Solar CSP - Trends and Future Directions

[solarant]

Solar CSP (or solar thermal to many) is currently a poor cousin to solar PV, which is hogging all the limelight, and deservedly so. Currently, solar CSP has less than 5% of the cpacity of the installed solar PV capacity worldwide. But that is not deterring many countries from having ambitious targets for solar CSP.

The following post from EAI (an Indian renewable energy blog) shows how [URL="http://eai.in/blog/2010/06/solar-csp-in-india-latest-trends.html"]India is bullish on solar CSP[/URL]:

"
Despite there being more than 10 different Solar CSP technology combinations in the market now, and more than 400MW installed capacity worldwide, India’s role in the CSP sector has been comparitively reticent – However, latest government incentives are set to reverse that trend. Writing for CSP Today, Giles Parkinson notes that the international arena’s biggest CSP heavyweights are making a beeline for India, which boasts the most ambitious solar energy development plan in the world. A simple set of numbers illustrate the enormous potential of solar energy: its current capacity is 5MW, and its target for 2022 is 20,000MW.
"

From what I read, India is allocating the 20,000 MW target for solar equally between solar PV and CSP, ignoring the current global status that is heavily skewed towards PV. I am not sure if this decision for allotment was taken based on in-depth analysis, but I spoke to some friends in India regarding the government's and industry's perspective towarads CSP, and they mentioned that many companies were quite bullish about CSP though they really have not put in their money into it yet.

Globally as well, I heard from an industry professional that starting 2012, solar CSP is expected to grow at an incredible pace once some technological questions have been sorted out.

What are your views on the solar CSP trends worldwide? Do you share the general optimism that it would start inching towards solar PV in terms of installed capacities by about 2015?