concentrated solar power

This research paper was from the Utrecht University’s Department of Science, Technology and Society in 2006.

The goal of this paper is to go over how a solar thermal electricity plant can be competitive to fossil fuel based on cost. This can be accomplished when you look at the construction criteria of the solar thermal plants.

Clean Energy for Eternity, Inc. provides this thirty-seven page document to promote and stimulate relevant bodies to take appropriate action to reduce energy use and develop local clean energy generation projects. The use of solar energy is a large portion of what the Clean Energy working group suggests as these “appropriate actions”.

This fact sheet was written by the Environmental and Energy Study Institute in 2009. The document starts with a brief background on solar thermal energy and then describes the different types of solar thermal systems (parabolic trough, linear fresnal reflectors, dish/engine, power tower).

This presentation, prepared by Leonardo Energy, describes and discusses ways to improve solar thermal storage technologies, notably melted salt and concrete storage. The improvement of these technologies would allow a better profit of the energy produced by power plants.

This is the report of a CSP workshop, which took place in South Africa on 22 May 2009. The workshop results from the necessity to gather project developers, the government, NGOs and research centers to start a discussion on scaling up CSP.

In South Africa, the development of CSP infrastructure has been boosted by the government which policy is to encourage renewable energy projects via financial measures and incentives such as the Renewable Energy Feed-In Tariff (REFIT) or the Clean Development Mechanism.

The TREE Project (Transfer Renewable Energy & Efficiency), run by the Renewables Academy (RENAC) in Berlin aims to promote capacity building and know-how transfer in renewable energies (RE), energy efficiency (EE) and climate protection for both decision makers from politics and business, as well as technicians and engineers in emerging countries.

This 2009 study from the Wuppertal Institute looks into the economical opportunities of CSP development from a German perspective. The study analyses the role German companies can play in the development of CSP technologies and how the export of these technologies to the “sunbelt” regions can benefit the different levels in the value-added chain.

This document explains how the use of Feed-In Tariffs has been beneficial for the development of concentrating solar power (CSP) in Spain. A Feed-In Tariff ensures that the entrepreneurs’ electricity will be bought at a guaranteed rate for a fixed period of time.

This 2009 report looks into the global outlook of concentrating solar power (CSP). The report first looks into the different CSP technologies and makes a comparison based on the advantages and disadvantages. The report also provides an overview of the CSP development by region. For certain countries per region a more detailed assessment is provided. In particular, the potential of the Mediterranean and the MENA region is being assessed.

The authors of this 2008 paper aim to demonstrate the importance concentrating solar power has for desalination of freshwater. Due to the projected growth in economy and population and the anticipated increase in future water consumption in the MENA region, the paper shows that the CSP technology has the potential to provide a solution for the growing water deficits.