Concentrating solar power - drivers and opportunities for cost-competitive electricity

[摘要] Concentrated solar power (CSP) harnesses the sun’s thermal energy to produce electricity. It has been deployed globally since the 1980’s and is currently undergoing a resurgence, particularly in Spain and California, due to its inherent advantages, which are: •Its potential to become a low cost technology and reduce its levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) from currently 190 to 250 $/MWh to 120 to 150 $/MWh by 2020•Its unique ability to be integrated with low cost thermal storage to provide renewable power well into the evening demand peak. Storage costs are expected to decrease by 70% from around 100 $/MWhth today to 30 $/MWhth by the end of this decade•Its ability to be hybridised with fossil fuels (eg gas or coal), which increases the dispatchability and reduces the cost of its power output•Its more uniform output compared to other intermittent renewable technologies;•Its ability to exploit the advances already achieved with conventional thermodynamic cycles and power generation equipment •Like all solar technologies, its good match between plant output and demand profile (especially with storage) The major drawback of CSP is its minimum efficient scale of 10-100MWe. This creates a significant barrier for research organisations and industry to deploy and improve the technology. The technology has thus progressed less on the technology learning curve than other new energy technologies such as PV or wind. While the vast majority (96%) of CSP plants built to date have been troughs, we show in this analysis that power towers have the potential to achieve the lowest cost because of their lower projected capital cost combined with their ability to reach higher temperatures and utilise more efficient thermodynamic cycles. This report provides a “bottom-up” technical analysis of CSP’s cost potential. This approach is much more suitable for new, early stage technologies with only a limited number of deployments to date because the traditional “top down” learning curve analysis requires many data points to provide reliable results. It is based on a review of the existing literature and our own detailed engineering analysis. It identifies where improvements can be made to the technology to lower its costs and increase its efficiency.

[发布日期] 2011-03-23 [发布机构] CSIRO

[学科分类] 地球科学(综合)