Economics

This flyer was created by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Assocation (NESEA). It provides information on the basics of solar thermal water heating and provides resources with information on how to best select a system.

This factsheet was created by Tracy Jennings and Laura Parsons of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute based in Washington D.C. It focuses on the various system types of concentrating solar power and its key features.

This presentation is from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) OpenCourseWare program on Sustainable Energy. It provides an overview of solar thermal technology including power towers, solar thermal cooling and storage technologies.

This fact sheet was created by NRG Energy, a New Jersey based electric generator company, and eSolar, a California based solar thermal power technology company. It provides information on a joint venture by the companies in New Mexico.

This presentation was created by National Grid, an energy service company in the northeastern United States. It was used to present at Solar Boston, a conference on solar energy in Boston, in a workshop on how to use RETScreen energy analysis software.

The presentation examines why solar thermal water heating makes sense based off the findings of a RETScreen analysis.

This presentation was created by Roger Taylor of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It was used at the NAEMI Solar Electric & Thermal Training Workshop in 2006. Solar thermal water and air heating are the main topics of the presentation.

This study from 2007 explores the potential for setting up in Australia large centralized solar heating plants with seasonal storage. These are long-term storage systems, which allow energy being collected in summer, and delivered in winter. The study aims to evaluate these systems - which already exist in Europe - in an Australian context.

Given a "favourable regulatory framework" for the deployment of solar thermal power plants currently exists in Spain, this study from 2006 estimates the economic impacts of solar thermal power plants and the impact derived from the compliance of the solarthermal power objectives stated by the Spanish Renewable Energies Plan 2005-10.

Using a socio-economic analysis (using gross added value, and employment generation) the study finds that:

This report from 2006 analyses how by combining the principle of humidification-dehumidification with solar desalination results in an increase in the overall efficiency of the desalination plant, and therefore appears to be the best method of water desalination with solar energy.

A detailed study of the mechanism of this process is presented in this report, along with an economical evaluation of the process.

This paper from 2007 looks into the energy needs of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) which is a consortium of countries in Southern Africa represented by their national power utility companies. The paper indicates that the critical concern for this region is that the electricity demand cannot be met beyond 2010.