Yesterday (May 9), Solar Trust of America and SolarHybrid AG, a German company, forged a new joint venture, SolarHybrid of America, LLC, to pursue utility-scale projects in North America, including unique, hybrid projects that use both photovoltaics (PVs) and concentrated solar power (CSP).

Solar Trust of America is a technology agnostic solar developer, according to spokesperson Bill Keegan. However, it is developing one of the largest CSP plants in the world, the 1,000-megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project in California. And it has an additional 1,000 megawatts of CSP in development.

SolarHybrid is a developer of large-scale PV projects with more than 220 megawatts of PV projects online and in development.

“We are combining forces, given their expertise. They’ve [i.e., SolarHybrid AG] got about 220 megawatts of PV installed right now. We, as you know, were primarily in the solar thermal space,” Keegan said.

Photovoltaic systems can come on at full generation more rapidly than CSP, but PV fluctuates more as clouds reduce sunlight.

“With CSP using molten salt storage, you store that energy and dispatch it on demand and use it even after the sun goes down. Which is good for up to seven hours,” Keegan said.

The idea of solar hybrid systems taking advantage of both the properties of CSP and PV are relatively new.

“Africa and the Middle East are some of the areas where solar hybrid now operates,” said Keegan. “We see a good to opportunity to combine the strengths of the two companies’ expertise. We’re used to building super-scale CSP projects.”

SolarHybrid is used to building smaller, but still utility-scale PV projects.

“In a very short time, they have made significant inroads into the PV side,” Keegan said. “They’re very well managed. We see a nice meshing of strengths on our side with CSP and on their side, with large-scale PV.”

Under the agreement, both companies will remain separate entities, according to Keegan.

“The JV [i.e., joint venture] will be the entity that focuses on the hybrid side,” he said.

The companies are looking for opportunities both in the U.S. market and internationally, particularly as subsidies and feed-in tariffs in Europe dry up

Image courtesy of Solar Millennium, Solar Trust's technology supplier.