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Welcome to the New Solar RevolutionAppalachia provides coal. West Texas provides oil. Now, America's Southwest is providing the 21st Century's energy source: solar energy. Long viewed as an arid wasteland suitable only for slot machines and huge hydro dams, the Southwest is now appreciated as as a 'world class' resource of direct normal radiation. Direct normal radiation is unimpeded, unscattered sunlight. That's the kind that falls on deserts. It's ideal for use with ground-based mirrors that reflect and concentrate the sunlight to create steam. This is opposed to diffuse solar radiation, which is everyday sunlight 'scattered' and 'diffused' by atmospheric moisture. Solar photovoltaic panels capture diffuse radiation and turn it into electricity. Solar PV can be put anywhere, but efficiencies fall with less sunlight. By contrast, concentrating solar power plants need to be located in deserts. Therefore, the best solution is to install large-scale, low cost concentrating solar power in deserts, and more expensive solar PV for lower volume, distributed power. Simple, really. The good news about America's Southwest is that it ranks right alongside North Africa and interior Australia as the world's three best land-based areas for exploiting direct normal radition to create clean energy as the chart below shows.
At present, the United States is leading the way in development of concentrating solar power and the revolution is rapidly picking up speed. Below is a map of America's southwest outlning with current and planned installations. More are sure to come, and you can read about many of them either here or on DESERTEC's other global websites accessible from the navigation panel above.
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