1. What is Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)?
2. What are the Technologies & Applications?
3. What is Utah’s CSP potential?
4. What are the Economic Benefits?
5. What are the Barriers?
6. What incentives are available?

1. What is Concentrating Solar Power?
Concentrated Solar Power acts in much the same way as traditional power plants, but instead of using fossil fuels as a heat source to create steam to rotate the large turbines, mirrors are used to reflect and concentrate sunlight onto receivers that collect the solar energy and convert it to heat and steam.

Find out more about Concentrating Solar Power:

• U.S. Department of Energy’s Southwest Concentrating Solar Power 1,000-MW Initiative
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory Concentrating Solar Power Research Concentrating Solar Maps
• Presentation on Utah's Concentrating Solar Power Resource and Potential  “Concentrating Solar Power for Utah: Resource Potential and Benefits” (2.2 MB)

2. What are the Technologies & Applications?
There are three main types of concentrating solar power systems:

• parabolic-trough
• dish/engine
• power tower

Parabolic-trough systems concentrate the sun's energy through long, rectangular, curved (U-shaped) mirrors. The mirrors are tilted toward the sun, focusing sunlight on a pipe that runs down the center of the trough. This heats the oil flowing through the pipe. The hot oil is then used to boil water in a conventional steam generator to produce electricity.

A dish/engine system uses a mirrored dish (similar to a very large satellite dish). The dish-shaped surface collects and concentrates the sun's heat onto a receiver, which absorbs the heat and transfers it to fluid within the engine. The heat causes the fluid to expand against a piston or turbine to produce mechanical power. The mechanical power is then used to run a generator or alternator to produce electricity.

A power tower system uses a large field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the top of a tower, where a receiver sits. This heats molten salt flowing through the receiver. Then, the salt's heat is used to generate electricity through a conventional steam generator. Molten salt retains heat efficiently, so it can be stored for days before being converted into electricity. That means electricity can be produced on cloudy days or even several hours after sunset.

3. What is Utah’s Concentrating Solar Potential?
According to the Utah Renewable Energy Zone Task Force Report, Utah has 6,371 square miles of land that has a technical potential for CSP of about 826 Gigwatts (GW) - or 826,000 MW. This represents 16,500 technically potential 50-Megawatt sites.

4. What are the Economic Benefits?
If Utah were to build 1000 MW of Concentrating Solar, the state would reap the following economic benefits¹:

• $2-4 billion in-state private investment
• 3,000-4,000 construction jobs
• 250 permanent solar plant jobs, many in rural areas
• $1 billion increase in state tax revenues

5. What are the Barriers?

• The economics of CSP are more challening in Utah, as compared to other states, given our historically lower costs of electricity.  However, Utah's rapidly growing population (ranked 5th in the nation for growth rates, expected to approach 3.5 million by 2030)  and
  

  rising electricity demand (2-3% annually) and growing peak demand are contributing to rising energy costs and an ever-growing need for new capacity, transmission/distribution, and resources. 

• Transmission costs: Concentrated solar power sites may be located far from major population centers or primary transmission lines, requiring significant fixed costs to gain access.
• State policies, such as additional incentives for commercial-scale/utility-scale solar, and utility regulatory decisions are critical to attracting developments and encouraging businesses to invest in Utah.

6. What incentives are available?

For an updated list of available state and federal incentives, visit:

• Utah State Energy Program
• Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy and Efficiency

Or, visit our How To section for information on incentives by application, resource and technology.

1 Mancini, Dr. Thomas.  Sandia National Laboratories.  Utah's Concentrating Solar Power Resource and Potential  “Concentrating Solar Power for Utah: Resource Potential and Benefits” (2.2 MB)