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Tech That Will Save Our Species - Solar Thermal Power
NoMoreCoal writes "Salon has up a story by Joe Romm, former undersecretary of energy during the Clinton administration, discussing a lesser-known alternative energy solution. It's a technology that (he claims) is ready to provide zero-carbon electric power big, fast, cheap and (most importantly) right now: solar thermal power. 'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour. CSP makes use of the most abundant and free fuel there is, sunlight, and key countries have a vast resource. Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources.'" Interesting stuff, even if he does mention the Archimedes Death Ray.
Thats 246 billion square feet.
Thats somewhere between the size of New Jersey and New Hampshire.
Talk about pie in the sky... its more realistic to be talking about microwave power stations in orbit!
... and without the radioactive waste.
www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
My guess would be that it would cost less than the Iraq war. Sounds like a good deal, no?
Before criticizing that type of technology, you really should read the article, you know. You might learn a thing or two.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
I have to question why you think a 92 square mile station wouldn't be more useful. More reflective area = more power.
Should we wait for the 'right combination' to magically appear, or should we start doing what we can right now and learn what works and what doesn't? This tech is dead simple, it's scalable, and it taps a power source that won't exhaust itself for 5 billion years or so.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
When usage starts peaking there is no way to get the sun to send down more energy. A 92 square mile station wouldn't be any more useful than a much smaller station.
So that's like saying if you need more water then it wouldn't be any better to pull water out of the Mississippi with a bucket than a cup because you can't make the river flow any faster?
Also, with solar thermal, you can store surplus heat. Plus there's the nice coincidence that in warm climates energy usage tracks insolation (e.g. airco).
Nuclear is not the magic bullet you seem to think it is. There's still a few major issues I see with nuclear:
* Waste that is toxic for hundreds of thousands of years
* The profit motive leading to corners being cut and safety being a casualty
* NIMBY (not in my back yard)
* Security - these plants are prime targets for terrorism
I know that other countries have made nuclear work (France is the most cited example.) However, those countries have been able to regulate the plants more closely without conservatives jumping all over their governments for 'promoting socialism' and 'over-regulation'. Our plants are (and would be) operated by for-profit companies. More corners being cut = more profit, so you better believe they'll cut those corners.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
I would love to see $600 billion poured into alternative fuels. It would be a boon to our economy, it would be a great opportunity for scientists and engineers, and it would isolate us from oil politics. Not to mention that it is an ethical thing to do, if we care about our planet.
You'd never 'throttle back' free solar power (just like you'd never run a nuclear power plant at less than optimum output -- if you don't use the fuel, it's wasted).
The sun costs $0, so even if the best thing you can do is sell the generated power at $0.00001/kWh to a place 500 miles away you make a profit.
One way to use up excess energy is to pump water upstream above a hydroelectric power station. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Or, you can just store the energy in batteries, and use them at night.
http://www.mhall119.com
There are many alternative concepts for low- or no-carbon energy in the drawers. Hoewever, most of them still have the status of an unproven technology. They are perceived as being driven mostly by tree-hugging nerds who can't do the math, or mad-scientist type of guys who are desperately fighting for a silly idea.
For some this may be true, for some it certainly is not. But to know which tech belongs to which category, a serios research investment needs to happen.
Now imaginge that a country of the size of the United States would invest just the cost of 1 month worth of Iraq war into the development of alternative energys. A research facility town in a desert, funded with anything they need to prove whatever technology promises to deliver clean energy on a larger scale, and invest what is necessary to solve the problem, or dismiss the technology, could probably do more for the world climate and world economy than most other measures.
The Manhattan project was an example of an must-do project where absolutely anything needed to solve a complex technical problem was done, investing any manpower and money possibly needed to solve the task.
Now think of doing the same, but this time not to build the most destructive weapon on the planet, but to get rid of oil as the primary energy source, lose the handcuffs of oil dependency, and save the climate.
Yes, you are right there. -- Another glass of champagne?
If you reprocess it and burn the actinides it is 300 years for uranium ore levels of radioactivity. Besides, many chemicals we tolerate in other energy systems ( such as photovoltaics ) are toxic indefinitely ( Lithium, Arsenide, Gallium ). If you can tolerate photovoltaics or the molten salts used in solar thermal plants, then nuclear waste is not a problem.
Argument by fear. In the entire history of civilian nuclear power in the US there has been one major accident which didn't kill anyone, this is far better than virtually every other industry in the country. If you were to apply the same irrational argument to other parts of the infrastructure society would grind to a halt.
This is a problem with all energy generation and not specific to nuclear. It applies just as well to windmills and solar as it does to nuclear plants. Furthermore this is a legislative problem, not a technical one.
Not really, the plants are well guarded and the containment structures are designed to survive a direct hit by a large airliner. An attack that would be a danger to a nuclear power plant would likely cause much more damage if directed towards an urban area or other piece of infrastructure ( such as a train station or airport ). Furthermore if terrorist attacks are an issue then a few nuclear power plants are relatively easy to guard and difficult to attack. It is also unlikely a terrorist organization that had the ability to launch a sufficiently fierce attack would pick a nuclear power plant as a target since there are far more vulnerable sites available.
That, as I understand it, is one of the advantages of thermal solar over photovoltaic and wind.... the heat stored in the molten salt acts as a buffer (a giant thermal flywheel, if you will), so that if the sun goes behind a cloud for a few minutes (or even a few hours), the plant's energy output doesn't immediately drop. Indeed, that's how the thermal solar plants are able to reliably generate power even during that regular solar outage we call 'night'. Combine that with the cost advantages (no expensive silicon required, just glass and concrete!) and I'd bet your UK tech guy would be a good deal more comfortable with thermal solar than he is with PV.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Citation, please. Else, don't cite figures.
Citation, please. Certainly the article cited in the OP didn't make such claims. I'm not saying you're wrong, but you'll be a whole lot more convincing if you'd provide some citations.
In 2005, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the cost of the war at $500 billion. That was three years ago. Others put the cost at $1 to $2 trillion in 2006. See this article from The Guardian (UK) for details. If you would like to provide some citations refuting these figures, please do so.
And your basis for this claim is...what, exactly?
From the article cited in the OP, "Commercial projects have already demonstrated that CSP systems can store energy by heating oil or molten salt, which can retain the heat for hours." That covers overnight hours. You'd locate the facilities in areas that typically don't have extended periods of overcast days (e.g., US Southwest, as mentioned in the article). Neither will provide 100% coverage, and so you'll probably still need existing power generation facilities, but they can be scaled back in operation the vast majority of time. What isn't discussed and probably needs to be is whether it is more effective to keep those facilities operating at bare minimum levels vs. come up with some other means to deal with extended poor generation periods.
First, the reference to the 92x92 mile grid says "Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest..." You might note that "plants" is plural. So we're not talking a single 92x92 mile plant, but a large number of plants that cover an equivalent area. However, it's unclear how large an individual plant in this scheme would be vis a vis the ones in operation today.
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