Why support that particular technology? There are around ten or so competing manufacturers of different technologies in the solar thermal industry after all. I doubt we have the funds to support all of them. If you have a genuine interest on the topic I suggest looking up the following names:
Abengoa Solar
Acciona Solar
Siemens Solar, formerly known as Solel
MAN Solar Millenium
AREVA Solar, formerly known as Ausra, formerly known as Solar Heat and Power
Brightsource
Transfield Novatec (Biosol)
Silex Systems, formerly Solar Systems
Skyfuel
Enviromission (dunno who they are these days)
There's power tower, parabolic trough, Linear Fresnel and hybrid technologies - which one to pick?
And the list is even longer on the PV front - why choose solar thermal over PV?
It's always difficult picking winners but on that one it's pretty safe to say it'll never happen... that technology is very complex by comparison to others and offers very little in terms of efficiency gains.
And it didn't get a guernsey in the latest competitive round of Fed govt funding, which is where all the money is.
Andy
There were some initiatives about 10 years ago and this is one of them.
http://www.wentworth.nsw.gov.au/solartower/
John Howard could have used his surpluses to build one of these in every state during his term but decided to hand the money back to the people in the form of tax cuts instead.
Glad he did - if he tried that it would be quite likely we would have a number of defunct structures in the outback warming the air a little bit. But don't tell Enviromission shareholders!
Thanks for the replies, I was aware that some money had been "promised", but still, nothing has happened on the renewable solar energy front.
Oh I dunno. I wouldn't call $1.5bn for the Solar Flagships program described
here "nothing". For progress on the program,
this is a guide.
And I am completely ignorant to the amount of infrastructure and cost of materials to compare the 2 sources.
Does anyone else have (real) science to add to my hastily constructed comparison?
Heaps but you have to be more specific. I can confirm land costs represent less than 0.1% of the total installed cost for both technologies. So comparing them on land cost is like comparing them on their colour. It's also safe to say that coal is a lot cheaper than solar or wind or any other renewable energy source. If it wasn't it wouldn't be there - the market has already decided on that front. Should solar be valued higher than coal on some other measure? If so on what measure? Energy security? Carbon emissions? And if on one or more of these measures - how much more?
That is the only question of relevance actually - how much more is it worth to you? Once you have established that then you can compare that price with the renewable energy (green power) tariff from your electricity retailer and make a decision on whether you want to actually support renewable energy - or not.