Concentrated solar power
Over the following years, invеntors such as John Ericsson and Frank Shuman developed concentrating solar-powered dеvices for irrigation, refrigеration, and locomоtion.
In 1913 Shuman finished a 55 horsepower (41 kW) parabolic solar thermal energy station in Maadi, Egypt for irrigation.
[25][26][27][28] The first solar-power system using a mirror dish was built by Dr. R.H. Goddard, who was already well known for his research on liquid-fueled rockets and wrote an article in 1929 in which he asserted that all the previous obstacles had been addressed.
No commercial concentrated solar was constructed from 1990, when SEGS was completed, until 2006, when the Compact linear Fresnel reflector system at Liddell Power Station in Australia was built.
Ivanpah Solar Power Facility was constructed at the same time but without thermal storage, using natural gas to preheat water each morning.
[40][41] In 2023, Australia’s national science agency CSIRO tested a CSP arrangement in which tiny ceramic particles fall through the beam of concentrated solar energy, the ceramic particles capable of storing a greater amount of heat than molten salt, while not requiring a container that would diminish heat transfer.
The glasshouse creates a protected environment to withstand the elements that can negatively impact reliability and efficiency of the solar thermal system.
Fresnel reflectors are made of many thin, flat mirror strips to concentrate sunlight onto tubes through which working fluid is pumped.
Some new models of Fresnel reflectors with Ray Tracing capabilities have begun to be tested and have initially proved to yield higher output than the standard version.
[61] According to its developer, Ripasso Energy, a Swedish firm, in 2015 its dish Stirling system tested in the Kalahari Desert in South Africa showed 34% efficiency.
[69] Unlike solar PV plants, CSP with thermal energy storage can also be used economically around the clock to produce process steam, replacing polluting fossil fuels.
The record for capacity installed was reached in 2014, corresponding to 925 MW; however, it was followed by a decline caused by policy changes, the global financial crisis, and the rapid decrease in price of the photovoltaic cells.
[85] Since about 2010, central power tower CSP has been favored in new plants due to its higher temperature operation – up to 565 °C (1,049 °F) vs. trough's maximum of 400 °C (752 °F) – which promises greater efficiency.
Tipping point lies at 2–10 hours depending on cost of the composing blocks: CSP, PV, TES and BESS.
[87] As early as 2011, the rapid decline of the price of photovoltaic systems led to projections that CSP (without TES) would no longer be economically viable.
[92] Even though overall deployment of CSP remains limited in the early 2020s, the levelized cost of power from commercial scale plants has decreased significantly since the 2010s.
With a learning rate estimated at around 20% cost reduction of every doubling in capacity,[93] the costs were approaching the upper end of the fossil fuel cost range at the beginning of the 2020s, driven by support schemes in several countries, including Spain, the US, Morocco, South Africa, China, and the UAE: CSP deployment has slowed down considerably in OECD countries, as most of the above-mentioned markets have cancelled their support, but CSP is one of the few renewable electricity technologies that can generate fully dispatchable or even fully baseload power at very large scale.
On the contrary, the receiver's efficiency is decreasing, as the amount of energy it cannot absorb (Qlost) grows by the fourth power as a function of temperature.
Theoretical efficiencies aside, real-world experience of CSP reveals a 25%–60% shortfall in projected production, a good part of which is due to the practical Carnot cycle losses not included in the above analysis.
2 RD 661/2007) – leading to the creation of the largest CSP fleet in the world which at 2.3 GW of installed capacity contributes about 5TWh of power to the Spanish grid every year.
[102] The initial requirements for plants in the FiT were: The capacity limits for the different system types were re-defined during the review of the application conditions every quarter (art.
Prior to the end of an application period, the market caps specified for each system type are published on the website of the Ministry of Industry, Tourism and Trade (art.
In 2017, now-bankrupt American CSP developer SolarReserve was awarded a PPA to realize the 150 MW Aurora Solar Thermal Power Project in South Australia at a record low rate of just AUD$ 0.08/kWh, or close to USD$ 0.06/kWh.
Solar power towers and parabolic troughs can be used to provide the steam, which is used directly, so no generators are required and no electricity is produced.
[1] Carbon neutral synthetic fuel production using concentrated solar thermal energy at nearly 1500 °C temperature is technically feasible and will be commercially viable in the future if the costs of CSP plants decline.
In 2012, the BLM made available 97,921,069 acres (39,627,251 hectares) of land in the southwestern United States for solar projects, enough for between 10,000 and 20,000 GW.
The subsequent report noted that dry cooling technology was available that, although more expensive to build and operate, could reduce water consumption by CSP by 91 to 95 percent.
[149] According to rigorous reporting, in over six months of its first year of operation, 321 bird fatalities were counted at Ivanpah, of which 133 were related to sunlight being reflected onto the boilers.
[151] Mitigations actions can be taken to reduce these numbers, such as focusing no more than four mirrors on any one place in the air during standby, as was done at Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project.
[152] Over the 2020-2021 period, 288 bird fatalities were directly accounted for at Ivanpah, a figure consistent with the ranges found in previous annual assessments.
