Concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors or lenses to concentrate large areas of sunlight on to a small area and is being widely commercialized. It’s forecast to supply nearly 1.2 GW of power worldwide by 2016, according to IMS Research.
But despite this projected rapid expansion, CSP faces adoption difficulties in the United States, despite its proven success in places like the Middle East, Spain and North Africa.
“It’s a little bit like politics in that it’s all local,” says John Van Scoter, president and CEO of concentrated solar-power-tower company eSolar. “When you talk solar in the United States, everyone is talking silicon (Si) PV. When you step off the plane in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), everyone is talking solar thermal, power towers in particular. It truly depends on where you are in the world.”
The IMS report identified four areas of the world where CSP is expected to grow in the next three years because favorable conditions exist:
• Southwest United States
• Chile
• Morroco
• Saudi Arabia
“We see the greatest areas of growth overseas for the short- and medium-term,” Van Scoter says. “We don’t believe the U.S. market will grow significantly until the back half of this decade [after 2015].”
Van Scoter says electrical consumption in North America has been declining over the past five years, but by 2016, he believes those needs will start growing again — and CSP will be perfectly positioned to fill that need, especially as molten-salt storage technology evolves.
“Today, we’re using molten salt as a primary heating fluid, which allows for storage,” Van Scoter says. “CSP provides the ability to keep the power on when the sun goes down. Traditional Si is still trying to find adequate storage sources. There’s lots of research money going into that area of the market — but they’re not there yet.”
Van Scoter says the company pushes projects overseas to keep the company solvent until the United States comes around to the technology.
Power towers, however, are not the only CSP technology making its way into the U.S. consciousness. Parabolic trough technology is currently being installed in utility-scale solar farms.
According to Solar Power World Senior Editor Larry Boulden, parabolic trough CSP uses a linear parabolic reflector to concentrate light on to a receiver (typically a tube filled with a working fluid like molten salt) positioned along the reflector’s focal line. Boulden adds that trough systems are the most developed CSP technology.
In fact, the largest parabolic-trough facility in the world is located in Daggett, Calif., a collaboration between 3M, Gossamer Space Frames and Cogentrix energy.
“Parabolic trough installations dominate the CSP market right now because of their long track record of success,” says Dan Chen, 3M’s manager for the Solar Light Management Business Unit. “We had wanted to enter the CSP market for a long time. We just had to find the right partners and produce the right technologies to make it happen.”
So the path for CSP in the United States appears to be this: slow, steady development overseas to perfect the technology, with the expectation that it will take off in the United States later this decade. If companies can survive until then, they may be looking at a boom in future years. SPW
To read our introduction to the 2013 trends, click here.
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