According to MIT Technology Review magazine, the US Department of Energy recently announced a $62 million investment to expand the development of concentrated solar power, another major technology in the solar industry, in order to tackle key challenges such as solar grid stability, repair and energy storage.

At present, solar farms are based on two main technologies to convert the sun's energy into electricity. One is photovoltaic, which requires expensive batteries or external storage technology to run power only when the sun is shining. The second is concentrating solar power generation technology, which focuses the sunlight through lenses and uses the energy obtained to convert water into steam to drive the turbine operation. The solar energy is partly converted into heat energy and stored in the molten salt tank equipped with the system, which can provide continuous power at night or in rainy days.

In 2011, in an effort to make solar power more competitive, the U.S. Department of Energy proposed the 'Shoot the Sun' initiative, which aims to reduce the price per watt of solar power from $4 to $1 by 2020. As a result, the Department of Energy and public and private companies focused on developing more accessible photovoltaic technologies and met its target earlier this year. Concentrating power generation technology has been ignored for a long time because of its higher cost and technical difficulty.

The U.S. Department of Energy announced a shift in research to focus on concentrating solar technologies that can improve the stability and sustainability of the solar grid once the cost of solar energy reaches its target. Energy experts have expressed support for the switch, arguing that concentrating power is a better way to store solar energy than photovolteics, although some have questioned whether the Trump administration is covering for 'curbing the threat to fossil fuels from rapidly expanding photovolteics.'

'There is an overinvestment in photovoltaics and an underinvestment in concentrated solar,' said David Victor, an energy policy researcher at the University of California, San Diego. 'The new DOE plan will start a boom in concentrated solar research and development.' David Hart, director of the Center for Science, Technology and Innovation Policy at George Mason University, agrees that the photovoltaic technology has matured and that the problem is no longer the technology, but how to scale it up, which private companies can solve. More government funds could be used to develop the immature concentrating power generation technology to solve the deep problems facing the development of solar energy.