Mixing Coal and Solar To Produce Cheaper Energy

Al writes "It might not please many environmentalists, but a major energy company is adding solar-thermal power to a coal plant and says this could be the cost-effective way to produce energy while lowering CO2 emissions. Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the coal plant, which is based near Grand Junction, Colorado. Under the design, parabolic troughs will be used to preheat water that will be fed into the coal plant's boilers, where coal is burned to turn the water into steam. Cost savings comes from using existing turbines and generators and from operating at higher efficiencies, since the turbines and generators in solar-thermal plants are normally optimized to run at the lower temperatures generated by parabolic mirrors."

Comments

who would object?

[eighthave]

sounds good to me, donno any environmentalists who would object to burning less coal...

Re:who would object?

[Rei]

Coal doesn't have to be produced by MTR. One can both object to MTR and support reducing the coal consumption of our existing plants. It's not economically realistic to phase out all of our existing coal plants, but if we can eliminate 4/5ths of their coal consumption, that'd be a huge victory.

Re:who would object?

[ciroknight]

A rabid unshaven hippie environmentalist might bring notice to the fact that this is just spending more money propping up coal, rather than investing the money directly into pure green energy (such as a pure solar thermal power plant replacing the coal burning one). But the fact is, there's no way this money would have went to pure green energy in the first place, so they should really be pleased that they are even bothering to try to green their coal plants at all.

Displeased Environmentalists

[Doc Ruby]

If it displeases environmentalists, it will be because it's still really bad for the environment. Using solar to preheat the water instead of more coal to preheat it just admits that solar is a more effective tech for generating energy than coal is. Any coal still burned is still polluting the Greenhouse, creating huge and unmanageable costs just a little down the road (and downwind, the typical "coal is clean" illusion).

They should just convert the entire plant to solar. But coal is too subsidized for them to abandon it, and its lobbyists have too tight a chokehold on the government for solar to have an equal shot at economic efficiency.