Earlier this year, on October 27th, Ausra commissioned their first solar thermal pilot plant, a 5.0 megawatt facility located in Kimberlina, just north of Bakersfield, California. It is the first solar thermal power facility to be commissioned in California in over 20 years - significantly, the approximately 350 megawatts of solar thermal power installed back [...]

Which of these solutions is more space efficient? 
If you assume 5.0 watts (peak) per square foot for thin film photovoltaic, you end up requiring 4.6 acres per peak megawatt-hour (MWp), about the same as Nevada Solar One’s solar thermal farm (4.7 acres per MWp). Thin film PV panels now have a factory cost of about [...]

No survey of utility scale solar thermal power companies is complete without mention of Solel Solar Systems Ltd., headquartered in Israel with operations in Spain and the USA.  In December 2007 Solel’s purchase power agreement (PPA) with Pacific Gas & Electric Co. was approved by California’s Public Utility Commission for a solar thermal plant with 553 [...]

This past October, in our report “Ausra’s Solar Thermal Power,” we reported on this newcomer in the rapidly growing solar thermal power industry, with at least two innovations that could make them a major participant in this sector which is finally taking off.  One of Ausra’s innovations is the design of their solar field - they have taken the single [...]