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If I got the categories right, CSP includes the more mature solar-thermal power technologies, in which a heat-absorbing medium drives a generator; as well as concentrated photovoltaic (CPV), in which the concentrated sunlight is absorbed by a high-quality multijunction solar cell.

Is this really how CPV is categorised by the industry? It certainly doesn't make any sense in terms of your discussion to group CPV with solar-thermal:

  • no storage potential
  • little economy of scale.

It is, however, possible that the emergence of CPV may be swamped, just like solar-thermal, by the cost reductions in classic PV.

It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II
by eurogreen on Wed Aug 31st, 2011 at 01:21:46 PM EST
Is this really how CPV is categorised by the industry?

I looked up a few sites and wasn't sure myself (as indicated at the start).

little economy of scale.

Is that true? For all types of CPV? Does the requirement of tracking systems not result in economies of scale? For that matter, how big can a single concentrated solar unit (concentrator + single receiver solar cell) be? (I'm really asking, I don't know much of CPV.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Wed Aug 31st, 2011 at 03:22:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]
The simplest CPV I have seen had two slanted mirrors at the sides of a PV film and the opening in line with the suns trajectory. Needs tilting over the year but not tracking during the day.

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by A swedish kind of death on Wed Aug 31st, 2011 at 03:30:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I have, however, seen CSP elaborated as Concentrated (Thermal) Solar Power, which suggests that CPV is a subcategory of PV and CSP a subcategory of TSP.

The ambiguity if that CPV needs to be cooled, and if you use the heat contained in that coolant to some useful purpose, then you have a hybrid CPV/CSP system, even if the CSP element is essentially co-generation.

The built in advantage that PV has in generating electricity is that it generates electricity originally, rather than collecting heat and converting it. The flipside for an application actually required heat of a grade that CSP could deliver would suggest an application for CSP to provide that heat, either directly or upgraded by using it as the above ambient temperature source for a heat pump.

Which clips around the vision of a decade ago of utility scale CSP installations and dispersed PV installations, to utility scale CPV installations and a mix of dispersed CSP and PV installations.

On the residential side of the grid, where a fair incentive would include the reduction in load at the substation serving that residential neighborhood, a mixed CPV/TSP panel that harvests both heat and electric power would seem to offer some potential utility.

I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Wed Aug 31st, 2011 at 06:56:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]
I do not know what terminology is used, but solar-thermal has historically ran all the way from smallish (without storage potential and little economy of scale) to large plants.

In real terms I think PV and concentrated solar-thermal are the two big ones, which makes the exact drawing of the lines less relevant as long as these are two are in seperate cathegories.

And just to mix things up, there also exists combined PV and thermal like Zenith Solar.

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by A swedish kind of death on Wed Aug 31st, 2011 at 03:28:09 PM EST
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