[ux266478]

> Solar thermal can't really compete economically with photovoltaics.

PV is cheap up front and maintains cost advantage in the time scale of a few decades, and obviously scale down much better than solar towers. PV also wins by being viable in more places, and not requiring local specialized labor. Once you extend the timescale to a hundred years or so, solar towers end up quite a bit cheaper (where they're actually viable).

Batteries, inverters, and the propensity for solar fields to completely rebuild themselves long before the panels die really compounds running-costs. This isn't apparent until you expand the time scales, and only once we're looking at solar fields with parity to a solar tower (60+MW). We're talking hundreds of acres of panels, and a massive battery farm. Even though solar towers require more motors, more regular cleaning, and complex refurbishment, they also produce a very large amount of power relative to their size.

Rebuilding a PV field costs a lot more than refurbishing a solar tower obviously. If solar plants ever get over rebuilding themselves from scratch every 20 years, or if battery tech ever gets better longevity, this might no longer hold.