The cost of renewable energy is dropping every year, and this year we saw record low cost Photovoltaic (PV) projects such as the 800 MW project in Dubai offered at 2.99 US$ cents/kWh. So how is it that concentrating solar power (CSP) is still an attractive technology compared to PV? [...]
The CSIRO Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap identifies Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) as the lowest cost technology for long-duration renewable energy storage, among the storage technologies required to reach net zero in Australia. The CSIRO Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap outlines the significant role that concentrating solar thermal power (often referred to as [...]
Cumulative CSP installed capacity grew just over five-fold, globally, between 2010 and 2020, reaching around 6.5 gigawatts (GW) by the end of that period. Breaking the last five years of this down, after modest activity in 2016 and 2017 – with annual additions hovering around 100 megawatts (MW) per year [...]
Between 2010 and 2021, the global weighted average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants fell by 68%, from USD 0.358/kilowatt hour (kWh) to USD 0.114/kWh. Between 2010 and 2020, the global weighted average LCOE had declined by 70%, to USD 0.107/kWh. This was primarily driven [...]
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) projects would add additional value of 5 or 6 cents per kilowatt hour to utility-scale solar energy in California where 33 percent renewables will be mandated in six years, a new report by the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory has found. The report, "Estimating the [...]
The U.S. Department of Energy is funding research to get the cost of Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) down to $0.05 per kWh. One key element of that research is the materials used to absorb and store the heat energy. Three categories of materials are being looked at: liquid (i.e. molten [...]
Concentrated solar power (CPS) has the potential to lower the cost of renewable energy and provide highly available dispatchable energy at any time of the day. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Department of Energy (DoE) are both working on the next generation of CPS facilities as part of [...]
At the annual SolarPACES Conference (held virtually for the second year) Cerro Dominador’s CEO Fernando Gonzalez answered questions from the international network of concentrated solar power (CSP) researchers and developers attending about exactly what happened in the recent Chilean energy auctions with the record-low bid for CSP at under $34/MWh. [...]
Bruce Anderson, CEO of 247Solar Inc., will speak at the International CSP Focus 2021 Conference in Beijing, China on Friday, October 29, 2021. There he will present new modular, ultra-high temperature CSP technology that makes the unique round-the-clock benefits of Concentrated Solar Power available at costs that rival daytime-only PV. [...]
Cerro Dominador, a subsidiary of EIG Partners, has just bid the 450 MW Likana tower CSP plant it procured from SolarReserve several years ago at under 4 cents/kWh. Was the record low bid enabled by cost reduction in tower CSP heliostat solar fields? To learn the current status of heliostat [...]
The cost of renewables, meanwhile, continued to fall even in 2020, despite Covid-linked disruption. The cost of electricity from utility-scale solar PV declined by 7% year-on-year, while offshore wind fell by 9%, onshore wind 13% and concentrating solar power by 16%. Between 2000 and 2020, renewables capacity grew more [...]
The goal of the Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) is to accelerate the development and deployment of solar technology to support an equitable transition to a decarbonized electricity system by 2035 and decarbonized energy sector by 2050. Achieving this goal will support the nationwide effort to meet the [...]
A hybrid Concentrated Solar Power-PV plant with 13 hours of storage is the lowest cost power generation option for low-carbon baseload power in Chile, researchers at the Fraunhofer Chile Research Foundation said in a new report. The researchers studied four hybrid plant concepts and found that a combined CSP solar [...]
