"Drawing on case studies and information collected over the past decade, Solar Power tells a story about the social and environmental considerations for scaling solar power. The book articulates a vision for a more sustainable and just solar industry. While decarbonizing electricity systems with clean, solar power will have tremendous social and environmental benefits, scaling solar industries for electricity will have impacts from global supply chains...

The objective of the research program is to develop design parameters of systems for thermal/mechanical conversion of solar energy to electric power at minimum cost per kilowatt-hour generated. Systems of 3MW to 300MW sizes in a public utility network are considered. Parametric performance and cost models are derived for key elements of the system. A sequential optimization program was developed using these models to determine optimum subsystem sets...