Renz Paolo T.

Ogena Eng 13 WFY1 / Final Research Paper Draft

BS Mechanical Engineering / 2018-04890 Dec. 7, 2018

Concentrated Solar Power

When we speak of solar power, we automatically think of lines of solar panels aimed up
towards sunlight, but little do we know that there exists another method of capturing and
harnessing solar energy that is even more efficient and more environment-friendly than the
photovoltaic cells we are used to. Concentrated solar power uses mirrors or lenses to reflect or
concentrate sunlight to a smaller area, typically a tube or container with a working fluid, which,
when heated to high temperatures, converts into steam which then drives a turbine to generate
electricity (Zhang & Cacères, 2013). This paper, after a short introduction on the history and
current state of concentrated solar power, presents three points on key characteristics of this
technology: its ability to generate baseload, or round-the-clock, electricity, which traditional
photovoltaic systems are not capable of; its progressively declining costs; and its applicability in
purposes other than electricity generation.

History

Perhaps the earliest account of using mirrors to concentrate sunlight is the apocryphal story
where Archimedes directed mirrors to concentrate sunlight to and burn ships of an invading
Roman army in Syracuse. This story had been in wide circulation in classical times, but modern
knowledge can easily dispel this myth. Mills & Clift (1992) calculated that 440 flat square meter
mirrors are necessary to light wood from a distance of 50 meters.

In 1866, French inventor Auguste Mouchout used a parabolic trough to create the
world’s first engine run by solar steam, marking the birth of concentrated solar thermal
technology (Butti & Perlin, 1980). Mouchout’s set-up utilized an important property of a curve
called the parabola: When a wave, such as sunlight, strikes the concave side of a reflective
surface with a parabolic section at a direction parallel to the parabola’s axis, the wave will
reflect to a specific point called the focus. Conversely, a wave source located at the focus of a
parabola will emit waves parallel to the axis upon reflection from the parabola. In 1861,
Mouchout received patent for his invention, which he coupled with a heat-trapping glass jar,
which accounts report can melt tin, lead and zinc in minutes (Collins, 2002).
 Following Mouchout’s lead were subsequent inventions on solar collectors. In 1912,
American inventor Frank Schuman designed a parabolic solar collector farm in Medea, Egypt,
used for irrigation purposes while American engineer Robert Hutchings Goddard (1929)
designed the first solar collector which used a mirror dish instead of a parabolic trough. And in
1968, Giovanni Francia built the world’s first solar steam plant in Sant’llario, near Genoa, Italy.
This plant was designed with a large central tower which received concentrated sunlight from a
field of solar reflectors, a design commonly used today; the plant was able to produce steam at
100 bar and 500 degrees Celsius and generate 5 megawatts of electricity (Butti & Perlin, 1980).

In 1981, a 10-megawatt solar tower facility, called Solar One, was built in California. It
was converted into Solar Two in 1995 and used molten salt as thermal receiver. In 2006, a solar
farm in Liddell Power Station in Australia was built. This solar farm operates on yet another
sunlight-harnessing design. Called compact linear Fresnel reflector system, this plant used long,
narrow segments of mirrors to focus sunlight on one or two raised absorbers, which contain the
heat-conducting liquid, located at the reflectors’ common focal point. In 2013, Spanish company
Abengoa Solar commissioned Solana Generating Station in Arizona as the world’s largest
parabolic trough system and the first solar energy facility with molten salt thermal storage in
the US (Overton, 2013; Mearian, 2013).

The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility at the Mojave Desert in California, commissioned in
2014, is currently the world’s largest concentrated solar power facility. This facility uses
173,500 heliostats, or mirrors which rotate to track the motion of the sun in the sky, focusing
sunlight on three central solar power towers with a gross energy output of 377 megawatts
(Tweed, 2013).

Current State

Concentrated solar power technology currently exists in four forms: parabolic troughs, mirror
disks, compact linear Fresnel reflectors and solar towers (Grenon, 1981). Parabolic trough
plants account for 90 percent of all concentrated solar facilities (Sawin & Martinot, 2011) while
solar towers account for majority of the remaining. As of 2016, concentrated solar power had a
world total installed capacity of 4,815 megawatts, which grew at around 50 percent per year
from 2005 and 2013 (REN21, 2014), from 2005’s 354 megawatts, before which no concentrated
solar power plants were constructed since the Solar Energy Generating Systems was built in
California in 1983. As of 2017, Spain was the world’s leader in concentrated solar technology,
accounting for almost half of the world capacity, at a total of 2,300 megawatts, followed by US at
1,738 megawatts. However, concentrated solar power’s cumulative output only accounts for 2
percent of the world’s solar energy, which is broadly dominated by photovoltaic cell plants
(Lilliestam, 2017).

Baseload Capacity

Most renewable energy sources, including wind and solar energy and the fairly recent
technology on tidal power, however green and safe, are intermittent, which means they are not
continuously available for electricity production because the electric output directly depends on
outside factors (Hanania, Stenhouse & Donev, 2017). As solar energy production depends on the
amount of sunlight received in a given time and place, electric output stops at night and
fluctuates at day, as solar intensity varies throughout the day and through the seasons; power
output is also hampered by cloud, dust, fog, frost or snow. Researchers agree that this
intermittency is the one of the greatest drawbacks of solar energy (Tan, 2011). Wind energy
output, meanwhile, relies directly on wind speed, which is a highly continuous variable
(Hanania, Stenhouse & Donev, 2017), along with wind density and turbine characteristics. This
intermittency of energy output makes these energy sources unable to provide baseload, or
round-the-clock electricity, as strongly compared with fossil fuel, nuclear and hydroelectric
power, which all provide continuous power. Also, these renewable energy sources are not
dispatchable, which means they cannot increase or decrease their electric output quickly on
demand.

This intermittency and non-dispatchability can only be solved by means of an energy

storage coupled to the system, and concentrated solar power marks its important distinction
with photovoltaic solar power in that it can store thermal energy to be able to produce baseload,
dispatchable electricity. Solar towers, for example, can store solar thermal energy in the central
boilers in the day, which can then be used to generate electricity when the sun sets down.
Photovoltaic power plants without energy storage cannot do this because photovoltaic cells
directly generate electricity upon exposure to sunlight.

There are currently some operating concentrated solar power plants which produce
baseload electricity, along with future projects. Even before Pfenninger et al. (2014) published
their study on the potential of concentrated solar power to provide baseload, dispatchable
power, Torresol Energy launched the Gemasolar Power plant in May 2011 in Andalucia, Spain.
One of the world's first utility-scale commercial baseload solar power plant, Gemasolar is a
19.9-megawatt facility which can store thermal energy up to 15 hours (Seba, 2011). Two central
tower receivers, which contain molten salt to store energy for electricity production in the
night, receive concentrated sunlight from 2,650 heliostats, each with a reflective surface of 110
square meters. The molten salt is composed of 60 percent potassium nitrate and 40 percent
sodium nitrate, which together retain 99 percent of their thermal energy for 24 hours (Seba,
2011). Gemasolar's annual energy output is at 110,000 megawatthours, enough to power
25,000 households, and Santiago Arias, Torresol Energy's Chief Infrastracture Officer, said the
19.9-megawatt energy output is equivalent to that of a 50-megawatt solar power plant without
energy storage. Another solar tower facility in Andalucia, Andasol-1, was launched in July 2009
and is currently producing 50 megawatts of electricity with 7.5-hour thermal energy storage
(Lo, 2014). In Morocco, the three-phase Ouaarzazate Power Station currently houses Phases I
and Phases II, which run with three and seven hours of heat storage, respectively. A third phase,
due to open next year, will have eight hours of energy storage, and, altogether, the solar power
complex is set to comprise a third of Morocco's renewable energy supply by 2020 (Neslen,
2015).

Although concentrated solar power lies superior over photovoltaic system in providing
baseload electricity, many leading figures in the concentrated solar industry do not feel the need
to compare the two technologies and view them not as combative but complementary systems
(Shemer, 2018). Jonathan Walters, leader of the Middle East and North Africa CSP Knowledge
and Innovation Program, noted in CSP Today that a solar power facility can generate cheap
baseload electricity by integrating photovoltaic and concentrated solar systems, with the former
providing the electricity at day and the latter generating the power at night. SolarReserve, a US-
based developer of solar power projects, in fact has already planned to construct a solar power
plant in Chile which will integrate concentrated and photovoltaic systems to generate round-
the-clock electricity with 13 hours of storage (Shemer, 2018; Kraemer, 2017a). Kevin Smith,
chief executive officer, said the integrated solar facility will produce 260 megawatts of
electricity from a 150-megawatt photovoltaic farm and two 130-megawatt molten salt towers.
Smith added that this bipartite facility can deliver energy at a record 90 percent capacity factor
(Deign, 2015).

Energy Prices

Various data sources show progressively competitive energy prices by concentrated solar
power. Estimates from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) (2012) projected
the levelized cost of electricity from concentrated solar power at $60 to $100 per megawatthour
by 2020, and this price is expected to fall by 30 percent for every doubling of the total installed
capacity from 2010 to 2020. Compare this percentage with that of solar photovoltaic power at
35 percent, of onshore wind power at 21 percent and of offshore wind power at 14 percent
(IRENA, 2012). Bloomberg New Energy Finance (Glennon & Reeves, 2010) calculated the cost of
electricity produced by the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility to be even lower than that of
photovoltaic power and about the same as that of natural gas.

In 2017, various concentrated solar energy projects bid record-low levels of electricity
cost. Saudi Arabia's Acwa Power and China's Shanghai Electric has planned to build the fourth
phase of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park in Dubai, which once housed then
world's largest concentrated solar plant prior to Ivanpah. This proposed project will generate
electricity at 7.3 US cents per kilowatthour (Parnell, 2017). Once constructed, this 700-
megawatt facility, which can store thermal energy for up to 15 hours (Kraemer, 2017c), will
supersede the United States' Ivanpah Solar Power Facility as the world's largest concentrated
solar power plant. Mills (2017) showed that electricity at this price is equivalent to a gas-
powered power station buying fuel at US$5 to 6 per million British thermal units, and gas prices,
he noted, as expected to increase in the next years. Kraemer (2017b) noted that this 7.3-US cent
power cost is significantly lower than the earliest cost bid for concentrated solar power with
storage, Spain's 31 US cents per kilowatthour in 2006.

But the lowest bid for electricity cost came from the previously mentioned SolarReserve
integrated solar power project in Chile, which proposed a world record-low of 6.3 US cents per
kilowatthour (Lilliestam & Pitz-Paal, 2018). Kevin Smith, SolarReserve CEO, said this low cost is
due to "substantial advances that has increased efficiencies and brought down capital costs"
(Kraemer, 2017a). The enhanced efficiency, which is geared towards 24/7 baseload electric
output, is mainly due to the integrated nature of the facility, which will couple photovoltaic and
concentrated solar systems to produce dispatchable energy. Smith pointed out that the excellent
solar irradiance and the stable market in Chile also helped shape the power price.

Meanwhile, Walters predicted that US$5 per kilowatthour can be "easily achieved" in
Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia or Morocco, where the direct normal irradiance of 2,500 to 2,800
kilowatthours per square meter is greater than that of Dubai's 2050 kilowatthours (SolarPACES,
2017). This is supported by the prediction of Frank Wouter of the EU GCC Clean Energy
Network that this levelized cost could be achieved next year if Chinese investors continue
involvement in projects in the Middle East and North Africa.
Other Applications

Lastly, concentrated solar power is also used in a host of technologies other than electricity
generation. One of the most promising applications of concentrated solar power is in the
electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen (Kraemer, 2017d; SolarPACES, 2017). The current
practice today is to produce hydrogen by combustion of natural gas, but Christian Sattler, solar
chemical engineering department head at the Institute of Solar Research in Germany, said that
the most efficient way to produce hydrogen is through solar energy (Kraemer, 2017d) because
it is entirely carbon emissions-free. Even the use of photovoltaic systems proved to be less
efficient: Sattler said electrolysis of water through photovoltaic solar energy worked at 12 to 14
percent efficiency while solar thermal-powered electrolysis peaked at over 60 percent.

Other researchers focused this solar thermal electrolysis technology to more specific
applications. In 2012, researchers at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at
ETH Zurich, Switzerland, concentrated over 3,000 units of solar thermal energy to heat water
and carbon dioxide at 1,500 degrees Celsius to produce 700 standard liters of hydrogen and
carbon monoxide, which they sent to Shell Global Solutions in Amsterdam, where it was refined
to produce kerosene through a process called the Fischer-Tropsch process (SolarPACES, 2017).
Lead researcher Philippe Furler said their electrolytic process utilized reticulated porous
ceramic made of ceria (CeO2). In the two-step process, he said, ceria initially released its oxygen
component, which it would regain when water and carbon dioxide is fed into the ceria reactor in
the second phase, splitting the gas molecules into hydrogen and carbon monoxide (Furler et al.,
2012).

Furler noted that this electrolysis technology could lessen the dependence on fossil fuels
in the production of kerosene, which is the fuel used by airplanes. He said the fossil fuel industry
should pursue substituting a solar thermal process for airliner fuel, citing the carbon taxes on
the conventional energy industry (SolarPACES, 2017). Also, Furler added that they are currently
developing this technology for carbon dioxide extraction from the atmosphere, describing the
technology as currently expensive but commercially available, pointing to the ETH spin-off
startup company Climeworks.

Sattler, on the other hand, cited current research developments which will use hydrogen
as fuel for ships and airplanes (Kraemer, 2017d). On June, the California Air Resources Board
provided a $3 million grant to Golden Gate Zero Emission Marine to construct a commercial
ferry that will run on hydrogen. Slated to be built next year, this project entered the worldwide
bid to build the first commercial-use, hydrogen-powered ferryboat (Moore, 2018; Galluci,
2018). European projects include Ferguson Marine's European Union-funded hydrogen ferry
project in Scotland and Viking Cruises' liquid hydrogen-fuelled ferry set to sail in Norway in
2020 (Sampson, 2018; Robinson, 2017). Even airline industry, Sattler added, has proposed
switching to hydrogen for fuel as carbon fuels ignite while hydrogen merely disintegrates,
making it safer as jet fuel. However, carbon-based fuels would be difficult to replace in the next
several years (SolarPACES, 2017).

Another application of solar thermal energy which substitutes into previous fossil fuel
processes is in enhanced oil recovery. In order to extract more oil from a reservoir, steam is
injected to decrease the viscosity of oil, allowing it to flow more easily (Anderson, 2017).
Traditionally, fossil fuels are burned to produce steam, but recently solar thermal energy is
being tapped to produce this steam, with researchers arguing that this is the most efficient
enhanced oil recovery method to date (Kovscek, 2012). Foremost of all its advantages is that it
releases significantly less carbon. Brandt & Unnasch (2010) showed that solar thermal
enhanced oil recovery can cut down the carbon output from 23.8 g CO2/MJ in a fossil fuel set-up
to 0.1 g CO2/MJ in a solar set-up. Economic considerations also point in favor of the solar
method. Thermal enhanced oil recovery costs less in marginal cost of production than gas- or
fossil-fuel set-ups while also being not subject to market fluctuations in natural gas prices
(Anderson, 2014).

Concentrated solar heating is also used in some factories for space heating and cooling
(Rose, 1981).

Conclusion

Concentrated solar power seems to possess the characteristics of an ideal energy source:
renewable; zero carbon emissions; able to produce baseload and dispatchable electricity; and
competitive power prices. It has solved the intermittency problem of its photovoltaic
counterpart and even seems to eliminate the latter's environmental impacts; Neff (1981)
enumerated the diverse health and environmental effects of the use of silicon, cadmium and
gallium arsenide, which are materials for photovoltaic cells. A joint study by Greenpeace
International, the European Solar Thermal Energy Association and SolarPACES showed that
concentrated solar power can produce 25 percent of the world's energy demands by 2050 (Jha,
2009). This presents the potential of concentrated solar power, and this technology should gain
wider knowledge and investor interest, for us to be able to realize our dream of a clean, green,
carbon-healthy future in energy production.
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Appendix

Grenon, M. (1981). The nuclear apple and the solar orange: Alternatives in world energy.
Oxford, United Kingdom: Pergamon Press.
Neff, T. (1981). The social costs of solar energy: A study of photovoltaic energy systems. Oxford,
United Kingdom: Pergamon Press.
Rose, H. (1981). The energy crisis, conservation and solar. Ann Arbor, Michigan: Ann Arbor
Science.