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."

Comments

Back of the envelope power cost calculation

[billstewart]

Most articles talking about power generation are talking about electrical power, so I'd guess that.

Is this thing really cost-effective? If it's mostly a proof of concept it doesn't have to be, of course. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation:

• 5MW * 10 Hours/day = 50 MWH/day = 50000 kWH/day (assumes you don't get peak power all day.)
• 50,000 kWH/day @ 10c/kwh = $5000/day (US power prices seem to start around 10 cents per kWH, though they're higher at prime times.)
• $5000/day * 300 days/year = $1.5M/year
• Euro 60M is about 50 years payback at that rate. Or 25 years if it's 20c/kWH.

So it's shiny and renewable (assuming the plant lasts a long time and doesn't break down into rusty mirrors encrusted with stray salt leaks in a year or two), and not *way* out of line compared to other power sources like coal plants, but it's not aggressively cheap either.

Re:Sounds cool, but...

[arivanov]

The network peak is in the first hours in the evening. Morning (while it warms up) is relatively low consumption. So if it can work through to what in the UK is referred to as the "Eastenders hour" it is well worth it. Pity they built it in Cicily though, I would really like to see those built in quantity in the Sahara. More sun, hotter sun and less cloud. The distance across the mediteranean is well within the limits of modern tech for a high voltage line on the sea bed. High voltage is also considerably safer compared to gas or oil in an earthquake zone (which is pretty much all of the Med).