Spain and America Dominate Solar Thermal Market

August 3rd, 2012 by Joshua S Hill

Spain and the United States currently dominate the global solar thermal market thanks to the continued soaring of fossil fuels and supporting government policies, according to a new report by GBI Research, a market-leading provider of business intelligence reports.

The GBI Research report, Solar Thermal Power Market to 2020 — Utilities to Drive Future Developments in the Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Market, showed that in 2011 Spain was the primary stakeholder in the global CSP market with a commanding 65 percent of the total installed capacity. An astounding achievement considering that Spain did not have a CSP installation until 2007.

The US came in second in the global market with 33 percent of total installed capacity.

Sanlúcar la Mayor, Spain

Spain built the 11-megawatt-capacity PS10 solar tower in 2007, but since then the country has seen their total installed capacity race to 1,002.2 megawatts, the largest tally in the world by a significant amount.

The obvious advantage of abundant sunshine combined with impressive government support has seen CSP boom in Spain. In 2005 the country’s government enacted an ambitious plan for its renewable sector, the Renewable Energy Plan (PER). This plan outlined particular attention to the solar power industry, and as the Spanish government has declared a commitment to adhere to the European Union 2020 agenda on emissions and renewable energy shares, the Spanish solar thermal sector is expected to have a strong future.

The US on the other hand installed its first solar thermal plant back in 1985, becoming the first country to produce solar thermal electricity with commercial viability.

Growth has been relatively slow since then, with the country’s total installed capacity only reaching 508.5 megawatts by 2011. But GBI Research believe that over the next eight years this number will explode, growing to 25,815 MW by 2020, climbing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 63 percent thanks to plans to commission numerous major CSP including the La Posa Solar Thermal plant and the Ranegras plant – both based in Arizona.

Source: GBI Research
Image Source: Wim Hertog

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Tags: America, market leader, megawatts, solar thermal market, Spain, spain clean energy, spain solar, US, US Clean Energy, US Solar Energy

About the Author

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

Uwe Trenkner

The headline is somewhat misleading: Both, Spain and the US are waaaay behind in solar thermal… because solar thermal is also solar heating and cooling. Here, countries like Israel, Cyprus, China and Austria are the leading nations (per capita that is). And Concentrating Solar Power (aka “Solar Thermal Power”) is tiny compared to the thermal energy harvested for hot water, space heating, industrial process heat etc. Have a look at Solar Heat Worldwide, published annually by the IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programme – on one of the first pages you find a comparison of the installed capacity and energy produced by different “new” renewable energies (i.e. wind, solar, geothermal) http://www.iea-shc.org/shw
http://ronaldbrak.blogspot.com.au/ Ronald Brak

Given the low cost of solar PV I doubt we’ll see much expansion of solar thermal in the short term, but its ability to store energy thermally could result in solar thermal plants being built and it could also be used as a source of heat for many processes.
- Bob_Wallace
  
  If we look at the places in the US where thermal solar is being built – the southwest, close to the coast desert – there’s another competitor coming into play. Wind out of Wyoming.
  
  IIRC the Wyoming wind tends to pick up speed about the time the SoCal sun begins to fade. A moderately short distance HVDC line (currently in process) should bring a lot of cheap late afternoon/evening wind to the Pacific Coast via the Pacific Intertie and Intermountain Intertie. The big runs are already in place, all that is needed is a jumper link to grab the Wyoming wind.
  
  Bring that $0.04/kWh power on line and thermal solar would have some serious price competition.
  - http://ronaldbrak.blogspot.com.au/ Ronald Brak
    
    That’s a useful wind. Here in Australia we might end up using solar thermal storage to meet evening and night time demand, but a large amount of that demand can be met with a combination of wind, filling our limited pumped storage with cheap PV electricity during the day, and demand managment. To meet the demand that’s left eletricity from solar thermal storage would have to be competitive with non-thermal storage, biomass/biogass, or just buring natural gas and then removing the CO2 released from the atmosphere. Also, with low daytime electricity prices from solar PV we could use electrical resistance heating for thermal storage instead of thermal solar.
    
    But if solar thermal had received a large amount of investment in the 70’s it could have ended up supplying a large portion of our electricity today. There is nothing wrong with solar thermal, it’s just that PV is cheaper.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      I’ve certainly got nothing against thermal solar, but I can see it not being cheap enough to be a player. Or not cheap enough, soon enough.
      
      A problem with thermal solar storage is that it’s limited to thermal input. Pump-up/CAES/battery storage can take in electricity from any generation method which gives them the opportunity to cycle more frequently. They could move wind from night to day and then midday solar to late afternoon. That makes them more valuable.
      
      Then PV has the advantage of easy siting. Just put it on rooftops and over parking lots. Use the existing grid, no infrastructure to build. It gets widely distributed which lowers variability.
      
      There might be a role for thermal solar with storage in North Africa with lots of the electricity fed to Europe. I also recall something about thermal solar working better in diffused light, so maybe that….
A Watters

The link to the GBI Research report in this article goes to a 2010 report. However, the article above says that the report “showed that in 2011.” I’m confused as to how a report published in 2010 reports on 2011. Should the link be updated? Thank you for your assistance.