Solar Thermal: The More Mature Older Solar Sister

Of the "Solar sisters", PV and Thermal, Thermal is clearly the more mature and ready for primetime. Why? Because Thermal solar contains its own storage.

...Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset..

..The workability of solar thermal power was established in the 1980s, when developers in California built a series of plants in the Mojave Desert, eventually reaching 354 megawatts of capacity. A megawatt is enough electricity to run 1,000 room air-conditioners at once.

The California plants grew more sophisticated and costs shrank as the project progressed. But then the price of a competing fuel, natural gas, collapsed in the 1990s and building new solar plants became uneconomic.

...solar plants do tend to produce peak power during the hottest part of the day, when demand is highest and electricity is costly, so at certain times they are already competitive with plants using natural gas. And they have an advantage over the other widely available form of renewable power, wind turbines: they are more predictable.___NYTimes__via_KurzweilAI.net

Heat is currently easier to store for later use than is electricity. With photovoltaic, when the sun is gone the power is gone. With solar thermal, the heat can be stored and used for several hours after sundown, until people go to bed.

Al Fin has argued for the superiority of solar thermal over PV for years. Incorporating phase change materials in thermal storage systems should extend heat storage through most of the night.