Utility-scale solar is still something of a novelty in the renewable energy ecosystem. Large-scale deployment of these multi-megawatt (MW) installations has only recently been enabled in the United States by two key pieces of federal legislation and state-level implementation of renewable energy standards. The market boomed in 2011, adding more than 760 MW of capacity and ending the year with a bullish outlook for 2012. In April, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) published a series of three reports on the market, technologies, policies, and cost of energy of utility-scale solar facilities in the United States. These reports provide a comprehensive portrait of this dynamic segment of the solar market.

The first report in the series, Utility-Scale Concentrating Solar Power and Photovoltaics Projects: A Technology and Market Overview, offers a rundown of all the technologies that have been and are currently employed in producing solar power at the utility-scale (defined in the report as projects of 5 MW or above). Several of these technologies are familiar (e.g., crystalline silicon PV and parabolic trough solar thermal systems), but some exotic representatives are also in the mix (e.g., linear Fresnel, and the far-out “solar chimney” and “space solar” projects currently under contract with California utilities).

via Two New Reports on Utility-Scale Solar from NREL | Renewable Energy Project Finance.