With increasing pressure to beef up their renewable energy portfolios, U.S. utilities are looking to concentrating solar power (CSP) as a way to generate renewable power on a large scale. Solar towers, in particular, have captured U.S. solar industry headlines in 2009. Announcements of hefty deals between utilities and developers, most notably a joint venture between BrightSource and Southern California Edison (NYSE: EIX) for seven solar tower power plants have emerged.
But the very thing that makes such projects so alluring to utilities looking to meet state renewable portfolio standards—namely the technologies’ potential to produce electricity on a massive scale—also means it will be years before such projects start lighting up American homes. Meanwhile Seville, Spain is already powered in part by solar tower power, including an 11-megawatt (MW) plant called PS10 completed in 2007 by Abengoa Solar. It plans to fire up Ps20, 20-MW tower, by mid-2009. While industry analysts are optimistic about solar towers’ promise, their high cost, lack of long-term data on their performance, and permitting are holding them back—for now.
Powering up
Concentrating solar power uses mirrors to focus the sun’s heat, turning it into electricity, usually by creating steam to drive a turbine. An October 2008 report by the Cleantech Group revealed that CSP had received $745 million in venture capital investment so far in 2008, up from $116 million in 2007. With its scalability and energy storage potential, CSP could be the “next significant winner in the renewable power sector,” the report says.
In addition to utility-scale projects, industrial applications for CSP represent a $50 billion global market, according to the report. One example of such an application, a parabolic trough project developed by Abengoa Solar at the Frito-Lay (NYSE: PEP) plant in Modesto, Calif., produces more than 8 million Btu/h (2.4 MW) of thermal energy under peak conditions.
Of the three basic concentrated solar technologies—parabolic troughs, power towers and dish-engine systems—troughs, in which curved mirrors focus sunlight to heat a tube of liquid, are the most mature. They have the lowest development cost and risk and will likely dominate near-term as other technologies prove their worth, according to analysts.
But power tower developers are vying to push their technologies to the foreground.
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