Large Scale 24/7 Solar Power Plant To Be Built in Nevada

RayTomes writes "The Obama administration has provided a loan guarantee of $737 million to construct the first large-scale solar power plant that stores energy and provides electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week." This solar power project, a heliostat rather than a photovoltaic system, with a molten salt system to store power as heat for times when the sun isn't shining, will be constructed in Nevada and, says the article, is expected to create "600 construction jobs and 45 permanent positions."

Comments

Re:Haven't we learned anything?

[HungryHobo]

an hydro dam is a dangerous thing: more dangerous than a nuclear plant looking at history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

a coal plant is a dangerous thing but it's a sort of low level constant danger.
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/cleanair.htm

drilling a hole for gas or geothermal is a dangerous thing
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Locals_Block_Work_At_Indonesian_Mud_Volcano_999.html

etc etc
Every energy source has dangers and problems.
So it makes sense to simply pick the ones which kill the fewest people overall.

pernament employees per MW

[mdsolar]

So the plant is suppose to produce 480,000 MWh per year which works out to an average capacity of 55 MW. So we get 0.8 permanent employees per MW. http://www.tonopahsolar.com/

At slashdot's favorite nuclear power plant Vermont Yankee, there are more that 650 employees for a plant that does not manage to run at 620 MW all that well. Let's give them 80% up time. That is 1.3 employees per MW.

Nuclear power seems less efficient than solar power by this measure. Maybe nuclear power is just a "make work" type jobs program which actually hurts the economy overall.

Re:pernament employees per MW

[JSBiff]

What planet are you from? 80%? Complete fiction. Vermont Yankee is very reliable, and had, from 2003-2009, an amazing 92.6% capacity factor. Which gives an employee/Mwatt ratio closer to 1.09, which while still slightly higher than the solar plant, isn't particularly bad.

The source for my claim is an open letter from an Entergy executive, being mirrored at the website of Meredith Angwin, who runs the Yes, Vermont Yankee blog.

For more actual *facts* about VY reliability, see this posting at Yes, VY.

In general, nuclear power plants in the U.S. have had an *industry average* of over 90%. That's not a cherry picked record for an individual plant - that's the *average* capacity factor. There are certainly some things to be worried about Nuclear plants, in terms of risks and costs, but reliability just isn't one of them. Let's stick to real problems, instead of making up fake ones.

As for number of employees per MW at nuclear plants, there is probably room for improvement there, with newer designs. However, I don't see that 650 employees for 620MW seems like a particularly *bad* ratio. As mentioned above, it's less than 1.09 empl./MW, so it's in the same general ballpark as the solar plant.

Re:Dunno, article leaves out information

[slim]

Of course the second it actually works the greens will be dead set against it. Gotta be some obscure critter living out in that desert ya know,

Because, just like Slashdotters, "The Greens" isn't a homogeneous group of people with identical opinions, nor is "environmentalists".

You can be an "environmentalist" and only care about the aesthetic appearance of countryside during your own lifetime (therefore opposed to onshore wind turbines).
Or you can be an "environmentalist" and only care about CO2 emissions and their long term effect (probably in favour of onshore wind turbines)
Or any of hundreds of differing viewpoints.

The proper role of government

[omems]

I 'm not certain about the numbers involved, but I'm happy to see the government doing what I believe it should: promoting things that are good for us that we wouldn't otherwise get. By that I mean buffering the long-term payoff on things that cost too much for the market to provide now.

Re:Amazing,

[Errol backfiring]

Yep. But it's a gamble.

Wrong approach

[WindBourne]

This will use a combined solar thermal collector/salt storage, powering a thermal engine. Not a problem. However, what that does is use the solar thermal to heat the storage and then power it all nightlong. So, for example, if you want a 100 MW output 24x7, you will need 300-400 MW tower (a lot more money). Not an issue. BUT, the storage is what is important. It would be better for the companies going into this, to split out the storage portion and make it distributed. In particular, America has a large number of OLD coal-based power plants that are going to go away over the next 20-30 years. Many of these are currently inside of cities. They are typically 50-100 MW in size (which was large monsters in the day). They have power lines that emanate from them. They also have cooling plants (typically, water), combined with steam engines/generators. But all that is really needed to be changed is that piping re-upped, and the coal boiler dropped. Instead, put in a high temp salt storage system, and use electricity to bring the temp up. With this approach, you can have a large CHEAP battery. The argument against it will be the inefficiency of it. There will be a loss of energy of roughly 50%. However, current tech with CASE, Hydro, batteries, etc. all have losses of 20-40% or so, but have many drawbacks. Hydro and Case can only be used in certain areas and are expensive. Batteries are VERY expensive to install, though they have the advantage of going anywhere.

In the end, the question should not be how efficient it is, but how economical it is. A thermal storage that has little costs to set-up, but will last for 20-30 years (within 10-15 years, ultra-caps will become the dominant form of new storage, and would then replace this). That approach extends this equipment for very little costs. More importantly, it would enable ALL FORMS of Alternative Energy to provide power as they can, since the salt storage would act as a buffer for demand systems. Right now, America loses something like 12 GW yearly because they have to feather wind generators at night. Likewise, we have gas turbine generator that are built to handle the demand, esp. when AE falls. With a thermal storage, it provide our demand system, while allowing AE to run at full power.

Funny.

[TheCabal]

I remember reading about plants like this on Slashdot a while ago. A lot of people said that was a good idea, and we should start building them!

Well now that we're actually doing it, suddenly it's a bad idea. Why is that?

Re:Haven't we learned anything?

[HungryHobo]

You seem to have thought this out a lot though your point 4 I'd challenge.
Professors can be wrong sometimes or simply misleading.

16% of the worlds energy already comes from nuclear.

There is apparently a 230-year estimate supply extractable at today's consumption rate with current technologyat current market prices at current rates of use.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last

36.8 years if tomorrow every single plant was replaced with nuclear if you don't use breeder reactors.

With breeder reactors you could multiply that by something like 50-100
Long enough that it's not a significant worry.

Current market prices is also important: if you increase the price, say double it, then that dramatically increases while not significantly increasing the price of running a nuclear plant as the fuel is very cheap compared to building the reactor.

Now there's claims that it is possible to extract uranium from seawater for about 5 or 6 times the current market price which effectively sets an upper limit on the price of uranium and would supply it forever but I'll wait till I see any kind of large scale operation.

point 2 is valid though it's also true of most industry, hazardous waste can be a serious long term issue even if it's not radioactive, it just doesn't get the same media attention.

point 3 is the most significant one for much of the human race and extremely valid.