Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Calif. solar power test begins — in Israel

Developer: 'Highest performance, lowest cost thermal solar system'
The Associated Press
updated 3:56 p.m. ET June 12, 2008

DIMONA, Israel - A team of Americans and Israelis launched an experimental solar technology plant Thursday in Israel's Negev Desert, a prototype designed to drastically cut the cost of energy produced from the sun.

Israeli company Luz II, Ltd. and its American parent, Brightsource Energy, Inc., plan to use the Israeli solar array to test new technology for the three new solar plants they are building for California utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company.

Arnold Goldman, founder of the Oakland, Calif.-based company, called the array "the highest performance, lowest cost thermal solar system in the world." His previous company built the first commercial solar plants in the 1980s.

The new technology uses fields of computer-guided flat mirrors called heliostats to track the sun and focus its rays on a boiler at the top of a 200-foot tower.

Water inside the boiler turns to steam, which powers a turbine and produces electricity. The steam is then captured and cooled naturally so the water, scarce in the desert, can be reused.

The concept is in the final testing stage. Results from the experimental facility, a fraction of the size of the commercial plants, are expected by the end of the summer. The plan is to complete full-sized facilities in California's Mojave desert by 2011.

The test plant does not have a turbine to create electricity, but engineers can measure the pressure and temperature of the steam to estimate how much energy the towers would produce.

As fossil fuels become more expensive, solar power is sought-after as a clean, renewable source of electricity. But harnessing the sun's rays has proved expensive and often inefficient.

BrightSource CEO John Woolard estimated that the new technology could cut the costs associated with solar energy by 30 to 50 percent. Although the tower technology is not a new idea, "no one's ever put it together in the right way before," he said.

The flat mirrors and sun-tracking technology improve on previous designs, he said.

Creators employed simpler cost-cutting strategies as well, such as using many small mirrors that can be mass-produced, instead of special-ordering a few large ones.

BrightSource says its deal, delivering at least 500 megawatts of solar energy to Pacific Gas and Electric, is the largest solar energy agreement ever signed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25124614/

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

The technology that will save humanity

The solar energy you haven't heard of is the one best suited to generate clean electricity for generations to come.

By Joseph Romm

Apr. 14, 2008 | One of oldest forms of energy used by humans -- sunlight concentrated by mirrors -- is poised to make an astonishing comeback. I believe it will be the most important form of carbon-free power in the 21st century. That's because it's the only form of clean electricity that can meet all the demanding requirements of this century.

Certainly we will need many different technologies to stop global warming. They include electric cars and plug-in hybrids, wind turbines and solar photovoltaics, which use sunlight to make electricity from solid-state materials like silicon semiconductors. Yet after speaking with energy experts and seeing countless presentations on all forms of clean power, I believe the one technology closest to being a silver bullet for global warming is the other solar power: solar thermal electric, which concentrates the sun's rays to heat a fluid that drives an electric generator. It is the best source of clean energy to replace coal and sustain economic development. I bet that it will deliver more power every year this century than coal with carbon capture and storage -- for much less money and with far less environmental damage.

Clearly, the world needs a massive amount of carbon-free electricity by 2050 to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions. The industrialized countries need to cut their carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation by more than 80 percent in four decades. Developing countries need to find a way to raise living standards without increasing electricity emissions in the short term, and then reduce those emissions sharply. And, over the next few decades, the world needs to switch to a ground transportation system whose primary fuel is clean electricity.

This electricity must meet a number of important criteria. It must be affordable: New electricity generation should cost at most about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, a price that would probably beat nuclear power and would certainly beat coal with carbon capture and storage, if the latter even proves practical on a large scale. The electricity cannot be intermittent and hard to store, as is energy from wind power and solar photovoltaics. We need power that either stays constant day and night or, even better, matches electricity demand, which typically rises in the morning, peaks in the late afternoon, and lasts late into the evening.

This carbon-free electricity must provide thousands of gigawatts of power and make use of a low-cost fuel that has huge reserves accessible to both industrialized and developing countries. It should not make use of much freshwater or arable land, which are likely to be scarce in a climate-changed world with 3 billion more people.

Solar electric thermal, also known as concentrated solar power (CSP), meets all these criteria. A technology that has the beauty of simplicity, it has proved effective for generations. As the Web site of CSP company Ausra illustrates, solar thermal has a long and fascinating history.

Back around 700 B.C., the Chinese first used "burning mirrors" to ignite firewood. In 230 B.C., a colleague of Archimedes built a parabolic mirror, which focuses the sun's rays to a single point, also better for starting fires. Around 212 B.C., Archimedes supposedly had Greek soldiers use their bronze shields to concentrate the sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire.

In the 15th century, the Italians used burning mirrors to solder copper sections of the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral. Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks contain many designs for solar concentrators, including some for industrial purposes, because he worried about the destruction of the earth's vast forests in humanity's search for fuel.

In the 1860s and 1870s, Augustin Mouchot built the first dish-shaped reflector that ran a heat engine, and he used solar thermal to heat a boiler that ran an ice maker. His assistant demonstrated a printing press running on concentrated solar. But all this work came to naught because of the general lack of direct sunlight in France and the abundance of cheap coal, which became a primary energy source for the Industrial Revolution.

A Swedish immigrant to America, John Ericsson, developed a motor driven by parabolic trough mirrors in 1870. In 1909, H.E. Wilsie added a critical component, a system for storing solar energy for when the sun did not shine. Heat is much easier to store than electricity, a fact that gives CSP a crucial -- maybe the crucial -- advantage over wind and solar photovoltaics.

In 1913, an American, Frank Shuman, installed a 55-kilowatt CSP water-pumping station using parabolic mirrors in Meadi, Egypt. The mirrors focused the sun on tubes whose heated fluid ran an engine to make electricity. This was perhaps the first commercial CSP plant. But it was shut down at the start of WWI, and, as Ausra notes, "the plant was never restarted because of the discovery of cheap oil in the Middle East."

In the 1960s, the Italians developed two of the key CSP designs used today. The first uses a linear mirror to focus the light on a long tube, allowing the mirrors to be flat, cheaper to build and less exposed to the wind. In the second, called a power tower, many mirrors move in two dimensions, focusing on a central tower that holds the engine.

The 1970s oil shocks led to the first commercial developer of U.S. solar thermal electric projects, Luz International. The company built and sold nine solar plants in California's Mojave Desert. The plants circulated oil in pipes, heating it to 700 degrees with long parabolic mirrors; the oil boiled water to drive a steam turbine. Although the technology functioned well, Luz was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1991. The reasons, detailed in this Sandia report, included uncertainty in the market, a delay of federal and state tax breaks, and the lack of economic value derived from environmental benefits.

For more than a decade, those barriers, coupled with low natural-gas prices, kept CSP moribund. The technology got a huge boost in 2004, when Spain approved a guaranteed price, a "feed-in tariff," for CSP. That led to an explosion of Spanish CSP, starting with a power tower near Seville, and a plant outside Granada, the first parabolic trough system in Europe, which should be running later this year.

In this country, soaring gas prices and renewable portfolio standards have sparked a resurgence. In 2006, the Arizona Public Service Co. dedicated the first new CSP plant in the United States in two decades -- a 1-megawatt concentrated solar trough system with an engine used for decades by the geothermal industry. In June 2007, Nevada Solar One, the state's first CSP plant, went online. On 275 acres near Boulder City, it provides 64 MW of electricity from 98 percent solar power and 2 percent natural gas. And in California, PG&E has created deals with three major CSP companies to generate electricity for the Golden State. Another 10 plants are in the advanced planning stages in the Southwest, along with nine plants in countries that include Israel, Mexico and China.

The key attribute of CSP is that it generates primary energy in the form of heat, which can be stored 20 to 100 times more cheaply than electricity -- and with far greater efficiency. Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours. Ausra and other companies are working on storing the heat directly with water in the tubes, which would significantly lower cost and avoid the need for heat exchangers.

CSP costs have already begun to decline as production increases. According to a 2008 Sandia National Laboratory presentation, costs are projected to drop to 8 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour when capacity exceeds 3,000 MW. The world will probably have double that capacity by 2013. The price drop will likely occur even if the current high prices for raw materials like steel and concrete continue (prices that also affect the competition, like wind, coal and nuclear power).

Since all three remaining presidential candidates endorse a cap on carbon dioxide emissions coupled with a system for trading emissions permits, carbon dioxide will likely have a significant price within a few years. And that means the economics of carbon-free CSP will only get better. Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.

CSP plants can also operate with a very small annual water requirement because they can be air-cooled. And CSP has some unique climate-friendly features. It can be used effectively for desalinating brackish water or seawater. That is useful for many developing countries today, and it's a must-have for tens if not hundreds of millions of people if we don't act in time to stop global warming and dry out much of the planet. Such desertification would, ironically, mean even more land ideal for CSP.

The technology has no obvious bottlenecks and uses mostly commodity materials -- steel, concrete and glass. The central component, a standard power system routinely used by the natural gas industry today, would create steam to turn a standard electric generator. Plants can be built rapidly -- in two to three years -- much faster than nuclear plants. It would be straightforward to build CSP systems at whatever rate industry and governments needed, ultimately 50 to 100 gigawatts a year growth or more.

So what do we need to do to ramp up CSP? Interestingly, most CSP executives don't talk much about the need for government R&D. They mostly need policies aimed at creating initial market demand that would help bring down costs quickly over the next several years. One such policy is a so-called national renewable portfolio standard, which would require utilities to get a minimum percentage of their electricity from new renewable forms of power, or purchase such power from other utilities. After that, the typical manufacturing learning curves and economies of scale -- plus a market price for carbon dioxide set by the cap-and-trade system -- should do the rest.

That means Congress and the president must renew the 30 percent solar energy investment tax credit through 2016. After all, it's the least they can do. From 2002 to 2007, fossil fuels received almost $14 billion in electricity-related tax subsides, whereas renewables received under $3 billion. From 1948 to today, nuclear energy R&D exceeded $70 billion, whereas R&D for renewables was about $10 billion.

The United States has already lost the leadership it had in solar photovoltaics and wind, thanks to deep budget cuts by President Reagan and the Newt Gingrich-led Congress. By 2010, China will be the top manufacturer of photovoltaic cells and wind turbines. Must we also abandon our historical leadership in CSP to conservative doctrine? Other countries, particularly Spain but also Israel and Australia, are poised to be dominant. And China, which has already begun importing coal and pursuing CSP projects, will not be far behind. CSP could well be one of the major job-creating industries of the century.

Every other major country aggressively supports clean tech industries with subsidies and mandates. But our Congress and president can't even agree on a requirement for 10 percent of U.S. energy to be from renewable sources -- far less than most European countries and half our own states. We should have a federal standard requiring U.S. utilities to get 20 percent of their power from renewables by 2020.

Another useful incentive would be loan guarantees, a program that could be retired once we have a price for carbon dioxide. CSP has no fuel cost, and low operations and maintenance costs, but it has high upfront capital costs. Loan guarantees can reduce the risks of the first big plants at little or no cost to the taxpayer. The United States should also insist that CSP be a high priority for development projects by the Global Environmental Facility and the World Bank.

Finally, we will need more electric transmission in this country. The good news is that because it matches the load most of the day and has cheap storage, CSP can share power lines with wind farms. When the country gets serious about global warming, we will need to get serious about a building a transmission system for a low-carbon economy.

If we are smart, the United States can be the economic leader here. We can accelerate the deployment of a technology that may be critical to saving humanity from a ruined climate.

You can learn more about concentrated solar power at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Web site.

-- By Joseph Romm

Sunday, June 8, 2008

PUNJAB LAUNCHES THE SOLAR POWER REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRY

PUNJAB LAUNCHES THE SOLAR POWER REVOLUTION IN THE COUNTRY

Posted By News Team On April 7, 2008 @ 9:12 pm In Chandigarh, Poltics (Pb) | No Comments

Chandigarh, April 7:Punjab Energy Development Agency (PEDA) took a major leap forward in its endeavour to put up Solar Photovoltaic (SPV) Power Projects in MW scale in the state, when in response to the International Competitive Bidding invited for setting up of SPV Power Projects on Build, Own, Operate (BOO) basis, 4 companies were shortlisted and a combined capacity of 17MW SPV Power Projects were allocated to be setup on Build Own Operated basis at various locations in the state of Punjab.

Informing this here today Science and Technology and Information & Public Relations Minister Punjab Mr. Bikram Singh Majithia said that Punjab was the first state in the country to allocate the MW scale projects. He informed that earlier 20 bids were received from a number of International / National companies for setting up of a combined capacity of MW scale Solar Photovoltaic power projects. Recalling the earlier period, when only KW scale SPV Power Projects were the norm and PEDA started with setting up of 50KW and 200KW SPV Power Projects, it has come a long way and taken a major step forward in making MW scale projects in the field of Solar Photovoltaic Power, a reality.

He further said that the state has a major potential in generating power from Solar Energy as 330 days of clear sunshine with solar insolation between 4-7 kwh / Sq. mtr. is available. The state was the first in the country to provide a tariff for solar power which starts from Rs. 7/- per Kwh. (base year 2006-07) and peaking upto Rs. 8.93 per Kwh. (base year 2011-12) with annual escalation of 5%. A tariff order providing this tariff was given by PSERC on 13th December'07.

With a view to encourage the setting up of SPV Power Projects on BOO basis Mr. Majithia said that the PEDA has invited bids through tariff based competitive bidding route in the 1st Phase for creating a total capacity of 100MW through solar photovoltaics. Various renowned International / National companies, notable among them were Reliance Industries Ltd., EPURON Renewable Energy Pvt. Ltd., Germany, Moser Baer Photovoltaic Ltd., Power Quality and Electrical Systems Inc. USA had submitted their bids. He further informed that with such a good response, PEDA has been able to get a combined projects capacity of 17MW and after completing the bid evaluation process, allocation letters for setting up of the projects in the state have been issued to four shortlisted companies i.e. M/s. Moser Baer, M/s. PQES Inc., M/s. India Bulls Electricity and M/s. Azure Power. These projects shall be completed and commissioned within a period of 630 days i.e. before Dec.'2009 and power generated shall be fed into the PSEB grid. The for these projects is in accordance with the NRSE Policy'06 and PSERC tariff order with peaking rate for sale of power from these projects being Rs. 8.93 / Kwh from the year 2011-12 onwards. The power purchase agreements shall be signed for a period of 30 years.

These projects being environment friendly and pollution free should be eligible for Carbon Credits under CDM and shall lead the solar revolution in the country which would ultimately bring down the cost of solar power generation, create enhanced capacities and also build economies of scale in this sector.

Mr. Majithia, Informed that it was a major achievement for the country, that state of Punjab and PEDA when a beginning has been made to actually realise the solar energy for power generation through setting up of MW scale projects. He further informed that PEDA shall be shortly inviting expression of interest / offers for setting up of a large scale solar thermal power project in the state of Punjab very soon.


Article printed from The India Post: http://www.theindiapost.com

Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Edison gives ESolar its first major power deal


ESolar test facility
ESolar
An array of mirrors, called heliostats, focus sunlight as part of a steam-power process at an ESolar test facility in the Antelope Valley. ESolar, based in Pasadena, plans to build solar thermal plants in the valley that could supply enough electricity to power 160,000 homes. Southern California Edison has agreed to buy 245 megawatts of power from the plants.
The Southland electric utility plans to buy 245 megawatts from solar plants that will be built in the Antelope Valley.
By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 4, 2008
Southern California Edison said Tuesday that it agreed to buy 245 megawatts of power from solar plants to be built in the Antelope Valley by ESolar Inc., a unit of Pasadena-based business incubator Idealab.

The plants, which are expected to begin operating in 2011, will provide enough electricity for about 160,000 homes, said Stuart Hemphill, the Rosemead utility's vice president of renewable and alternative power.

"We're excited about the promise of solar," Hemphill said. "It's the great untapped resource of California."

The plants will employ a solar-thermal process involving thousands of mirrors, or heliostats, spread across seven 160-acre plots in Lancaster. The mirrors concentrate the sun's rays onto water-filled receivers atop towers. The water boils, creating steam that operates turbines to create electricity.

The installation will be more cost-effective than most tower plants because the towers and mirrors are smaller, said ESolar Chief Executive Asif Ansari, giving the private company an edge over dozens of more-experienced solar suppliers now scrambling for space in Southern California deserts. The towers and small mirrors, which can be assembled without heavy machinery, make for a more efficient permit and setup process, Ansari said.

Under the 20-year contract with Edison, 105 megawatts will be available by 2012, with the full 245 megawatts ready by 2013. Financial details, including the price ratepayers will bear, weren't disclosed.

Edison International, Southern California Edison's parent company, saw its stock slip 57 cents Tuesday to $51.79.

The arrangement is the first major contract for ESolar, which Ansari founded in 2007. In April, ESolar said it raised $130 million for utility-scale solar projects from Google Inc.'s nonprofit arm, Google.org, and Oak Investment Partners.

But it is far from the first solar dealing for Edison. The utility, which serves 13 million people in Central and Southern California, says it buys more than 90% of the solar power produced in the U.S. In March, Edison said it would install $875 million worth of photovoltaic cells across 65 million square feet of rooftops on commercial buildings in Southern California.

In 2007, aiming to match a goal to have 20% of the state's electricity derived from renewable sources by 2010, Edison bought 12.5 billion kilowatt-hours of renewable energy, or 16% of the company's portfolio.

FPL Energy, the largest U.S. solar power operator, unveiled plans in March to build a 250-megawatt solar-thermal plant using parabolic mirrors set in troughs in the Mojave Desert.

Improvements in technology are pushing down the price of solar production, said George Douglas, spokesman for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

"Solar is a rapidly growing trend, but keeping in mind that it's growing from very little," Douglas said. "But we've got to start somewhere."

The Edison deal is good news for Idealab, ESolar's 12-year-old parent company, which launched some of the Internet's most successful businesses, including GoTo.com, as well as flops such as Eve.com.

Idealab went through a rough patch earlier in the decade and had to close several satellite offices and trim to about 75 employees from 250. Its portfolio now features 15 companies, down from about 50, across areas including robotics and online retailing.

Tuesday, June 3, 2008

eSolar Scores 245MW Solar Deal in SoCal

eSolar, the solar startup backed by Google.org and Bill Gross' Idealab, said today that it's inked a deal to build a 245 MW solar thermal power plant in the Antelope Valley region of Southern California and sell that solar power to utility Southern California Edison. eSolar expects the plant to be fully operational by 2011. In April, eSolar said it would have a power plant up and running later this year in Southern California (if this is the same one, that's fast construction!)

There are over a dozen companies building solar thermal plants in California's deserts; these plants will use lenses and mirrors to concentrate the suns rays to heat liquid and power a steam turbine. But eSolar is trying to differentiate itself by building "modular," smaller setups that the company says are cheaper and easier to deploy.

eSolar uses smaller heliostats — the mirrors that track the sun's rays — and says it will use "computing and the technology of mass manufacturing" to make solar scale at a lower cost. eSolar explains that strategy as replacing "expensive steel, concrete and brute force with inexpensive computing power and elegant algorithms."

Guess the pitch worked, because it convinced Southern California Edison. The utility was likely also reassured by eSolar's announcement in April that it had raised a whopping $130 million from Google.org, Bill Gross' Idealab, Oak Investment Partners and other investors. eSolar also says it has "secured land rights" in the southwestern U.S. to produce over 1 GW of power.

This is one of the first announcements we've heard in quite awhile from Southern California Edison involving solar thermal plants. The utility tells us that it has a solar thermal portfolio that goes back to the 80's and more recently has a plant deal in the works with Stirling Energy Systems, which it decided on back in 2005. But Southern California Edison is also investing in one of the most ambitious solar rooftop projects to date, promising 250 megawatts of photovoltaic power covering more than two square miles (some 65 million square feet) of Southern California's commercial building rooftops.

Northern California utility PG&E aso already has several deals in the works with solar thermal startups Solel, BrightSource Energy and Ausra. Heck, PG&E might even build and own its own solar thermal power plants.

Now the next step for the plant that eSolar will build and Southern California Edison will buy power from, is to get approval from the California Public Utilities Commission. Though this will likely happen, we've also seen cases where for whatever reason the CPUC doesn't come through.

Moser Baer hopeful of cutting solar energy cost to Rs 4-6 a unit


Solar power could be the solution for energy crunch



Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

Advertisement

New Delhi, June 3

At a time when crude prices are peaking, a reduction in solar power costs could brighten the energy scenario. The solar photovoltaic (PV) business, which incurs a generation cost of Rs 12-14 per unit, is looking at reducing it to Rs 4-6 a unit in the next three to five years.

The reduction would mainly be on the back of anticipated easing of global demand-supply imbalance of silicon, advances in thin-film PV, higher cell efficiency and other innovations.

"Depending on various factors, one MW of solar energy involves an investment of $5.5-7 million. This is going to come down to the $3.5-5 million range in short to medium term. In the next 10 years it may go as low as $2.5 million per MW. In terms of generation cost, today I can give power at about Rs 14 per unit, and our roadmap clearly shows us a visibility to hit Rs 4-6 per unit," Mr Ravi Khanna, CEO of Moser Baer Photo Voltaic Ltd, said.

How it fares

In contrast, the average cost of generation at coal-fired thermal stations is around Rs 3 a unit. Gas-based generation costs higher at around Rs 4-5 a unit, while liquid fuel-based generation costs over Rs 7 a unit. However, industrial power purchasers are willing to shell out higher tariffs upwards of Rs 7 a unit to meet the peaking shortages at these high tariffs.

For instance, captive power owners in Maharashtra's industrial townships such as Pune are getting requests for supply of excess power to industrial and domestic consumers during peak hours at close to Rs 10 a unit.

PV price parity outlook

So far, capacity constraints in silicon – the raw material for most solar panels, which in turn are used to generate solar power – have kept prices artificially high. However, now with capacity augmentation by silicon suppliers that is set to change. "Silicon accounts for close to 70 per cent of the panel cost, and it should ideally drop to 40 per cent," said Mr Khanna adding that photovoltaic modules based on new Thin Film technology – using Silane gas as raw material – promise to significantly lower solar energy costs.

Moreover, Mr Khanna pointed out that optimisation in processes and equipments, customised for the PV business, could yield 25-50 per cent cost benefits.

"For instance, PV players have been procuring silicon wafers of very high purity level which is not ideally required, so we have invested in a firm in Slovenia where we are producing solar grade silicon and optimising quality," he said.

The industry is also gunning for higher efficiencies in solar panels. "One MW, depending on solar conditions, results in 0.9-1.2 million units per year. If the efficiency level rises, the yield per MW could he much higher," he said.

Globally, solar energy plants with huge capacities have started dotting the PV horizon. These include a 300 MW solar facility in New Mexico, US (New Solar Ventures and Solar Torx); 280 MW Solana Solar plant in Arizona (Abengoa Solar and Arizona Public Services Company); 154MW project near Mildura, Australia (TRUenergy and Solar systems). In India, Moser Baer Photo Voltaic has signed MoU with Rajasthan for setting up a large solar power project with an estimated generation capacity of 1-5 MW. The project would be the largest grid connected solar farm in India. Although the company refused to comment on the tariffs for the project, the subsidy level is likely to be about Rs 10-12 per unit.

Related Stories:
Moser Baer setting up grid connected solar farm
Moser Baer looking for expansion in photovoltaics
Centre chalks out plan to develop 60 'solar cities'
Companies making a beeline for solar energy plants
Solar energy project to attract private capital
Push for MW-capacity solar power generation

© Copyright 2000 - 2008 The Hindu Business Line

Sunday, June 1, 2008

Solar thermal is different


Solar thermal is able to very efficiently store energy in the form of a fusible salt. During the day, the salt is melted using the excess heat not being used to generate power. At night the melted salt re-solidifies releasing heat. Wind power generation has no such convenient energy storage mechanism.

Furthermore, given that solar thermal is a heat source, once you get to the actual power generation stage it is basically the same as a conventional nuclear or coal plant (which are simply heat sources as well). A steam fired turbine is run by the heat source using the Rankine cycle and connected to the electrical grid in the conventional manner. That also means there is a throttle where the operator can control just how much energy is put into the grid and how much is added to / removed from storage. For wind you literally are at the mercy of the wind.

Plus we can accurately predict when the sun will rise and set. The wind? Not so much. Like all solar sources, they are best located in a location where the sun mostly shines during the day (duh). Even so, because of their efficient energy storage, solar thermal can be much more easily set up to continue to generate power during cloudy days.

For those reasons, and numerous others, wind power, compared to solar thermal, is much more difficult to use effectively.

You need to call up and berate Teddy Kennedy who is opposing windmills off the coast of Cape Cod because they might interfere with sailing his yacht. The locals in Carteret county are fighting like hell to prevent the installation of windmills as well. People in the Blue Ridge Mountains ("green" groups in particular) who worry about "the viewscape" are fighting like hell to prevent installation there.