United States Concentrated Solar outlook – promise despite the haze

CSP in the United States faces a crucial year, with the Department of Energy adamant that visible benefits from five new plants under construction, plus millions of dollars in research funding, will offset the freezing of its loan guarantee programme.

By Sam Phipps
The arrival of a new energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, has prompted speculation about the outlook for renewables in general and concentrated solar power specifically, amid the backdrop of a boom in natural gas and an expansion of nuclear, both of which he has declared support for.

 

Asked by CSP Today how committed it remained to the sector, the DOE said the industry’s profile had already risen sharply and would continue to do so as the new plants became operational.
However, it declined to comment on whether any additional funding was likely in the coming months.

 

“With the growing R&D and deployment activities related to CSP, both in the United States and abroad, there has been a sharp upswing in general awareness of CSP,” a spokeswoman said. “More people are recognising CSP’s potential to serve as a viable energy resource thanks to industry stewardship in commercial deployments and continuing SunShot successes.”

SunShot, a DOE target for concentrated solar power technologies to achieve cost parity with other forms of energy on the grid by 2020, calls for at least a 75 per cent cut in costs in order to achieve a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) of 6 cents/kWh electric or less without subsidy.
“SunShot’s strategic investments in CSP continue to grow strong,” the spokeswoman said. “Since October 2011, the SunShot CSP program has committed a total of more than $130 million to new funding initiatives for the development and demonstration of CSP technologies.
“In this fiscal year so far, four new funding initiatives have been launched – CSP-HIBRED, SolarMat, PREDICTS, and CSP: ELEMENTS.”
 

Research boosts
* CSP Heat Integration for Baseload Renewable Energy Development (HIBRED) supports the advancement of the hybridisation of CSP technologies with existing fossil fuel plants to catalyse wider CSP hybrid deployment in the power industry.

 

* Solar Manufacturing Technology (SolarMat) funds the development and demonstration of innovative, but commercially and technically viable, manufacturing technologies that can achieve a significant market or manufacturing impact in one to four years.

 

* Physics of Reliability: Evaluating Design Insights for Component Technologies in Solar (PREDICTS) makes funding available to accurately understand and extend system and component lifetimes by increasing reliability, decreasing risk, and reducing the costs of systems and components used in solar field installations.

 

* Concentrating Solar Power: Efficiently Leveraging Equilibrium Mechanisms for Engineering New Thermochemical Storage (CSP: ELEMENTS) supports the development of thermochemical energy storage (TCES) systems that can validate a cost of ≤$15 per kilowatt-hour-thermal (kWht) and operate at temperatures ≥650°C. TCES presents opportunities for storing the sun’s energy at high densities in the form of chemical bonds for use in utility-scale CSP electricity generation.

 

A recent study by the International Energy Agency’s SolarPACES group states that concentrating solar power systemscould provide up to 25 per cent of the world’s electricity needs by 2050, representing enormous potential for this technology.

 

Currently about 500MW of electricity is generated by CSP in the US.

 

Five new plants are under construction for start-up in 2013 or early 2014, which will collectively add another 1.3GW. Some of these plants are among the largest CSP plants in the world.
 

Ivanpah advance
One of them, Ivanpah, is due to produce enough clean power for more than 140,000 Californian homes and avoid the emission of 400,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
Industry executives and government officials are hopeful the increased CSP capacity will give investors and utilities more confidence in the technology, making it easier to finance future projects.

 

In April Ivanpah became the first renewable energy project to participate in California’s Advanced Mitigation Program (AMP) by agreeing to buy 7,000 acres of land at a cost of $6.2m. This will offset the amount required for its own site, which will affect desert tortoise habitat and state waters.

 

The Ivanpah owners, Solar Partners, also paid an extra $5.2m as an endowment for long-term maintenance and management of the lands.

 

The AMP, established by Senate Bill 34, allows solar developers to coordinate directly with state agencies to more efficiently purchase high-value conservation lands as mitigation for large-scale renewable energy projects. The aim is to streamline the permitting process in order to achieve Governor Edmund G Brown’s goal of 33 per cent renewable energy for the state by 2020.

 

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the California Energy Commission (Energy Commission) co-signed the deal with Ivanpah’s owners.

 

“Getting meaningful wildlife conservation on the ground while meeting our state and national renewable energy goals is mission-critical for our department and for the people of California,” said CDFW chief deputy director Kevin Hunting.

 

“The Advanced Mitigation Program is an innovative approach to achieving these vital goals and is a shining example of what can be accomplished when government, industry and conservation partners work together.”

 

In summary, progress is well under way but it will be a while before the long-term health of the sector can be gauged. The CSP Today USA 2013 conference in Las Vegas on 26-27 June is sure to shed more light on prospects for the next few years.  

© CSP Today 

http://social.csptoday.com/markets/united-states-outlook-–-promise-despite-haze