Spanish concentrating solar power (CSP) trade group Protermosolar (Seville, Spain) has announced that Spain has become the world leader in installed CSP capacity with the connection to the grid of the 50MW La Florida CSP plant. Spain now has 432MW of CSP installed, compared to 422MW in the US, most of which is produced by the SEGS systems, constructed in the late 1980's.

In recent years Spain has advanced its CSP capacity dramatically through its feed-in tariff program. "Spain today is a world leader in this technology, and companies linked to these CSP plants are beginning to participate in ambitious projects in many regions of the world", declared Protermosolar in a statement. "This leadership has been achieved through a continued effort in R&D effort within the sector which began in the late 1970's and endures to this day."

La Florida
La Florida (Place of Flowers) is a 50MW CSP plant constructed by Renovables SAMCA (Aragón, Spain) in Alvarado (Badajoz) in the Extramadura region of Spain. The plant uses parabolic trough technology developed by Grupo SAMCA, the parent company of Renovables SAMCA, where long rows of curved mirrors concentrate sunlight onto a central receiver carrying a fluid. The plant also uses a molten salt heat storage system, which allows it to generate electricity during evening hours or other times as needed. The La Florida plant includes 550,000 square meters of collectors.

CSP in Spain and the United States
The vast majority of the world's CSP plants are located in Spain and the United States, however the development of the two nations' CSP capacity tells very different stories. The United States pioneered large-scale use of CSP with the nine Solar Energy Generating Systems, constructed in California's Mojave Desert from 1984 to 1990 and totaling 354MW. However, the US did not put another full-scale CSP plant online until the 60MW Nevada Solar One plant in 2007.

Since then the United States has only connected three relatively small CSP plants to the grid. A part of the reason for slower development may be policy; the US has avoided implementing feed-in tariffs, preferring policies that have proven less effective for encouraging the development of the solar industry such as renewable portfolio standard (RPS) policies, and has only enacted RPS policies at the state level.

A larger part of the reason the US has lagged behind Spain may be bureaucratic delays in land-use approval. Many choice sites for CSP development are on public lands, and the California Energy Commission and Bureau of Land Management have received applications for 12 solar thermal plants, totaling 4.8GW of CSP. Some of these applicants have been waiting for years for approval. 

Spanish success?
The relative success of Spain's CSP development, however is set against the story of a dramatic explosion of solar energy generation, followed by a collapse of the nation's industry in 2008-2009, a result of overly successful feed-in tariffs which were later capped. However, even though the Spanish solar photovoltaic (PV) industry is still recovering, with a paltry 69MW installed in 2009, the CSP industry continues to grow. Protermosolar estimates that 600MW of Spanish CSP projects are less than one year away from interconnection to the grid, and that with 432MW of installed CSP, 600MW under construction and other projects already approved under the feed-in tariff, Spain will have 2.5GW of operational CSP in 2013.