World's Largest Solar Plants Planned In California

Pickens writes "Two photovoltaic solar power plants will be built in San Luis Obispo County in California, covering 12.5 square miles, that together will generate about 800 megawatts of power, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. 'If you're going to make a difference, you've got to do it big,' said Randy Goldstein, the chief executive of OptiSolar. OptiSolar will employ enough of its amorphous silicon thin-film solar panels at its Topaz Solar Farm project to generate 550 MW. Meanwhile, SunPower will install mechanical tracking for its more expensive 250 MW-worth of crystalline silicon photovoltaics at High Plains Ranch II in a bid to boost their efficiency by 30 percent from following the sun across the sky. The power will be sold to Pacific Gas & Electric, which is under a state mandate to get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2010. The utility said that it expected the new plants to be competitive with other renewable energy sources, including wind turbines and solar thermal plants. 'These landmark agreements signal the arrival of utility-scale PV solar power that may be cost-competitive with solar thermal and wind energy,' said Jack Keenan, chief operating officer and senior vice president for PG&E." Reader thefickler notes some related news that researchers have developed a method of collecting infrared rays at night to supplement day-time solar power.

Comments

Is photovoltaic really the best way to go?

[SendBot]

I'm surprised that photovoltaic is more cost effective than solar thermal. Using fresnel lenses that focus on heat exchangers that double as turbines, it can be cheaper than coal. See here:
http://www.celsias.com/article/utahs-solar-fired-furnace-power-california-less-co/

Re:800 MW?

[jcr]

Indeed. I'm convinced that if big solar plants are ever going to be worth building, they'll have to be based on a thermal approach rather than PV technology.

The molten salt system looks quite promising from the standpoint of solving the time of generation/time of use problem.

-jcr

Split some atoms

[kf4lhp]

I still like nuclear.

The plant that's 4 miles from my house sits on less than 1 square mile and produces over 2300 MW, day or night.

The 12.5 square miles of flat desert land may be no problem out west, but finding several hundred acres of flat land here in the Appalachians just isn't happening. Besides, we'd have to cut down all the trees.

Re:Nuke Plants More Dense

[QuoteMstr]

I think that's more an issue with a specific plant design than with the technology in general. Can't you use radiative closed-cycle cooling, like in a big automobile engine?

Fortunately, the places people tend to actually live are the places with water.

Re:Nuke Plants More Dense

[Original Replica]

A nuclear plant could produce twice that on about ten acres.

Does that ten acres include the uranium mine and the waste disposal site? Because in-situ leaching isn't exactly eco-friendly.

Re:Nuke Plants More Dense

[QuoteMstr]

Yes, but the scale is tiny. Look: this argument comes up so often, I'm going to give it a name:

The Environmentalist's Fallacy

It goes something like this:

1. Consider a technology X that replaces a polluting technology Y
2. Identify some aspect of X that produces pollution
3. Oppose X for this pollution while ignoring the pollution Y produces

In reality, X produces far less overall pollution than Y.

I've seen this argument used to oppose:

• The Prius (Nickel mining)
• Nuclear power (Uranium mining, nuclear waste)
• Solar power (Semiconductor manufacturing, altering desert ecosystems)
• Orbital microwave power (Rocket exhaust)
• Hydroelectric power (Salmon migration)
• Wind power (Birds)

All of these are great technologies. If we're ever to make any progress, we have to learn to think past the environmentalist's fallacy.

Re:Nuke Plants More Dense

[h4rm0ny]

This is another example of the environmentalist's fallacy.

Excuse me, Greenpeace != All Environmentalists. In a lot of ways, they're just a nuisance who claim to speak for others. There are plenty of us "environmentalists" who are very pro-nuclear. I am one of them.

Re:NUCLEAR IS NEVER THE ANSWER

[fizzup]

Canada uses CANDU nuclear reactors, which do not promote nuclear weapons since they use regular unenriched uranium. Canada also has no nuclear weapons. The idea that nuclear power is tied to nuclear weapons is absurd.

This is a little disingenuous. The NRU at Chalk River used to run on high-enriched uranium, and now runs on low-enriched uranium. Source.

Furthermore, the NRU, like the NRX before it, is heavy-water moderated, which is efficient at producing plutonium. Source.

Production of the world's medical isotopes using the NRU is one of the Canadian excuses for being able to produce bombs in a several-month time frame. It's true that Canada has never actually produced a nuclear weapon, but it's also true that some of the programs at Chalk River are "dual use".

Re:Nuke Plants More Dense

[marxmarv]

Lakes?