Secondly CSP isn’t 97% efficient as today’s most efficient CSP systems (sun tracking dish concentrators) only achieve a maximum efficiency of around 35% and typically operate well below this in practise, with an operating efficiency of 20% being commonplace.

However this efficiency comes at a high price and CSP systems are expensive both to construct and maintain, and as a result compete poorly with fossil fuels at todays prices. This is one of the reasons why nantennas or solar rectennas are so interesting as they not only offer high potential conversion efficiencies, but more importantly are potentially very, very cheap.

Finally the claim of a 97% efficiency isn’t just wrong – it’s physically impossible!

The laws of thermodynamics place a maximum limit on the efficiency of any solar power generation of around 86%.
However the design of the solar collector will reduce this, for instance the most efficient form of collector, a sun tracking dish concentrator operating at 800 – 8000 suns concentration could only achieve an absolute maximum efficiency of around 80% – and as I mentioned previously these systems operate in real world conditions at around 35% efficiency max.

In short Zer0sum is full of it.

You don’t know how the conversation went and using this discussion as a reference leaves you severely misrepresenting the ability of the physorg editorial crew to argue their case. In fact their only method was to censor any discussion that did not fit with their slanted bias.

Having interacted with you a bit I expect I understand how the conversations with the PhysOrg editors played out.

It’s your choice to fill your head with their propaganda. Don’t get upset at me if I don’t want to do the same.

” Every single article on that site is full of overt errors even on basic math and they refuse to have any kind of serious discussion about their crap reporting. Even going to far as to silence anyone who questions their motives.”

Physorg sources their articles at the end of each article.

Physorg has a comment section following each of their articles. I post and discuss there from time to time.

You need to prove your charge or go away.”

The first company I was mentioning was not from the Middle East. I’d have to check again, but think it was a French company.

The main engineer I talked to at Masdar is not a sell-out — he’s a sincere solar enthusiast and actually is focusing on CSP for his PhD and seemed much more into it than PV. And, quite frankly, if there was a way to get CSP competitive, someone would do it — don’t of money in that arena.

Physorg mostly just reprints press releases from universities and research institutes.

You can keep living in denial Bob. Physorg is definitely a misinformation website. Every single article on that site is full of overt errors even on basic math and they refuse to have any kind of serious discussion about their crap reporting. Even going to far as to silence anyone who questions their motives.

BTW, why do you choose to defend physorg instead of discussing the clearly ridiculous claim that PV can only manage 10 – 20% when even this site has regular articles about the latest advances in PV being able to go as high as 48%?

One thing I like about Clean Technica is that you generally attempt to publish a less biased presentation of information. But if you guys are going to insist on republishing total crap from sites like phsyorg then you are no better than them.

I understand that you have an agenda but going as low as physorg is scraping the bottom of the barrel.

You claim that a web site that was founded by a bunch of Brits and run from the Isle of Man is a CIA front and you want me to prove you wrong.

And you post a link to a page that says nothing.

Drag yourself back to reality or please go away. This site is crackpot intolerant.

There is definitely a serious problem with the inflated price of CSP systems. There is absolutely no logical reason for it to cost more than PV. We produce hundreds of miles of high quality and cheap steel on a daily basis.

We have well proven and highly efficient technology for gigawatt sized power stations.

The main thing propping up the PV market at the moment is the fact that the Chinese Government has heavily subsidised it’s manufacturing industry in order to flood the global market and beat the Americans at their own game of monopoly.

Take away all the subsidies around PV and get rid of the cronyism and graft of all the other major energy industries and CSP is the only thing that stands on it’s feet, is quick and easy to manufacture and install, and has the capacity to actually be able to solve the global energy crisis.

However that sounds too much like commonsense for the global Irrational Elite to allow it to actually happen. How would they justify all their wars if we didn’t have any energy issues any more and every major city in the world was energy independant?

Companies around the world who are building CSP are artificially inflating the price of the electricity they produce?

Companies around the world are deliberating pricing their product to fail?

Physorg ” is a straight up misinformation project run by the US Military and MIT haven’t done anything worthwhile”?

Do you realize how tinfoil-hattery that sounds?

After all it’s just a few pipes, sheets of metal and a standard steam turbine power station which can be bought off the shelf from Seimens.

CSP can be a lot cheaper than it is currently simply by taking out the excessively inflated construction costs and copious amounts of graft. Let alone the efficiencies that can be gained by economies of scale and advances in technology.

Apart from that I’m really surprised that you have reprinted information from physorg.org and MIT to boot. You should know better by now. Physorg.org is a straight up misinformation project run by the US Military and MIT haven’t done anything worthwhile, like pretty much ever.