Establishing Bankability for High Performance, Cost Reducing SkyTrough Parabolic Trough Solar Collector

Concentrating solar power (CSP) holds great promise for providing clean, economical and dispatchable thermal energy for use in electricity production via a turbine generator or directly in industrial processes. In particular, parabolic trough solar power plants have been operating in the Mojave Desert since the 1980s, with power purchase agreements now in the $0.06/kWh range, giving ample evidence that they will carry on delivering electricity for decades, long after their capital investment is paid off. Since 2005, nearly 2 GW of parabolic trough solar power plants have been installed around the world under various incentive and grant programs that make them financially viable. For this technology to reach its full market potential, it is necessary to drive down the cost of energy produced. This will be achieved by increasing efficiency, increasing volume of component production, decreasing cost of installation, and decreasing cost of finance. SkyFuel has addressed each of these areas for cost reduction in our optimized SkyTrough® design. In this paper we describe our approach and show the validated benefits.