US Pays $2B To Develop Concentrating Solar Power Projects

coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy today said it was conditionally committing $2 billion to develop two concentrating solar power projects that it says will offer 500 megawatts of power combined, effectively doubling the nation's currently installed capacity of that type of power. Concentrated solar systems typically use parabolic mirrors to collect solar energy."

Comments

A link to the actual press release

[elrous0]

A link to the actual press release

First of all, these aren't grants or direct money (as the summary seems to imply), they're loan guarantees. And if you read the press release, it's pretty clear this is a helluva lot less about producing clean energy than producing jobs in California.

Like so many government-funded and government-backed programs these days (NASA, I'm looking in your direction), this is basically a just a jobs program. Some Senator gets to go back to his district and say he created jobs. Whether these plants actually ever create any energy is anyone's guess.

Re:A link to the actual press release

[chemicaldave]

Whether these plants actually ever create any energy is anyone's guess.

Without loan guarantees we would never know one way or the other.

Re:A link to the actual press release

[timeOday]

if you read the press release, it's pretty clear this is a helluva lot less about producing clean energy than producing jobs in California

Just because a press release is phrased a certain way doesn't mean a project is actually "about" that. The press release is just a gauge of today's political winds.

Look at Secretary Chu's statement:

"These projects represent an important step in the development of solar as an affordable, clean energy resource in this country," said Secretary Chu. "By investing in the commercial-scale deployment of solar technologies, we can create greater efficiencies that will lower the cost of solar power while creating jobs and increasing our global competitiveness in this key industry."

What part of that is incorrect, or admits the possibility that this is "basically just a jobs program?" I don't see why Concentrated Solar can't be scaled up affordably.

Re:A link to the actual press release

[PinchDuck]

You're right. What company in their right mind would want to produce something that is going to be in constant and ever increasing demand? They would have a guaranteed customer base, guaranteed scarcity, and guaranteed profits. Yup, no company in their right mind would ever want to be a part of that. Thank God that Uncle Sam is here to fill the gap. We should pour money into projects like this right up until the day we default.

Re:A link to the actual press release

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Yeah! It's not like NASA has any current missions that are providing valuable science to our society at all. It's nothing but a worthless jobs program!

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the rest of your post, but please educate yourself about the space industry before commenting on it. I'm getting really tired of correcting ignorance on what is supposed to be a News for Nerds site. Thanks.

Re:A link to the actual press release

[nonguru]

I seem to remember a posting on Slashdot regarding "anti-intellectualism" amongst nerds. Not everything in life has to have a direct dollar value. Pure research may not have a direct practical outcome - ever - and when it does, it involves decades-long pay-off times, but I would not be arrogant enough to write it off totally. Some things have a 'utlity' value - it's valuable because we derive satsifaction from discovering new knowledge. (And I'm an ex-engineer having been involved in the most utilitarian of industries, i.e. telecoms switching, automotive electronics, airborne radar, etc. all of which rely on somebody else having done the basic physics covering electronics design over previous decades of research.)

Re:A link to the actual press release

[rahvin112]

Not a Dime. It's a a loan guarantee. It's entire purpose is to allow the borrower to borrow the money to build at government interest rates (currently 3%) rather than the market rates that would likely be MUCH MUCH higher for a power plant with an unproven design (by unproven I mean there aren't 50,000 of them). Something like this helps develop technology like this without high interest rates that make the project uneconomic. Because the reality is you can't build a power plant and make money at 9% interest rates and only proven technology (as in 20% of the nations power is generated by the technology) is given market rates.

The single greatest barrier to the development of new technology is the interest rate barrier that applies to such projects. Banks assume because it's not "proven" that there is a higher risk of default and charge much higher interest rates. Those higher rates make projects ROI negative or so small as to essentially make the project worthless. If we want to move away from Coal power and to carbon-less sources of power we MUST provide loan guarantees and grants to move the projects from theory to reality. Unlike what politicians these days like to tell you the purpose of government is help move the infrastructure and the country as a whole forward. When you put market forces behind infrastructure you inevitably end up with little to no progress without economic incentive to move forward. Coal is cheap, the technology is proven, if we want to move away from coal (and I do) then Government needs to help find the alternative technology that's just as good because the reality is the banks don't like risk and power is a business where margins are razor thin. Power and Energy are national security issues, we've forgotten that as a nation, particularly if people like you post such sarcastic posts and ignore the reality of the market and it's driving forces.

Is this the way we want to go?

[bjd1970]

Is concentrating solar power into "power plants" the best way? Wouldn't it make more sense to distribute the collection over a large area, namely every persons house?

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[vlm]

Is concentrating solar power into "power plants" the best way? Wouldn't it make more sense to distribute the collection over a large area, namely every persons house?

Big businesses make better campaign contributors than "every persons"

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[ArhcAngel]

How would companies get paid if you were allowed to make your own power? Communist!

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[hackertourist]

You need both. Solar power is low-density, so you need a lot of area to gather enough power.

When you install PV on rooftops, it doesn't provide enough power for buildings with more than a couple of floors. I did some calculations recently for my own apartment building: a roof full of PV panels provided just enough power for one floor of the building, assuming the national average domestic power consumption.

CSP can supplement power generation for high-density areas (cities). It can also easily provide nighttime power by using heat storage. This is more difficult to do with house-sized PV (you need huge battery banks in each house, or a central storage system, e.g. a pumped water storage facility).

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[hackertourist]

PV isn't cost effective yet

Come again? A home PV installation is currently cost-effective even here (.nl), you can recover your investment in something like 12 years. It makes more sense to invest in a PV installation than to put the money in a savings account.

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[Grishnakh]

It also doesn't make sense unless you own your own home, and also intend to live there until you die. For the rest of us who either rent, or will probably move in 2-10 years, investing in PV panels is stupid. I don't know about Holland, but here in the USA people rarely stay in one house unless they're retired. And retired people generally don't have the extra cash to invest in a PV installation since they're on fixed incomes.

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[mdsolar]

I have not done in myself so I can't make a list of don't do's. I found this site which talks about things I've heard are important. http://www.solarexpert.com/instroof5.html I'd suggest getting several estimates now. Pick the lowest one, take 30% off and then let each contractor know that you would be ready to go forward when the price falls that far. Here are your incentives: http://www.dsireusa.org/incentives/index.cfm?getRE=1?re=undefined&ee=1&spv=0&st=0&srp=1&state=IA Doesn't look like anything important is expiring but check yourself.

Re:Is this the way we want to go?

[Grishnakh]

Only if you don't mention it to the realator or inspector. Otherwise it will increase the resale value of your home, much as any other improvement would. Savings on the electrical bill can be quite easily factored into price and should factor into the "is it worth it" equation.

Sorry, no.

Improvements do add to the value of a home, but not anywhere near what they cost in general. Remember, I'm talking about the USA here, and in America, there's one thing both buyers and their loan officers look at when buying and financing a house: cost per square foot. Adding $30k in solar panels doesn't add any square footage, but it adds a lot of cost. So if you try to price your home accordingly, the buyer and bank are going to see that and shy away in favor of a cheaper home. Even if the buyer is smart enough to understand a higher monthly payment equals much lower electric bills, the bank isn't going to care: their appraiser is going to say "this house has a much higher price/s.f. than all the comparables in the area", so the bank is going to refuse to finance it unless the buyer ponies up a much, much larger downpayment.

This is basically why all the lower-end houses (i.e., less than $1 million) here (esp. new ones) are cheaply-made pieces of shit, because it doesn't pay to buy quality. The buyers (the ones you'll be trying to sell your house to when you're ready to move on) don't care, and if they do, they can't get financing, so you won't recoup your investment as you'll have to drop your price to be competitive with all the other POSes in the area. Sure, you'll be able to get a few thousand more for a nicely fixed-up home than one that's as cheap as the builder could make it, but it won't be enough to recover your investment in fancy plumbing fixtures and granite (and solar panels), so if you buy those things, make sure you're buying them for your own enjoyment, not because you think you're going to get your money back, because you won't.

Energy != power

[Scareduck]

As you correctly note, the estimated amount of energy harvested from this project remains undisclosed.

The "enough to power X number of homes" is therefore a kind of fraud.

Re:Energy != power

[Grishnakh]

Not really. Whether you're powering homes or factories or offices, consumers use far more power during the daytime than during the night.

It's even more pronounced here in Arizona, where we blast the A/C during the day because it's so damn hot, and then don't use it much at night (or not at all, in the winter) because it's so much cooler. Because of this, we actually use our nuclear power here to pump water uphill during the nighttime, and then generate hydroelectric power with that water during the daytime to meet peak load needs.

So a solar (thermal) plant making lots more power during the daytime is not really a problem in many places. A few of these would be great in combination with a nuke plant, with the nuke plant providing the base load at all hours and the solar plants providing power for peak loads.

Mojave Solar Project details

[hackertourist]

Actual information about the Mojave Solar Project can be found here and here.
The technology used in the MSP isn't entirely new (has been used in at least one other plant) but looks to be an incremental improvement.
The plant features heat storage using molten salt, and won't be using fossil fuels as nighttime backup.

Price per Home

[im_thatoneguy]

$2B in loan guarantees for 100,000 homes. I wonder if they're guaranteeing the entire cost of the plants or just a part of the financing.

That would work out to $20k per home.

Average monthly bill for a home is approximately $100 a month. So $1200 per year. 12 year pay-off ignoring operating expenses and maintenance.

Sounds like a good investment.

Re:Price per Home

[Rei]

I can't speak for solar, but with wind, O&M is generally less than a fifth of the construction cost. I'd expect solar to be even less.

One nice thing about solar relates to grid stabilization. With wind, any turbine you add to the grid destabilizes it. At low penetration, the effect is quite small, easily dwarfed by demand instabilities, mind you, but it's still worth consideration. With solar however, at low penetrations, you're offsetting the increased demand that bright, sunny days impart to the grid. Low penetration of solar over a broad geographical area actually helps stabilize the grid, even without energy storage. Note the "geographical" component, mind you; having just one plant is vulnerable to the "a cloud just showed up" phenomenon (unless we get a smart grid, or at least a data exchange with power-hungry industries; barring that, you need integrated or standalone peaking -- although integrated peaking is pretty darned easy (see SEGS))

Re:Price per Home

[ShakaUVM]

You think the average home pays $100 for power in California? Heh. Not if you live in the desert and run your AC at 50c/kWh.

$20k/home could install small-scale solar on all of these houses, and without the inevitable lawsuits (the Sierra Club has successfully blocked two sites already, costing $$) and cost overruns. It also demonstrates that the supposed economy of scale benefit from large scale solar are also illusory.

Re:Parabolic Focusing Panels

[gnick]

Of course the mirrors could be focused to take down overhead aircraft or satellites as well.

OK - Now I'm sold. The equivalent of burning an ant w/ a magnifying glass, but huge and in space? Count me in!

Re:Parabolic Focusing Panels

[Rei]

Which would be just awesome. ;) Can you imagine getting the automated phone call:

To PG&E customers in your area: We regret to inform you that your area will be experiencing rolling blackouts this afternoon as we utilize our power plants as massive solar death rays against the hardware of our nation's foes. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. As a token of apology, we invite you to enjoy a spectacular light show in the sky at no expense to you.

Re:This is idiotic

[Rei]

Does your proposal come with a free unicorn?

EGS is not that cheap, or anywhere close to it. And the tech is less mature than solar thermal. And I say this as a big EGS supporter (actually, I've moved more towards SWEGS, which is a particular variant of EGS).

Why not more?

[MoldySpore]

Really? Only $2Bil? When we are spending $708 Billion on defense? Why are we only putting up 0.0028% of the annual defense budget towards renewable, clean energy like this? Not sure how this makes sense. While it is nice to see a number in the Billions being put towards a project like this, I have a hard time taking the initiatives seriously when there are so many other bloated budgets we could chop down in size to put towards initiatives like this...

Re:Why not more?

[Rei]

Worse: These are loan guarantees, not grants. The military never pays back its budget with interest.

Re:Why not more?

[belthize]

Says the guy with the freedom to post as AC.

I feel fairly confident that if we hadn't doubled the military budget in the past decade we could probably still post on /.

If you think the only thing between the US and "loss of American way of life as we know it"(TM) is 300B why the hell aren't we spending 2T. Seems kind of risky to live that close to the edge.

Apologies to all you non-US folks with no military, it's sad you can no longer post on /., we'll keep the light on until the hordes finally over run us.

Re:Why not more?

[MoldySpore]

...Military spending looks like a waste until someone wants to take your stuff and you don't have the strength to prevent them...

Really? How can you argue FOR the huge defense budget? We have somewhere in the vicinity of 5000 nuclear warheads deployed or in stockpile (They plan to decommission enough by 2012 to return to "1957 numbers" of warheads, but everyone forgets how much more powerful they are today than they were in 1957). We could trigger a worldwide nuclear winter ourselves 50 times over without any other country firing a single shot. We still have 174,000 troops deployed world wide, with 60,000+ in Germany, 50,000+ in Japan, and 30,000+ in South Korea. Why? Your guess is as good as mine, because those wars ended long ago. The list goes on and on and on. How is that smart spending in a time of economic hardship? The tanks and missiles and ships aren't going anywhere. I guarantee calling back all troops deployed worldwide not currently engaged in Afghanistan would net a huge amount of $ that could be spent in a MUCH better place, especially now with the economy in the shitter. And that is just ONE example.

I like the irony

[Colin Smith]

Solar thermal concentrating power stations to provide electricity to run air conditioning.
 

Re:I like the irony

[Rei]

Actually, you can run cooling systems directly off heat.

Re:Because it won't pay for itself.

[kaiser423]

The US government routinely provides loan guarantees for oil refineries, oil fields, wind plants, coal plants, natural gas pipelines, solar plants, etc, etc all of which are routinely profitable.

Strangely, the government views a stable US power grid as something that is important to our society. Who'd have thunk?

That's all?

[ALeader71]

$2B for a measely 500kwh? Pathetic! Solar just won't cut it. It's a technology for sunny states, but not so much for the rest of the nation. Shame GreenPeace isn't allowing cold states to develop alternate energy solutions that work in states with weather.