“We’re a technology agnostic company,” Uwe T. Schmidt, Solar Trust's chief executive, said in an interview. “Most of our competitors have developed a certain type of technology and have built companies around that technology.”
On Monday, Solar Trust, which is a joint venture of Solar Millennium and Ferrostaal , announced a partnership with Germany’s SolarHybrid to build photovoltaic power plants in the United States. The deal was another sign that as solar panel prices continue to decline, they’re coming off suburban rooftops and being deployed by the hundreds of thousands in photovoltaic farms.
The new joint venture is notable in that Solar Trust develops solar thermal power plants. Earlier this year, the company secured a $2.1 billion federal loan guarantee to build the first two phases of the Blythe Solar Power Project, 1,000-megawatt solar trough power plant under construction in the Southern California desert. (At peak output, Blythe will generate as much electricity as a big nuclear power plant.) It is one of several big solar thermal projects Solar Trust is developing on federal land in California and Nevada.
Unlike photovoltaic farms, which convert sunlight directly in electricity, solar thermal power plants deploy arrays of mirrors that focus sunlight on tubes of liquid to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine. While photovoltaic power plants are easier to build, they are more vulnerable to interruptions in production from passing clouds.
Schmidt said that Solar Trust plans to install both solar troughs – long rows of big parabolic mirrors – and photovoltaic panels at some projects as well as build standalone photovoltaic power plants.
“I think that photovoltaics and trough and other technologies are quite compatible,” he said. “There’s a cost advantage in PV at the utility scale.”
Schmidt said he expects photovoltaic module prices to further fall when Germany, the world’s largest solar market, cuts subsidies and dampens demand.
"There will be an oversupply of panels and we’ll see prices as low as we’ve ever seen,” he said. “The biggest marketplace for utility-scale solar production will be here in the United States.”
That has Solar Trust looking at replacing solar troughs at its Palen Solar Power Plant, a 500-megawatt California project that has been licensed but not built, with solar panels. The company is considering doing the same at a 500-megawatt project planned for federal land in the Amargosa Valley in Nevada.
Solar Trust’s move comes as the new owners of two massive solar power plants in California – Calico and Imperial Valley – replace the solar thermal technology planned for the projects with solar panels. NRG Energy also is going photovoltaic at some of its planned solar thermal power plants.
“Economics will drive these decisions,” Schmidt said.
An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Solar Trust of America as a subsidiary of Solar Millennium.
