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Intelligent solutions for the production of environmentally-friendly power and water |
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TECHNOLOGY
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Solar Parabolic Trough HistoryA Short History of Solar Thermal EnergyIn the 212 BC siege of Syracuse, Archimedes used the shields of Greek soldiers to reflect sunlight onto the advancing Roman fleet, setting it afire. In the early 1900s, parabolic mirrors in Egypt powered steam engines that in turn drove irrigation pumps. After World War II, futurist Arthur C. Clarke’s revolutionary idea for geostationary Earth orbiting communications satellites included the suggestion they get their energy from concentrating solar power (CSP). Australia, California, North Africa -- The World's Three Best Locations for Concentrating Solar Power Unlike solar photovoltaics, which can generate
electricity from often scattered, diffuse sunlight, concentrating
solar power needs desert-like conditions with bright, unimpeded
sunlight. Inland Australia along with the southwestern deserts
of the United States and the Sahara desert of North Africa are
considered the world's best locations for generating concentrating
solar power.
The 1980s California HeydayIn response to the two 1970s oil crises, US President Jimmy Carter encouraged investment in alternative and renewable energy production through investment and production tax credits. In response, Luz Solar Partners Ltd. built nine parabolic trough power plants in the California desert between 1983 and 1989. The plants ranged in size from 13.8 MW to 80 MW. Together, they totaled 354MW of capacity. All still operate today. They remain the largest collection of concentrating solar power plants in the world.
The effect of government support is impossible to overestimate in getting the concentrating solar power industry started. Spurred by incentives, a rapid cycle of innovation, learning-by-doing and economies of scale caused solar parabolic trough concentrating solar power prices to fall by 50% in six years (from US 30c to 14c per kwh). In Australia, pilot concentrating solar power plants were built in White Cliffs, NSW and Meekatharra, Western Australia. But as the 1980s wore on and energy prices fell, the political urgency for renewable energy waned. Government support for renewable and alternative energy in both the US and Australia became increasingly short-term and uncertain. The White Cliffs and Meekatharra research experiments were quietly shut down. Few records now still remain about them. In the US, meanwhile, Luz went broke. In 1990, it sold its power stations to Florida-based utility FPL which still operates them today. Built for US $1.3 billion, the 354 MW of capacity now generates 2,325 Mwhs of reliable electricity each year for the hungry Southern California electricity market. That’s the equivalent of a 200MW coal-fired power plant, but without the greenhouse gases. Each year, California's concentrating solar power plant generates 99% of America’s commercial solar electricity and has singlehandedly accounted for more than half of all solar electricity ever generated. Today, the plant has been operating for more than two decades -- longer than many of Australia's coal-fired power plants. The Renaissance Today in Europe and the United StatesWith energy prices high and climate change now
threatening humanity's quality of life, concentrating solar power
is back. It's being led by supportive government policies and risk-tolerant
capital in both Europe and the United States. The focus of activity
is Spain and California where large commercial projects are now
under construction. In southern Spain, Acquasol strategic partner
Solar Millennium is building a 50 MW parabolic trough concentrating
solar power plant near Almeria, while the European Union has a
large concentrating solar power research center in the country.
In California, companies like Sterling Solar, Solargenix and Solel
are building concentrating solar power plants east of Los Angeles
and around Las Vegas, Nevada. Researchers agree that this new generation
of investment - with its research and development breakthroughs,
increased manufacturing efficiencies and lower costs from larger
plants -- will combine over the next 10-15 years to bring down
the costs of concentrating solar power to around 5-6 Australian
cents per kilowatthour. That's less than nuclear or carbon capture
and storage when coal and nuclear are properly costed.
The Importance of Stable, Long-Lived Government Policy for New Industries Like RenewablesGovernment policies make or break new industries. Renewable energy is no exception. To see how powerful government's influence is, it's instructive to have a look at what US, Australian and European renewable energy policies have accomplished.The USWhen Jimmy Carter enacted alternative energy incentives, Luz Partners enjoyed a US federal investment tax credit equivalent to 10%. Luz also received a federal energy production tax credit of 15%, and a California Solar Energy Tax Credit of 13.5%. But as energy prices fell, US government renewable energy incentives were cut by half with remaining incentives subject to short sunset periods. This increased business uncertainty for Luz, making it hard for the company to get bank financing for the later buildout phases of its Mojave desert plant. The first four MWs of capacity Luz installed enjoyed tax benefits of nearly 44 US cents per kwh with prices fixed for 15 years. Later additions received 10-years of fixed prices followed by 20 years of fluctuating prices. The final plants Luz built had no price certainty at all. This scared off the bankers. As a result, Luz went under. AustraliaAustralia is focusing on low emission technologies. In practice, this has meant giving grants to favored companies and industries to give them a leg up on potential competitors and a lower their cost of capital. The problem with this kind of policy is that companies that don't benefit from such government largesse are effectively punished in the marketplace. While in power, the Howard government distributed $425 million in grants under its Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fund. Eighty percent of the money went to non-renewable energy sources such as coal-seam methane, carbon capture and storage, brown coal drying and oxyfuel coal burning. While such grants are no doubt beneficial to the recipients, they do little to create a "level playing field" everyone agrees is needed to ensure Australia ends up with the best low emission future energy mix. Such grants do, however, ensure survival of the chosen companies in a market-distorting practice economists call picking winners.
European Union/SpainInstead of America's system of fickle tax credits or Australia's system of big federal grants to favored companies, the European Union has opted for a more powerful and effective approach which has yielded impressive results to date: feed-in tariffs for renewables. This is a system of long-lived, bankable guaranteed premium wholesale prices for renewable energy producers. It vastly increases market transparency and business certainty and enables renewable energy generators to support bank funding with long and visible offtake terms. Since the 1980s, European policies have created an explosion in investment in wind power, leading to the creation of globally world-beating wind energy companies such as Denmark's Vestas. The continent's energy policies also have led to plans for concentrating solar power plants to be built in North Africa to bring solar power to Europe's electricity markets via high capacity direct current power lines. This idea could be easily replicated in Australia. But instead of transporting African solar energy north to Europe, Australia could bring Outback-generated solar power eastward and southward to her major population areas.
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