROTEAS) facility research infrastructure shown in Figure 6 (https://proteas.cyi.ac.cy/). This facility will provide the perfect controlled experimental platform for facilitating future development and high TRL testing of the proposed technology. PROTEAS uniquely combines ideal environmental conditions with a seaside environment for research, development and testing of technologies related to CST power, solar thermal energy and thermal desalination of sea water. The versatile facility provides a test bed under realistic conditions for testing novel components, systems and technologies, both for research and industry.

In the spirit of international collaboration, the facility is open to the international scientific community on a merit based priority scheme and it is part of several European projects such as INSHIP, SFERA III and recently of StoRIES, providing transnational access to researchers for research and training. Furthermore, PROTEAS provides services such as components testing both for research and industry.

Moreover, CyI is operating the Athalassa’s Heliostat Testing Facility, which is an advanced testing facility for heliostats and novel technologies related to heliostat tracking. Currently the facility is equipped with two heliostat test benches in an outdoor environment. A multifunctional Lambertian fully instrumented target is part of the facility which, among others, can qualitative and quantitatively obtain flux and temperature contours and calculate the power sent from heliostats. In addition, the laboratory has access to local meteorological data, including DNI, thus providing the perfect platform for assessing the performance of the proposed heliostat.

Finally, CyI’s High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) (https://www.hpcf.cyi.ac.cy/) is a multi-teraflop/s facility, consisting of hybrid CPU and GPU machines, that provides advanced computing services and supports the activities of CyI and its Research Centres. The HPCF is the national supercomputing facility for Cyprus and provides computing and data resources to the research community of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean region. The HPCF will be used in WP5 to accelerate the required simulations. In addition, the CyI’s fully equipped machine shop will be assisting in the development of the prototype heliostat.