Changing directions of the solar thermal technology program

Abstract

There have been many changes in the Department of Energy’s Solar Thermal Technology Program over the last 10 yr. Its focus has been the development of technologies that concentrate the sun’s energy; and that focus has not changed. But there has been considerable change in the pathways taken to making the technologies real alternatives for producing energy. Only a part of these changes have beep due to the evolution of those technologies. Instead, many changes have resulted from economic and political changes that have taken place in the country during this period. As the needs and priorities of the country change, so do the needs and priorities of the Solar Thermal Program. This paper describes how changing events at the national level have altered the technical focus and directions of the Solar Thermal Program. This is not unique to the Solar Thermal Program, or even to the other renewable energy programs at the Department of Energy. It is common to many federally funded research programs. To being the story, it is necessary to remember what the mood of the country was like when the solar programs were started. In 1973 there was an energy crisis. Waiting in lines to buy gasoline became a national pastime. People began looking for ways of returning to the “good old days” when energy was plentiful and cheap. National attention was focused on energy problems, and organizations such as the Energy Research and Development Agency (ERDA) and then the Department of Energy (DOE) were formed. Advanced technology was going to come to our rescue. The formation of NASA some years earlier had resulted in landing men on the moon and had proven that the mixture of national enthusiasm, technical excellence, and federal funding could overcome very difficult technical challenges. DOE was started with the same burst of enthusiasm that had accompanied NASA. Unlike the NASA program of the 1960s. however, the energy crisis of the 1970s was solved by political events, such as the weakening of OPEC, before it could be solved by technology. Public focus on energy declined with declining oil prices. In addition, political priorities changed. Increasing national defense readiness and balancing the budget took over the national agenda in the 1980s. This change had a significant impact on the Solar Thermal Program. Since its inception, the program has been either rapidly expanding or rapidly contracting. Figure 1 shows the funding history of the program. As can be seen, it is nearly a classical bell-shaped curve. The program expanded in the 197Os, and contracted in the 1980s. The changes in funding levels have significantly altered the paths by which goals can be achieved. Even with the changes, however, the ultimate goal of the program has remained the same: to make solar thermal technologies a viable alternative to fossil fuels for producing energy. The Solar Thermal Program was started with the assumptions that the cost of oil and gas would continue to increase rapidly while the price of solar thermal technologies would decrease due to an aggressive federal program. Figure 2 shows that these assumptions were projecting the possibility of the technologies being economically competitive by the late 1980s. During the early part of the program DOE’s charter was to develop the technology and to assure that those solar-related goals were met. This included research, technology development, and large-scale system demonstrations. The large solar thermal budgets of 1978-1981 were primarily the result of several large system experiments. The largest was to prove the technical feasibility of central receivers