Might Solar Thermal Energy Succeed After All?
When we kicked off 2GreenEnergy in the summer of 2009, I (wrongly) predicted that solar thermal, aka concentrated solar power (CSP) would soon come to dominate the field of renewable energy, largely because of the way it lends itself to low-cost energy storage. There are significant economic advantages of storing energy as heat, vs. electricity; in particular, large vats of molten salt that are heated and cooled over a range of many hundreds of degrees C can be installed at a fraction of the cost of the equivalent capacity of large banks of batteries.
At the time I made that ill-fated prediction, few people foresaw the dramatic cost reductions that were just about to happen to silicon-based solar PV, which hit all competitive solar technologies very hard, most famously Solyndra, the government backed company based on CIGS (copper indium gallium selenide).
Here’s an article that suggests that the final chapter may not have yet been written. I’m unconvinced, FWIW.
That’s an interesting article, Craig. Here’s another related article from a few months ago that was linked, discussing an application in South Australia:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/solarreserve-inks-deal-with-south-australia-to-supply-solar-thermal-power-w#gs.lax.DQF92vw
Cameron,
Don’t get me wrong, I’m genuinely interested to see how effective Solar Reserves project turns out. Unlike many conservative critics of the project I don’t condemn the South Australian government for investing in this technology.
” government paying no more than $78/MWh,”
That’s a problem for industry. SA can buy power from Victoria for under $30/MWh. For mining, it doesn’t matter since mines can’t be relocated but for manufacture etc, energy is a big part of doing business.
South Australia is one of Australia’s largest and most environmentally advanced Cement producers. The industry is heavily reliant on natural gas. With each rise in the price of natural gas the SA government must either increase energy subsidies or lose the industry to states with cheaper energy.
I wish Solar Reserves well with the Aurora project. CSP technology has far less environmental problems than other solar technologies.
Thank you for posting the link.