Solar Thermal Plants - What Are the Challenges?

The first generation of concentrating solar technology, which is called parabolic troughs, use three fluids. The heat has got an upper temperature limit of about 400 degrees Celsius. By the time you've taken that energy and passed it through into a turbine, it's at relatively low temperatures. So we're able to get the benefits of the high temperatures, but because it's a modular system, we're also able to combine that with the reliability and the operability of the parabolic troughS.