Abstract:
The progress in the deployment of power towers directly affected the reduction of the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), a standard for economic assessment of technologies producing electricity. LCOE of CSP plants is predicted to drop down to less than 0.05 USD/kWh in the coming years. Fig. 2 gives the LCOE of various plants from 2010 to 2017 and winning bid prices from auctions for the years 2017–2022. From around 0.35 USD/kWh in 2017 to 0.22 USD/kWh in 2022, the LCOE is dramatically reducing with steady developments in CSP technology. Further innovations are needed to use these components in a holistic system to meet peak load demands at low costs. With the advantage of thermal energy storage (TES), smaller plants can be used for providing peak load power while larger plants with long storage hours can be deployed to provide baseload power [12]. Even large plants are now developed for peak loads. Newer CSP plants equipped with thermal energy storage (TES) create grid flexibility, making it an asset with lower prices for better cost-competitiveness. This shows the magnitude of pressure to quickly develop cost-effective technology, one of the driving forces for CSP development and deployment. However, these price reductions are a result of not only competition but also technological improvements (see Fig. 3).
Yerudkar, A. N., Kumar, D., Dalvi, V. H., Panse, S. V., Gaval, V. R., & Joshi, J. B. (2023). Economically feasible solutions in concentrating solar power technology specifically for heliostats – A review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 189, 113825. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2023.113825
