Cost
The US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has estimated that by 2020 electricity could be produced from power towers for 5.47 cents per kWh. Companies such as ESolar (backed by Google.org) are continuing development of cheap, low maintenance, mass producible heliostat components that will reduce costs in the near future. ESolar's design uses large numbers of small mirrors (1.14m²), which reduce costs for installing mounting systems such as concrete, steel, drilling & cranes.
Improvements in working fluid systems, such as moving from current two tank (hot/cold) designs to single tank thermocline systems with quartzite thermal fillers and oxygen blankets will improve material efficiency and reduce costs further.
Read more about this topic: Solar Power Tower
Famous quotes containing the word cost:
“Greeting people doesn’t cost you anything except a roll of your tongue.”
—Chinese proverb.
“How much would it cost you to stand at the wrong end of a shooting gallery?”
—S.J. Perelman, U.S. screenwriter, Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, and Norman Z. McLeod. Groucho Marx, Horsefeathers, Huxley College president to con artist Baravelli (Chico Marx)
“If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)