Is solar-thermal power generation reliable?

(3) The technology is still immature, which can be known by the degree of commercialization.

(4) Although the solar thermal power generation is good, but it is still a long way to put into actual use

Since the birth of solar thermal power generation technology in the 1950s, it has experienced multiple stages of development, and as of the end of December 2015, the global solar thermal power station has been completed and put into operation close to 5GW.

Among them, the total installed capacity of Spain in the solar thermal power station is 2300MW, accounting for nearly half of the global total installed capacity, ranking first in the world, the total installed capacity of the United States is 1777MW, ranking second in the world, and the two together account for about 88% of the global solar thermal installed capacity.

In addition to these two major solar thermal countries, India, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Morocco and other countries are also vigorously developing solar thermal technology, China is the world's eighth country to master large-scale solar thermal technology.

IRENA

Although the principle of photothermal power generation is simple, its energy conversion link is much more complex than photovoltaic power generation, involving optics, heat, electricity, materials science, thermal engineering and other disciplines of cross integration, for different technical routes, efficiency improvement obstacles and paths are also different, it can be said that the promotion and application is still a long way to go.

But we should see great prospects for its development:

1. Joint power generation with photovoltaic power stations and thermal power plants to form complementary effects. Balancing the power production and transmission between solar thermal and photovoltaic in the same power generation area can eliminate the intermittency problem of photovoltaic, and the combination of these two technologies can effectively reduce the power generation cost of the overall system.

2, the establishment of distributed power generation system, to solve the remote mountain power supply problem, the dish system is the most suitable, but because its power generation technology is not mature, the current use of trough power generation system.

Some professionals pointed out that domestic enterprises have entered the solar thermal power generation market, and the overall industrial chain has initially formed: five major power companies have followed up solar thermal power generation. Domestic enterprises are growing rapidly in the production of upstream and downstream components of the solar thermal industry chain, such as the capacity and capacity of large tower power stations with helioscopes, megawatt solar tower thermal power stations have been put into trial operation; In terms of trough solar thermal power generation, 300°C vacuum tubes have been developed, and they are now moving towards 450°C vacuum tubes.