This is a concept I never fully understood. My father even sold all kinds of renewables for ~5 years until 2016, and he just said “Thermal just isn’t worth it” but never really explained how or why. And even now when all Europe is under a strong pressure into deciding how to heat our homes this winter, it seems that no one is still considering thermal solar as a solution.
Heck some governments even decided that it was better to propose PV + Heat Pumps instead of Solar heating
​
Why?
In: 4
They’re really freaking expensive. Back in 2016 PVs were expensive enough where solar thermal plants were roughly equivalent. Before then the tech was still immature but had a lot of potential as PVs were pretty expensive.
Fast forward to today and PVs are substantially cheaper than back then. As a result the tech receives limited investment, and therefore it’s hard to develop the tech to be cheaper. You can look at some big thermal solar projects from that era and see that they struggle to turn a profit.
That’s not to say the tech doesn’t have any advantages. They are really good at storing heat for use when the sun doesn’t shine, partially addressing the storage issue with PVs. But thermal solar is a lot more complex with the need for a tower and heat storage medium (molten salt being common) and the need to control the mirrors which is a huge source of the cost.
Latest Answers