Since Blythe, the largest solar farm in the country, switched its planned technology from concentrated solar power to traditional solar photovoltaic panels last year, the industry has been questioning CSP.

But it’s not to be written off yet, said senior analyst with GTM Research Brett Prior.

He spoke at Solar Power Generation USA in Las Vegas last week about the bankability of CSP technology.

“If the technology is not bankable, nothing else matters,” Prior said. “If you can’t get it financed, it doesn’t matter how good it is or that it could change the energy world forever.”

So the question, he said, is whether or not CSP is bankable.

CSP in general costs more per watt than traditional solar photovoltaic panels.

“And if it’s not cost per watt, why should people choose CSP?” Prior asked.

One of CSP’s biggest advantages is the ability to build energy storage into the system.

“The time you deliver the power matters,” Prior said. “Power generated at 2 a.m. is not as valuable as power delivered at 5 p.m.”

Even traditional solar tends to produce during more peak hours than wind, and being able to dispatch the energy during the daylight hours is an advantage. But peak load for many utilities also runs from 5 to 8 p.m. when people are getting home from work, running their air conditioning, making dinner, doing laundry and watching TV.

If CSP can sell power during those hours for 15 cents per kilowatt hour and traditional photovoltaics are limited to peak production hours when power still sells above the baseline, but at 12 cents per kilowatt hour instead, it might be enough to edge CSP past photovoltaics in bankers’ eyes, Prior said.

There are different types of CSP, and some are definitely nosing ahead in the race to the banks.

“You’re not seeing a lot of projects go with troughs these days,” Prior said.

Towers, however, are gaining international favor.

SolarReserve’s power tower just went up in Tonapah, Nev., last week. As the largest solar project of its kind in the country, the 110-megawatt tower with molten salt energy storage has a 25-year power purchase agreement with NV Energy.

Nevertheless, the project needed a $725 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to get off the ground.

“It probably wouldn’t hurt for SolarReserve to be acquired by a much larger company,” Prior said. “It would improve their credit rating.”