Solar thermal or Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) is not just one more renewable. Its great asset is that it allows availability and dispatchability (ability to generate electricity depending on the need of the network) thanks to its thermal storage and therefore it is possible that it manages production on demand, even more if it is done under the criteria of decarbonization.
But
it does not finish taking off internationally not only because of its
costs, still very limited in relation to other renewable technologies,
but because it needs a series of very specific geographical, physical
and atmospheric conditions, as discussed at the CSP Madrid 2019
Congress, The international reference meeting of the Concentrating Solar
Power industry.
“Even so, solar thermal is the cheapest when the
sun goes down,” explains Luis Crespo, general secretary of
Protermosolar and president of the European Association of the Solar
Thermal Electricity Industry (ESTELA), “for example, the peak of maximum
demand in the Spanish peninsula usually occurs around 8:00 p.m. on the
cold days of the winter months, when there is hardly any photovoltaic or
wind power contribution, and there is the storage system of the
Concentrated Solar Power could cover that need and even participate in
the arbitration of spot market prices as do the pumping plants”.
The
six-hour reserve of the storage tanks of these Concentrated Solar Power
plants could contribute for two or three consecutive days to respond to
the high demand for those maximum peaks, and the total backup capacity
will be recovered on a sunny day or in the next valley period. “If this
potential is recognized, the storage tanks could be oversized with
little additional investment and the electricity supplier at peak times
for a full week could easily be done.”
Hence, they are new
auctions that may need the update of new solar thermal power in the
market. “We do not expect the Government to have designed specific
auctions for solar thermal power, but rather that other additional price
requirements, such as employment management or job creation for each of
the projects that concur, are specified in renewable energy auctions.”
“It
is true that in Spain the price is expected to remain between 80 and
100 dollars / MWh (72 and 90 euros / MWh at the current exchange rate),
but we are not so far from competing with the cycles, which are
subsidized and their price It is around 60 dollars”, Crespo points out,
“and in some countries with the DNI (Chile) as Chile, it is expected
that by 2020 prices below 50 dollars / MWh (45 euros / MWh) can be
reached”.
It is precisely the Atacama Desert, the geographical
area with the perfect weather conditions, “which will make the price
very competitive,” confirmed Li Wei, president of the China Supcon
Solar, “and I bet it will go down from 50 dollars / MWh ».
In
Europe, solar thermal is only feasible at latitudes below the imaginary
line of Madrid and Spain remains the world leader in installed power
(2.3 GW), followed closely by the US. (1.8 GW) despite the slowdown of
Trump’s policies, and of China.
The Asian country had proposed in
2016 to build 20 Concentrating Solar Power plants that added a total of
1.5 GW, but finally 13 (1 GW) will be built due to financing and
regulation problems in the Asian giant. “The Chinese industry, although
it has hired European specialists, many of them from Abengoa, to carry
out these projects, the truth is that it has yet to prove that they
control a technology that is difficult to export as is the case with
photovoltaic panels, and which Spain is still the leader”.
So
Spain would be a leader not only in knowledge but also in installed
power if the objectives of the National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC)
are carried out with the modification of 5 new GW of Concentrated Solar
Power until 2030.
“It is not only to incorporate more renewable
capacity into the system, it is to offer a strategic energy storage
reserve, that is, it does not work in the same way as the pumping plants
and as it is expected that the batteries worked in the future, charging
during the night and supplying when the price of electricity is high”,
Crespo concludes, “the 20 Concentrated Solar Power plants proposed by
Protermosolar in its report “Transition Report” could provide through
storage a quantity of annual energy similar to approximately 20 pumping
stations such as La Muela”.
“Concentrated Solar Power technology could improve load peaks by combining photovoltaic with wind energy and energy storage, and will improve the new generation so in ten years the cost of this technology could be half of what it is now, it is the projection that we handle”, adds Li Wei.
