A review of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants operating in the US reveals that they are costly, heavily-subsidized, generally performing below expectations and no more efficient than utility-scale PV plants. The need to jump-start them in the morning can also require the burning of substantial quantities of natural gas. And although CSP’s sole advantage over PV is that it can store energy for re-use only one of the plants considered has built-in storage capacity. As discussed in the earlier concentrated solar power in Spain post , however, it is unlikely that enough storage could be installed at a CSP plant to provide more than short-term load-following capability when the sun is not shining. (Inset: Ivanpah Unit 2 tower catches fire, May 2016).
This review originated from a comment posted by correspondent “Thinks Too Much” (T2M) on the Blowout Week 172 thread which bewailed the lack of publicity being given to the poor performance of the Crescent Dunes CSP plant. After further exchanges T2M sent me a copy of a spreadsheet he had painstakingly constructed from the EIA’s Electricity Browser monthly data, which, supplemented by Wikipedia data on the Genesis plant I have used to develop the data presented here. So a thank you and a hat tip to T2M.
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