Exploring the Promise Inherent in Large Scale Solar Energy Electricity Projects

While it was an idea almost unimaginable just a few years ago, the concept of utility scale solar energy electricity generation projects are now living reality. This has come to be as a result of two important developments in the recent past. To begin with, technologies deployed in crafting such large projects have improved considerably. In addition, there has been a tremendous rise in the number of subsidies and economic incentives offered to both manufacturers as well as installers of the systems.

Quite in accordance to expectations, it is conventional electricity generators who are investing heavily in the deployment of the programs. This notwithstanding, there are plenty of novel entrants in the field attracted by the substantive promise of solar energy as the earth depletes fossil fuel reserves. This level of investment will likely be increased in the future.

As matters stand today, there are two technologies that are used to deploy utility scale solar power generation projects. Both make use of powerful lenses to concentrate the sun's energy and thereby achieve lower costs per unit of electricity produced. The two technologies are Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) as well as Concentrating Photovoltaics (CPV).

CSP is perhaps the technology that has received the largest amount of publicity and understandably too. The system depends on lenses that concentrate sunlight to heat a liquid in a vessel. As the liquid gets heated, it drives a steam turbine and thereby generates electricity. The efficacy of this approach perhaps owes to the fact that it is a concept that has been deployed for many years in fossil fuel powered electricity generating plants, except that in this instance the heat is harvested from the sun.

Concentrating Photovoltaics on the other hand are used to concentrate sunlight on highly efficient solar cell arrays. In contrast to conventional PV modules which have conversion efficiencies of less than 20%, these cells are enhanced to achieve efficiencies in the neighborhood of 40%. When you add this to the fact that the mirrors used to concentrate the solar power can track the sun all day long, the capacity of these systems becomes manifestly clear.

With more and more solar manufacturers adopting vertical integration tactics, solar power systems have received a needed shot in the arm. Unlike less vertically integrated outfits, these companies are able to go beyond manufacturing and distribution to being active investors in the solar energy generation field. By actively installing the modules they produce, companies have greater control over their inflows and, predictably, their bottom lines.

Growing demand for more effective ways of powering the globe call for a level of invention that is quite out of the ordinary. While both governments as well as private entrepreneurs have shown increased level of interest in recent years, there has been few options that have seemed to suffice in replacing the relatively cheaper and dominant fossil fuels. It is only gradually that solar energy electricity generation projects have become promising for effective deployment.


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