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Here's the Crescent Dunes installation in Nevada.

https://www.solarreserve.com/e...

Google Map link:
https://www.google.com/maps/pl...

Solar Reserve have some great low externality base load solar power stations. The heat is stored in molten salt and is available when the sun goes down. Base load solar plant like this can be scaled up, I have no affiliation with them however I find their technology interesting.

Coupled with domestic, industrial and commercial P.V there is enough energy in the sun to build power infrastructure. Combined with the terawatts of power available with wind and geothermal does anyone think the oil and coal industry want this technology to be developed and advanced?

I reason that any form of massive dynamic grid will need a lot of intelligence to make the power available where it is needed, which means interesting technological avenues to explore, a massive explosion of information technology and, fortunes to be made as the economy changes. If we can overcome the economic inertia.

None of the criticisms of these technologies ever ask what it would take to build such infrastructures and all of the technologies look like they scale well. We know we can't continue the way we are going because we will die. This is not just about the planet - Save the Humans, the planet will be just fine.

The only rational conclusion is that the world is being run by complete anti-social psychopaths who actually want such an outcome, otherwise it would be done already. The excuses are less and less believable every day.

High temperature molten salt solar is quickly developing into an excellent base-load power option. We know that the sun will be shining in the future or we'd have much bigger problems.

It looks awesome too!

Yes, I've seen that. The claim is that the sun can heat a molten salt,

No, the claim is it is more appropriate energy infrastructure for the 21st century, now that we've had the internet for decades and we can read.

That would be great if this solar technology existed today. Where are these solar thermal power plants that are cheap, reliable, and provide power 24/7?

Here ya go.

http://www.solarreserve.com/en/technology/molten-salt-energy-storage
Heat loss is only 1âF per day
so what you just said is bunk ..

Let me know when Kansas can supply 100% of it's electrical needs through renewables when the electricity is actually needed - producing a surplus of electricity during the day does nothing to power lights at night.

Coal and nuclear doesn't work well when you do that, they prefer to ramp up and down production slowly.
Hydroelectric have traditionally been the only power source that adapt directly to the load, then you use other power sources to not spend the dam as quickly.
Hydroelectric doesn't care if that other power source is coal or wind, it doesn't depend on someone else being constant.

I suspect your comment about powering lights at night comes from the misconception that solar power is limited to photovoltaic cells.
One solar power plant type that is becoming more and more popular is molten salt plants
It uses solar to heat salt and can then draw power from it through the night.

You keep it in a glorified pressure cooker; the higher thermal difference just means more energy can be reclaimed. I couldn't find a link to the research faculty I read about that was taking it to that extreme some years back (maybe it went nowhere), but this company is doing something similar at a much more routine atmospheric pressure approach at 566C, and this one was working towards a solution closer to boiling point with a storage temp of 1200C.

If you are going for solar power then there are other options than just photovoltaic and batteries.
A solar power plant in Nevada uses mirrors to melt salt and then the heat is used like it is in other thermal based plants like coal and nuclear.
Since the salt stays warm after sunset there is no need for batteries. Power can be generated through the night.

Repairing mirrors is also a bit less expensive than repairing photovoltaic panels.

There are plenty of less expensive, lower risk options for energy storage. e.g. flywheels, molten salt, water reservoirs, etc.

All this talk about how a given solar panel's output being cheaper than coal always avoids the extra infrastructure needed to bridge that cloud-period gap.

Always? Nope. There's plenty of discussion of grid management, but then you'd know that if you bothered to be part of any discussions of say, Solar Thermal power generation, that it can operate as a heat bank itself.

Of course, as anybody with a hospital or medical refrigeration system knows, or running a water company, you have to have backups anyway, because SOMETIMES the local plant goes offline. Even the grid itself has to compensate. Sometimes it does it poorly, as folks who suffered the Northeast Blackout found out.

And if you're a nuclear plant, if you don't have a place to dump power, you're likely going to emergency shut down.

But hey, maybe next time you can back off the hyperbole? Always is a high bar, and easy to disprove. They don't avoid it. It's faced head-on.

I know you'd like to believe otherwise, because then you can just smirk and walk off in some sense of superiority, but it's really just empty arrogance.

How many molten sodium plants are operational

I was able to find two that were operational: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plan - US Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant - Spain

which isn't as much as I would have expected. However, the these types of plants are relatively new, and molten salt is the latest and greatest in the industry, so it's not a total surprise.

If you are worried about heat loss, molten solar only loses 1 degree F per day. source: http://www.solarreserve.com/en...

and the sun effectively "goes out" for several hours every day.

Hey dude, problem already solved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage#Molten_salt_technology

They're building one in Nevada that can pump out the MWs for 10 hours without direct sunlight. The whole facility only puts out 110 MW, however. So about 10 of these will replace the average nuke site.

"PV is closer to 20% than 50%"

At least solar thermal is closer to 50%...

Crescent Dunes, under construction, is a solar thermal plant rated at 100MW, and expected to supply 480GWH annually, putting it at 480e9/(365*24)/110e6*100 =~ 49.8%. And it's being built for about the same dollars per watt as the nuclear plant. So nuclear is about half price of that in construction cost (in this case). But with the cost difference of deconstruct/cleanup/decontamination of a nuclear plant versus a tower and a bunch of mirrors, and I'd say that solar thermal costs about the same as nuclear.

From here:
http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/10/worlds-largest-concentrating-solar-power-plant-hits-milestone/
http://www.solarreserve.com/what-we-do/csp-projects/crescent-dunes/

Obsolete information. People are largely unaware of the full gamut of renewable energy technologies. Even so, the Department of Energy did an extensive study that said that Texas, Kansas, and North Dakota could supply the country's full energy needs from wind energy alone, but we're not just talking solar panels and turbines.

We could slash building energy requirements drastically: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_solar_building_design
Move to peer-to-peer microgrids which by the redundancy of many diverse small energy sources would fill gaps in baseload, reduce the need for redundant large powerplants and losses to electric resistance: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/09/uk-island-micro-grid-wales
Consider alternatives for urban and suburban transit that would on today's grid be the equivalent of 300MPG cars: http://www.jpods.com/
For 24/7 baseload, use offshore wind and concentrated solar thermal: http://www.solarreserve.com/
Not to mention use solar thermal for hot water, a highly affordable approach: http://www.energysavers.gov/your_home/water_heating/index.cfm/mytopic=12850

These are proven solutions with excellent working examples. You can also look at kites: http://ecoble.com/2008/08/26/wind-power-generated-from-kites/ for cheaper material costs or extending power generation to altitudes where the wind is constant, panels of windbelts for smaller-scale solutions as on http://www.humdingerwind.com/ and artificial photosynthesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_photosynthesis

They're also making great strides towards net-positive fusion using lasers: https://www.llnl.gov/str/Petawatt.html

I think the full range of these makes nuclear strictly a question of how to use the remaining nuclear fuel to the fullest extent with less waste left over. I don't understand the enthusiasm for nuclear in the light of the above, or the recent disasters.

I've seen a lot of pro-nuclear advocacy on this site, and I feel that people need to have a perspective on what that choice represents. It's opportunity cost. That's a term for when you give up your chances on one side in the pursuit of another. If your choices are poor your loss includes what you did not pursue when you had the chance.

Right now we have gotten wind down to where it has much to offer and very little drawback. Laddermills can provide power 24-7. Offshore windfarms have been heavily studied and show little impact. A better grid could distribute the uneven power effectively. Ribbon generators and windbelts can, in arrays, compete with solar panels.

Where heat is needed we can concentrate solar thermal energy, whether through passive solar buildings, solar towers and troughs which heat molten salts to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit for storage in insulated tanks to drive turbines 24/7. You can even get hot water from running hoses through a compost pile - several compositions yield a proven 140 degree internal temperature and you're getting fertile soil too.

If you do in fact need electricity, solar panels on a microgrid close to their point of demand circumvent our hugely wasteful grid with its losses due to resistance and the unnecessary surplus generated by redundancy of huge, centralized powerplants.

These are not perfect, but when you consider the subsidies fossil fuels and nuclear plants require, the wars being waged to control their supply, and the costs of pollution whether we're paying them now or ignoring it at the peril of future generations, we are being very foolish to waver in the pursuit of a resilient, safe energy supply.

In the words of Bill Maher on offshore wind turbines: "You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash."

Supporting links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laddermill
http://www.truth-out.org/wind-energy-can-power-much-east-coast-study-says63637
http://inhabitat.com/windbelt-innovative-generator-to-bring-cheap-wind-power-to-third-world/
http://gliving.com/power-tower-wind-turbines-a-brilliant-idea-in-this-issue-of-metropolis-magazine-may-2009/
http://www.solarreserve.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parabolic_trough
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-microgrids.html