You have hoover dam, why not death valley solar farm?
For the confused. Solar thermal farms don't use semiconductor PV cells, but fields of mirrors that heat water in a heat engine (just like nuclear and coal power plants, that only work when the sun is up).
The US has enormous spaces of empty sunny desert and has a history being the largest, most advanced economy in the world with a culture of massive civil engineering projects like roads and rail networks that span the continent. The whole night/day thing is an issue but it's solvable with day/night prices and large scale storage. Also HVDC across 100s of miles of desert and ocean has been a thing since the 50s. (Source, ch.25)
Edit: Better example, doesn't require automatic mirror adjustment or workers manually adjusting mirrors in deadly conditions, at the expense of capturing less light per mirror.
This chart from the Energy Information Administration shows the levelized cost of energy from various renewable and non-renewable sources:
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/er/electricity_generation.cfm
Essentially, solar thermal is among the costliest sources of generation, even when compared with other renewable alternatives. Still, it has had some success in California's renewable energy marketplace.
To your point on the death valley solar farm, the nearby Mojave desert is one of the most active solar development regions in the world. Since death valley is a national park, it's pretty doubtful that there will be any development there.
I know your question has been answered, but I'd just like to pipe in and talk about energy storage.
Right now the technology to store enough bulk energy to last all night - making a solar power source have an effectively continuous output - doesn't exist yet. It can be done, but nobody is going to flush their money away on a venture such as that.
There are a few places where large amounts of power for a short time can be stored for later use. This is when they use stuff like pumped hydro. Those are typically for really short term demands, like when everyone in London turns on their electric kettle at the same time. A pumped up reservoir will last you long enough to get a gas turbine up to speed, but not all night(unless you've got a bigger system than has ever been built or only a handful of customers). And pumped hydro is out of the question in the desert(do you ship the water in on a fleet of trucks? Evaporation?)
There are other uses for utility scale energy storage, like peak shaving, but storing enough energy to make a desert sized solar farm work through the night isn't currently feasible.
A lack of utility scale energy storage is one of the things that makes it really difficult to implement all the wind and solar that idealistic high school kids would like. Currently, we basically need enough spinning reserve to cover a sudden drop in output from renewables. Fwiw, I think pumped hydro, compressed air and flywheels are neat, but I think the breakthrough in energy storage will come from a new battery chemistry.
hi all! I see that there are several people that would like to chat about the pros & cons & potential of solar thermal energy, but that sort of discussion would be better placed in /r/AskScience or an energy technology sub (which surely must exist). Here, let's stick to history, specifically the development (or lack thereof) of the industry in the USA, and in particular, answer the OP's question "why isn't the US full of them?"
A last reminder: be mindful of this sub's "20-year rule" and confine discussion to events/conditions/opinions/research/technology prior to 1994 only.
Thanks!
