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Posted: September 11, 2007
Ausra, a Palo Alto, Calif.-based solar-thermal startup, came out of stealth mode Monday with an announcement that it raised "more than" $40 million from venture-capital firms Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers.
It's no surprise that Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, would back solar-thermal power, as he has been a prime advocate of the technology (see Cooling with the Sun).
Ausra's technology can help utilities "meet the dual challenges of economic growth and carbon constraints," he said in a press release. "Ausra's technology replaces smoke with mirrors by eliminating fuel use for power generation, and sets a new benchmark for the cost and scale of solar power."
While solar-thermal power has long been hailed as a potentially far cheaper form of solar power for utilities, it previously had been limited to small demonstration plants and gone nowhere. Some blame a lack of government backing after the oil crises in the late '70s and early '80s ended; others blame a nonexistent market and a paucity of funding for larger plants.
Unlike rooftop solar-electric projects, which compete with retail prices for electricity, solar-thermal projects compete with wholesale utility prices, and must be large to be economical. And because such large amounts of money are at stake, solar-thermal technology has had a slower start than solar-electric power.
Still, Ausra is the latest example that the technology is gaining traction. In July, Israel-based Solel Solar Systems announced it is building a large solar park in California after the Pacific Gas and Electric utility agreed to buy all 553 megawatts of the park's capacity, and Spain's Acciona Energy closed $266 million in project financing for its 64-megawatt Nevada Solar One project.
"We see solar-thermal as one of the most, if not the most, promising of the renewable technologies," said Keely Wachs, spokesperson for PG&E. "It's cost-effective compared with many other renewables, and especially compared with solar [photovoltaics]."