Although CST concentrating solar thermal farms produce the lowest LCOE (levelized cost of energy) with several ~100MW implementations in the planning/approval stage in Southern California with realizable targets of less than $0.09 per Kw/hr, PV solar farm implementations in the range of 1- 20 MWp provide the most viable, fastest to implement, and profitable option for generating massive amount of solar energy at the present time.
These PV farms are small enough to allow connection into power substations and not require building new transmission lines. Building transmission lines across varing municipalities takes many years. In addition they can usually be built in proximity to the sub-station on land that will not require excessive environmental studies, such as that for a 100MW CST plant.
The financial return for such a PV farm is now attractive with the massive drop due to inventory excess in the PV module manufactures world wide. Financially this massive solar generator farm requires only a guarantee of a feed-in tariff, or guarantee of purchase such as now exists in California with PG&E, Southern Power Edison etc. through a minimum PPA agreement fee. Old PPA’s from the largest “solar power providers” such as SunEdison, MMA, Recurrent Energy, Solar Power Assets in California under last year’s federal and state incentives were starting at about $0.15 per KW/hr. It would require less now to make the financials work out for all concerned.
~10MW PV can be be best alternative to meet the requirement of solar to satisfy state reaqirement for ~20% renewable energy in a fast manner. Everything is in place to make this happen.