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World's First Molten-Salt Solar Plant Opens
An anonymous reader writes "Sicily has just announced the opening of the world's first concentrated solar power (CSP) facility that uses molten salt as a heat collection medium. Since molten salt is able to reach very high temperatures (over 1000 degrees Fahrenheit) and can hold more heat than the synthetic oil used in other CSP plants, the plant is able to continue to produce electricity long after the sun has gone down. The Archimede plant has a capacity of 5 megawatts with a field of 30,000 square meters of mirrors and more than 3 miles of heat collecting piping for the molten salt. The cost for this initial plant was around 60 million Euros."
Um what? I swear I saw a documentary about a US plant which did the same thing (even looks the same) and that was years ago.
Ok, so it can produce after the sun has gone down, but wouldn't the inverse be true, too, i.e. it'll take longer for it to reach a heat at which it can start producing in the morning? Anyone who didn't fail physics want to help an ignorant AC out?
Euro 60M is about 50 years payback at that rate. Or 25 years if it's 20c/kWH.
As the plant buffers the energy to use it at night, I'd be inclined to use a 24 hours/day * 5 MW.
Assuming that all the other calculations are correct, this would mean approx 21 years for the payback at 10c/kWh, or 10.5 years at 20c/kWh.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
A phrase one guy said back in the 50's, used often by anti-nuclear types, which needs to be retired.
I wish it would hurry up and come true instead.
5MW for $60M (euro).. really?
That's normal. First, it's a prototype. Second, it's Italy. Third, it's Sicily.
The project started something like 20 years ago by the Nobel Prize laureate (physics) Carlo Rubbia. Seven different governments (both right-wing and center-left-wing) made every effort to cripple the project with bad management and bureaucratic issues. At the same time they poured heaps of money to dubious Sicilian consulting organisations. After a while (actually, after being dismissed from the environmental cabinet) Carlo Rubbia got tired of all these problems and flew to Spain where he built in 3 years six or seven similar plants for a tenth of their Italian price.
No, once the plant is charged with working fluid, you don't need to add any more.
What's this Fahrenheit rubbish?
Yeah, and fusion will one day render liquid fluoride thorium reactors irrelevant, but they've built something now, and it's environmentally friendly, and as long as the cost is reasonable, who cares? They still have something good now.
Qxe4
Our 10MW natural gas turbine at work is about 4m wide, 8m long and 7m high.
If your natural gas turbine doesn't generate the natural gas, you aren't giving the full story here though. You also need hundreds of miles of carefully sealed pipelines and/or freight infrastructure, you also need the refining and mining infrastructure, and you need to factor in the cost for exploration and developing the mine in the first place, with all the dead ends that implies. Natural gas might be cheap but its often subsidised at source, but hey so what you say, I don't pay it. If you live in Europe and the Russians want to extract a trade agreement or something from you, the cost of that natural gas might suddenly start to fluctuate wildly however.
And thats the full story.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
This is the FIRST plant, what it cost is pretty meaningless. You need to ask what it would cost to deploy and run the next 1000 plants. Experience will accumulate, production will be scaled up and competition emerge.
To keep them operational? Nothing at all. I guess sunlight if you wanted to be pedantic.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Here we go again.
There is no "one true energy" because that is instead called putting all of your eggs in one basket. Anyone that tells you otherwise is either selling something or is gullible enough to have been conned by somebody that is. Thus even if there was an actual physical LFTR in existence it would not render all other forms of electricity production irrelevant.
Also we've got a hell of a long way to go before the practical details of working with molten radioactive materials are sorted out. I can't wait to see the "safe, clean" spin get put on liquid fluoride instead of treating it with the respect it deserves.
That's not funny, that's insightful. Because you would have to fight exactly that attitude when trying to build a new nuclear reactor of any kind. And I can't see a lot of countries in europe where you could possibly win that fight (and I don't know enough about the popular opinion about nuclear energy in the US, but I'd guess it would be at least a pretty tough fight).
60 years is ok, so long as the EROI is good. Power stations aren't something you're just going to get sick of in 60 years and want to get rid of. Also, for a prototype plant, I'd expect there to be a lot of waste of both manpower and horsepower in building the thing that would get trimmed over time if it was at all profitable to do.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Yes, but Solar 2 used molten salt as an overnight storage medium only. This plant uses it as the energy collection medium, and is the first to do that.
Er, I ingested more than 400mg of NaCl on my lunch today.
True, my government's recommendation is to ingest less that 6000mg per day, but it's manufacturers of processed food not renewable energy who threaten that.
Not that these heat storage systems use Sodium Chloride, I think they actually use Nitrates (i.e. fertilizer).
Which is why the externalities of pollution need to be accounted for via regulation
a handful of selfish greedy people are no match for millions of selfish, greedy people -u4ya