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Largest US Power Storing Solar Array Goes Live
Lucas123 writes "A solar power array that covers three square miles with 3,200 mirrored parabolic collectors went live this week, creating enough energy to power 70,000 homes in Arizona. The Solana Solar Power Plant, located 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, was built at a cost of $2 billion, and financed in large part by a U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee. The array is the world's largest parabolic trough plant, meaning it uses parabolic shaped mirrors mounted on moving structures that track the sun and concentrate its heat. A first: a thermal energy storage system at the plant can provide electricity for six hours without the concurrent use of the solar field. Because it can store electricity, the plant can continue to provide power during the night and inclement weather."
"Because it can store electricity" Someone doesn't understand how it works...
You are right. We should bulldozer it at once!
THL phish sticks
The plant doesn't really store electricity. It can however, store heated salts that can be used to generate electricity well after sunset.
The plant doesn't generate solar power, the plant generates electricity.
Won't that prove that solar power is ineffective? It's Arizona, it can't be that sunny all the time.
And at night? What will they do when the sun is down?
So I'm not going to respond to the first post because it makes no sense. But I'll happily use the "first reply" spot, thank you very much, to actually say something. This $2 billion plant breaks down to close to $30,000 per home serviced. Seems a wee bit excessive, considering the average home electric bill in Arizona runs something like $200 (I researched the web for a few minutes to estimate this). Consider that installing a home solar system would run something like $10-$20k at most in a sunny place like Arizona (considerably less w various tax incentives). Looking like a bit of a boondoggle?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solana_Generating_Station
Interesting that the wholesale price of this electricity is 14c/kWh. The overnight residential rate in Phoenix is about 7c. I guess they're hoping to resell a lot of this to businesses during the day, or they're just going to eat the price difference (over nuclear, gas and coal) to meet the 15% renewable energy mandate for 2025.
But the demand is typically down significantly 6 hours after sundown.
Not if you build a data center next door.
The real question is, can it withstand fracking underneath?
Will somebody tell me if I should get a woody because it's oh-so-wonderful solar power, or should I get angry that evil humans are spoiling the desert?
Nighttime lasts longer than that.
RTFA - "These six hours will satisfy Arizona's peak electricity demands during the summer evenings and early night time hours . . "
Someone do the math. $2 bil over 30 years for 70k homes.
I'm not saying it's useless, but I am curious if there's some fundamental limitation that's caused this. If you want base load power, you'd probably want more like 12 hours of storage and it seems strange they wouldn't go for that, since they're half way there. If you're only going for intermittent power, this system is more expensive to build and operate than a photovoltaic system would be, but it makes sense if you add energy storage to the picture.
I already did. It's $0.11 per kWh with no operating costs or interest added in. Or it's about $1000 per home per year (again no operating costs or interest payments).
Well, that's all well and good for you people in areas that don't have 99.8 percent green energy like we in Seattle do.
Meanwhile, I just shelled out $150 to buy one unit of the Seattle Aquarium solar panel array, which will reduce my annual already green electric bill by about $46 until around 2035.
You have fun with your 1 or 2 percent gains - we're cooking with green energy and leaving you in the DUST!
(caveat - we pump out more solar, biofilm, biofuel, wind, and energy patents every year than the rest of you do, just at the UW itself here in Seattle)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
actually, this provides shade. If you'd ever lived in the desert, you'd get why that's good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
And since they're selling the power to APS at 14c/kWh, it seems like a good plan...
In Arizona, we use most of our power during the day, cooling homes.
Most of us work during the day, so we only need to really cool our homes in the evening (unless we have pets).
for not that many megawatts. Not to mention using up a ton of land.
Is there any solar power that is not a blight on the land? Nothing quite like enhancing the scenery with 20 huge panels at roadside.
I'd like to remind them that as a trusted Slashdot personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their energy storage caves.
That is all.
I did the calculations and it is around 1200 square feet per household that this project is powering. I'm not sure this type of land use could really scale.
it also seems stupid to use a turbine that requires water in the middle of a desert and is subject to the energy lost in conversion. I'm a fan of the "by all means necessary" approach to solving our energy problems but this is just a huge waste IMO. Perhaps it has use as a prototype, otherwise I'm not convinced it's a good idea, at all.
Economics. You don't need nearly as much power between midnight and 6 (7? 8?), during which time the nukes and coal, which can't be throttled too much, will oblige. Designing heat storage capacity for around-the-clock is wasting money, at least in the current grid configuration and state of the tech.
bit of an exaggeration, but that's ok. We're still way ahead of the curve even if 99.8% isn't true.
http://www.seattle.gov/light/fuelmix/
Few people here turn their cooling systems OFF during the day. Also, the hottest days of the year here are in the summer, where a lot of families have kids at home. YES, there's absolutely a spike in electricity around 4pm (when it's still hot and people come home), but businesses (which a lot of us go to during the day) have air conditioners too.
Nighttime lasts longer than that.
Or more likely, they did some demand modeling and found some value that made the economic sense?
Electricity demand follows a predictable pattern, with the lowest demand between 10pm and 7am. If surplus power (to storage) were to transition from positive to negative in the early evening, then 6 hours of stored capacity might work out pretty well.
Yes, night is longer than the 6 hours mentioned in the story summary. But the story summary is a bit misleading.
That is six hours running at full capacity and also running entirely from the salt tanks. Neither of those conditions are likely to be true overnight.
Solar plants continue operating at reduced power during cloud cover and at night time. Even at times of reduced sunlight or at night there is still energy available. It does not need to run entirely from the salt tanks.
Secondly, nighttime is not peak usage hours.
The Solana salt tanks are about 740 cubic meters so they could probably store around 16TJ of energy. (For physics impaired, 1 joule per second == 1 watt.) That is a lot of power. Since it will mostly be relying on that stored energy at night and not running at full capacity, that stored energy could reasonably last through the night and on through a good portion of the following day.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
As an Arizonan, I assure you, we have no use for any of the land between Phoenix and Yuma sans that which the Palo Verde nuclear plant sits on -- and there's a lot of it.
Wrong. I buy Green Up and Green Power, which means my bill is normally $12 more a month, which pays for 99.8 percent green power.
Adapt or die.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Technically nothing stores electricity except for super-cooled superconductors. Batteries "store electricity" in the form of chemical energy and even capacitors only "store electricity" as two charged plates. But I think we all know what they meant, that it was storing the potential for electricity.
That's really small, in fact it's less than the average size of a home. Considering you have a lot of otherwise unusable desert out west, this sounds like a great use of land.
It must be great to live close enough to rivers to get 89% of your electricity from hydro.
For the rest of the world, electricity generation is still a problem.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Well after sunset?
Actually, when you read up on it, the storage capacity is exhausted shortly after sunset. 6 Hours max.
The efficiency falls off at low sun angles.
Sunset usually happens right at peak demand time, evening cooking, and late afternoon air conditioning.
Plus the site has high ground to the immediate west, sunset comes earlier for them.
Don't get me wrong, this is an impressive feat of engineering.
It was installed very fast, hacked out of prime farm land (or as prime as it gets in Arizona).
Google Maps Satellite view, with imagery dated 2013 http://goo.gl/maps/Qh7e5 shows nothing
but desert with truck roads laid out, and now they are up and running.
(Either that or Google is Playing Fast and Loose with image dates, because Google Earth shows the same
images but has a 2010 date on them)
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Don't get caught up so much on thinking the people of one particular area are worth more than the people of another area. That's what wars are made of.
You know we have lots of desert sitting out there doing nothing right? A whole lot of it. Miles and miles and miles of sand and rock.
More than enough to power the entire country on not even half of it....
Those education cuts really did hurt :(
If you want base load power, you'd probably want more like 12 hours of storage and it seems strange they wouldn't go for that, since they're half way there.
You can trade peak power for more hours of lesser power generation, but it's not a balanced 1:1 trade off.
For every extra hour of heat retention, you lose a lot of your power generation.
And it's also more expensive to operate that type of plant.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
it also seems stupid to use a turbine that requires water in the middle of a desert and is subject to the energy lost in conversion. I'm a fan of the "by all means necessary" approach to solving our energy problems but this is just a huge waste IMO. Perhaps it has use as a prototype, otherwise I'm not convinced it's a good idea, at all.
Can you think of another way of generating electricity from heat on a commercial scale?
According to this it is a bit lower than that at about 94.2%. It is also a bit skewed by the fact that Seattle is close to mountain ranges with lots of valleys that can produce hydroelectric power. If you remove the hydroelectric, 89.8% the percentage drops to 4.4%.
Not everyone lives in an area that has plentiful hydroelectric generation. It is like Arizona touting how much solar based electricity they are generating and slagging Seattle for falling behind.
Meanwhile, I just shelled out $150 to buy one unit of the Seattle Aquarium solar panel array, which will reduce my annual already green electric bill by about $46 until around 2035.
That is only because you are getting credited for $1.15/KWh when electricity sells locally for $0,0672. You are being paid over 17 times the going rate. Making money due to tax incentives really skews the picture.
By the way according to Seattle Power the credits amount to "an estimated annual credit of almost $29 per solar unit"
I really don't think comparing a highly subsidizes small , 49 kW, project with al large commercial project is very valid at all.
What I don't get is why they only went for six hours of storage capacity? A few years ago, a friend of mine described an idea to me for a salt tank system that would take days to come up to working temperature, and days to cool off. You'd just add heat whenever you could, and draw power whenever you needed it. His estimate was that the power would end up costing 3 to 4 cents per KwH.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Shhh... Don't argue. The average slashdotter has a lot better technological insight than what "stupid" people with a paltry $2000000000 credit line could ever access.
Those education cuts really did hurt :(
The efficiency falls off at low sun angles.
It falls off faster for solar hotwater (like this plant) than for photo-voltaic.
You start drawing on your stored heat WELL BEFORE sunset, usually several
hours before sunset, because as I pointed out that is the peak demand period, and your
storage is exhausted in 6 hours, from the time you start drawing.
So maybe two or three hours after sunset your storage is exhausted.
Its a long time till sunrise.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
News just in - big stuff costs a lot, big stuff that is a cutting edge experiment even more so.
Also I suggest you look at the fine print and breakdown of those numbers you've quoted - I'd say they are assuming the tenth plant or so of a type where savings can be made due to already sunk expenses and from experience. For the China number I suggest you use a real plant instead of a wild estimate. They some AP1000s almost ready to go, a couple of years behind the initial plan and a few billion over expected budget but real things instead of rubbery numbers with an implied attack at "regulation costs". I suspect a lot of those extra costs are really due to China not having so many parasitic "horse judges" doing a "heck of a job" in the businesses involved with construction. I'm not suggesting that China is not corrupt, simply that the US nuclear lobby is vastly more so.
Not at large scales. PV does not scale well since if you double the size you only double the output. With thermal solutions of all types you can get a lot more heat out of stuff if you have a lot of hot stuff, so doubling the size gives you more than double the output due to an increase in the amount of energy you can get out. For example, if you don't have much steam you can only have a high pressure turbine but if you have a lot you can use the leftover steam that comes out of the first turbine and feed it into another with a different blade pattern to extract more energy and so on.
With thermal it has to be big so you have an enormous capital cost, but if it's big enough PV just will not match it. A 500MW PV array would cost a vast amount more than a 500MW thermal solution.
I don't know about you but fracking with hot salts is not my idea of fun, hot wax well that's different.
so that's $28,571 spent per home supplied with power, sounds great I think I'll order 20
Anyone else out there thinking this?
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
China 2007:
Tianwan Nuclear Power Plant
$3.3 Billion for 2,120 MW
$1.56 Million/MW
US 2013:
Solana Solar Power Plant
$2 Billion for 280 MW
$7.1 Million/MW
And we wonder why we keep having to borrow money from them?!
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
Someone's going to start bitching about gila monsters catching cold because they don't have enough sunshine at ground level to bask in.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
If you can provide renewable energy for 6 hours of every night powered by nothing more than the sun that's hitting the earth anyway, I'd say that puts you way ahead of the game. And it means that much less fossil fuel and all the external costs that brings.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yes, but during our horrible, soul-killing abominable summers (6 months out of the year) AC usage 24/7 is pretty well required. How many nights a year does the overnight low not dip below 100? (I moved to phoenix from oregon, i might be .. exaggerating, but shit summers be hot here.)
Have you ever been to Arizona? It's pretty empty.
It's not like they're going to be growing crops on that scrub desert.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Even at times of reduced sunlight or at night there is still energy available.
Did you just claim that this solar plant can run (at greatly reduced capacity) off of starlight? Even moonlight seems pretty improbable.
I've never been to Arizona but I have been in near-desert and it gets pretty darn cold at night, under the stars.
Could you expand a bit on this point and maybe provide a reference link? This is intriguing.
BTW no complaints about the rest of what you wrote. I agree that the people who designed the plant probably had a clue, and the amount of energy it stores is likely to be a sensible amount.
When we, as lay people, read about engineering like this, if we see something that looks odd we should assume we don't fully understand the situation rather than assuming that the engineers were totally incompetent.
(But the Obamacare web sites really were incompetently engineered. Hey, government, big surprise there.)
Except the collectors, although not operating at peak efficiency, due to the sun light passing through more air (but the effective surface area is still the same, since the mirrors rotate to track the sun) they still provide heat energy to the molten salt, right up until sunset.
The uninformed who spout off endlessly about how great green energy is rarely realize or talk about the cost to keep the power plants running at peak efficiency for a long enough time to recoup the initial investment. So what are the overhead costs? If they increase the cost of electricity to the consumer, are they going to care that there's a chance the Great Barrier Reef won't shrink as much especially since most of them couldn't afford to go see it?
Do you think they vent the steam to the atmosphere? Or do you think they might put it in a closed loop so they can reuse the water?
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
With that we can cover that state of New York and power 1/4 of the U.S. Let's start by getting rid of NY City.
With HVDC transmission lines getting put in that makes a lot of places close enough to get electricity from hydro, or solar from the Sahara or whatever.
Remote power sources such as tidal hydro or cold coastal currents near hot land (Atacama Desert) become more viable as transmission losses drop. Even without room temperature superconductors we are headed that way.
Yes but that's a Russian design with research and development paid for by the state. Buying American is a lot more as is being shown with the AP1000 reactors.
Most of you don't work weekends, and probably half the homes have somebody home during weekdays (retired people, unemployed people, stay at home parents, latch key kids), and it's hotter during the day than the evening, so you need a lot of daytime power still.
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Peak use is an daylight.
If you are going to be an armchair quarterback at least go as far as working out that it's a game using a ball before you comment.
I hope so
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
First, I don't think it was his own idea, he was just describing it to me, and second, the US government is the last place I'd go with any promising technology.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
More storage capacity beyond peak hours probably isn't profitable. You want to sell electricity during peak because that's when you're getting the highest dollar value for your power. They probably designed the salt storage, so the total output of the plant was extended long enough to generate during those peak evening hours, and no longer, so baseload power takes over. The smaller your storage is, the less power you would put into storage and the more power you put into spinning your turbine.
Helps to read this in the voice of Sheldon.
Base load is the easy stuff in power generation. The peaks are vastly greater than the minimum demand at night.
Absolutely. The whole thing about the sun not shining at night is a total red herring, because that's not a problem until the day we produce more solar energy than we can use in real time, and we're a couple orders of magnitude away from that good problem too have.
PV does not scale well since if you double the size you only double the output. With thermal solutions of all types you can get a lot more heat out of stuff if you have a lot of hot stuff
No, not really. The energy available is directly proportional to the collector area, be it PV or thermal.
Besides, installed PV is around $4/watt (and falling fast), while this thermal plant was over $7/watt.
If the government offers you 2 billion dollars to build a solar power plant, you build a solar power plant, whether you need one or not. It's not like they need to have this facility running 24/7 in order to supply electricity. Arizona still has plenty of coal, nuclear and natural gas power. Those will still supply the bulk of the power. The solar array will be used to supply power during peak times during the day.
You never build a Solar plant because you need more electricity. Because if you build one you also have to build a traditional plant in order for cloudy days and night. it just doesn't make economic sense. But if you don't actually NEED more power, and somebody is offering you a grant, then a Solar plant is a GREAT idea.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I found it remarkable that an article about a system that "stores electricity" (or energy, as you properly suggest) doesn't actually say anything about the energy storage method.
You may be right that heated salts are the method, but I've read that there are significant problems with salt for energy storage that revolves around its high corrosiveness. So, I was hoping that some new storage method would be revealed in the article. Instead, it reveals...wait for it...nothing - not even the well-known salt method.
the energy available from the sun is proportional to collector area, but the capital cost favors thermal generation over PV, especially as the scale goes up. You make a gigawatt power plant with solar thermal and you can leverage all the big steam turbines and such that are already designed and built for things like conventional gas fired or nuclear power plants.
The capital costs of most central collector designs also favor going bigger. One collector and more mirrors makes for a hotter collector, which improves the hot temperature side of the Carnot efficiency limit ((Thot-Tcold)/Thot). Handling 1000 psi superheated steam is a well understood technology, and you can get very close to the theoretical limit as you bring it back down to "room" temperature. Trough designs have a tough time getting really hot (too much collector area for a given mirror area) although there is progress in window design (heat that collector up to a few hundred degrees C and it radiates pretty effectively)
There's also a whole issue of life cycle carbon and other waste impact. Semiconductor manufacturing is not known for it's cleanliness or low power consumption. But then, steel making isn't much better.
Well, that's all well and good for you people in areas that don't have 99.8 percent green energy like we in Seattle do.
How can you breath with all the smug in the air up there? Do you have any figures on how many are lost per day due to self righteousness?
Electricity is the relative flow of electrical charge so storing electricity is an absurd notion. You can store electrical charge however.
The cost of the plant works out to about 30k per home which leads to some very interesting ideas.
Every home could have footed the bill as incremental construction cost. Considering how much we pay for electricity, the initial cost would pay itself off in about 20 years which is actually not bad.
For this cost, every house could have fitted high efficiency solar panels - although I have no clue if it would be the same equivalent thing.
The govt should be investing in smart grids that encourage people to contribute to the grid efficiently, not subsidizing solar power plants.
Just some thoughts. I'm not an expert though.
Unless there are some nuclear reactions going on in there, I really don't think it is creating any energy at all, much less "creating enough energy to power 70,000 homes".
I did the calculations and it is around 1200 square feet per household that this project is powering. I'm not sure this type of land use could really scale.
1200 square feet is a square less than 35 feet on a side. It's also about a 36th of an acre. So, not only is it pretty much guaranteed to be less area than the lots these households are in, it's probably smaller than the interior floor space of many of the households. So, in the worst case scenario, you could build this sort of power plant on top of a town. There is, of course, a finite amount of sunlight that hits our planet, so if we cover the Earth in one massive ten story apartment building populated at full capacity we won't have enough power from Earth-bound solar. For current and near future needs, it's plenty, however.
It's actually kind of scary flying into Phoenix the way that the desert just sort of stops and the city grid starts.
I immediately did the same calculation. It's not that much relative to the footprint of a house, but it's probably quite huge compared to the footprint for an equivalent capacity natural gas or nuclear plant.
Whether it makes sense depends on the potentil revenue generation value of the land -- the opportunity cost. It wouldn't make economic sense in the Santa Clara Valley in CA, where land is fabulously expensive, but it might make sense in an undeveloped area of the Sonoran Desert where land is cheap -- e.g. on the outskirts of the Phoenix area. This discounts any environmental costs, of course, but these also would vary from site to site.
It's pretty clear this is not a technology for solving *all* our energy needs (as nuclear was intended to be in the 50's and 60's). But the nifty thing about electricity is that it doesn't matter where it comes from. You don't have to put all your eggs in one technology basket, you can use a mix of sources. Which means you can stop building these things when the marginal *environmental* cost starts to go up. You just have to build enough to reach economies of scale that allow you to make a decent profit.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Right, and that is another reason this plant is way more efficient than roof top collectors.
It can make the best use of early morning and late afternoon sun, even when there is much more air the light has to go through.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Technically nothing stores electricity except for super-cooled superconductors.
Depends on how you define electricty I suppose. If "static" electricity isn't really electricity, then you have a point. We refer a lot to "electrical flow" as if there is a thing called "electricity" that is made up of electrons, rather than electricity being the flow itself. If you think of electricity as an "electron fluid" then it's still electricity even when it's just has a potential to flow as in static electricity. If you think of it the way you're thinking of it (which is more technically correct) then only actual flow of charged particles (which don't just have to be electrons) is electricity.
Still, you're ignoring ways other than superconductors that you can "store" electricity. Cyclotrons, for example. Or natural magnetic artifacts like the Van Allen belts. For that matter, I'm not sure there's such a thing as a perfect insulator, so "static" elecricity isn't really truly static, it's just that the flow is very slow. So capacitors and Leydon jars, etc. can be said to be "storing" electricity by slowing it down, just as pretty much any vessel "storing" water actually allows the water to flow out of it very, very slowly.
In any case, it's always tricky to talk in absolutes. You always find yourself having to invent arbitrary constants and cutoffs or applying "I know it when I see it" style reasoning.
However the amount of electricity produced is not. You can recover energy more energy from a vast amount of steam pushing a series of turbines around to drive generators than you could from the electrons coming from the PV cells coving the same area.
Can you think of another way of generating electricity from heat on a commercial scale?
Stirling engines are getting quite good and might be competitive, but they're generally considered a less tried and true technology and most engineers are going to want to play it safe and go with what's known to work. At the very least, they won't want to combine multiple relatively untested technologies together. Plus, the turbines they're using are going to be essentially "off the shelf" commodity technology.
Make it bigger and those costs come down. Of course the sensible thing is to solve a lot of problems by building a pilot plant such as this before you build the large plant - hence this project. It's not big but it's big enough for a proof of concept.
So in other words this thing makes perfect sense and bitching about it is like complaining that the Wright brothers didn't start off with a SR71. Why should they have bothered when airships existed?
I really hate the "N homes" nonsense, can somebody tell me the power output in jigga-watts please? And then divide by 3 to account for the fact that you only get good enough sun to run a thermal concentrator about 8 hours a day, so I can compare the output to a natty gas plant costing around a $billion? I think I already know the answer though...
Is this the BrightSource plant? I thought that was in CA. It's a prototype so hopefully the cost can come down by 4X or something in production. Assuming the "environmentalist" movement doesn't file lawsuits over endangered desert turtles to slow deployment and keep costs up, of course.
Except for the fact that, in the southwestern US, peak power demand tracks sunlight pretty well. And that peaking plants (run on coal) are fairly expensive. And that all that solar power can simply displace daytime use of hydro, which can fill-in the shortfall on cloudy days of high demand.
So, you're just *completely* wrong... That's not too bad here on /.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is the USA we used to know! At last, leading from behind is over. At last, American engineers are back at work again.
The video in the article is really inspiring. I hope it is the beginning of the re-industrialization of North America and Europe on the basis of clean,clever, non-outsourcecable technologies.
This technology could be miniaturized, automated, computerized, and finally placed on all roofs.
Green up and Green Power is a feel good tax if ever there was one. Washington state is producing as much green energy as it can. Paying the extra fees does not make them produce more. It just allows you to feel good that you are paying for green energy. If you were not paying for the extra fee the green power would be going to someone else who didn't pay the fee. All it does is make the ratio of green energy use for someone else lower but the overall average stays the same.
The Solana salt tanks are about 740 cubic meters so they could probably store around 16TJ of energy. (For physics impaired, 1 joule per second == 1 watt.) That is a lot of power. Since it will mostly be relying on that stored energy at night and not running at full capacity, that stored energy could reasonably last through the night and on through a good portion of the following day.
1. Not all of that energy is usable. Once the salt stops being molten, it stops being *useful.
2. AFAIK there's one solar-thermal plant that managed 24 hours of energy output... Once.
It's not really possible.
*You never want the salt to cool enough to stop being molten. It's the equivalent of stopping a cement mixer and letting the cement dry.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Right, and that is another reason this plant is way more efficient than roof top collectors.
It can make the best use of early morning and late afternoon sun, even when there is much more air the light has to go through.
You see to have reversed your insane position from your GGPost. The article (ok, summary) says you can output for six hours at max power after sunset. From 9am to 3pm sun is plenty hot in most places they'd build these things, but lets pretend there's a 4 hour eclipse from 3pm to 7pm (sunset) every day. Even if the sun vanished at 3pm, six hours reserve gets you through to 9pm. That handles the main power spike of AC required in the middle of the day and the main "getting home and ACing/cooking/electric hot water showering phase of the day". Nuke, hydro, coal and oil handle the rest of the relatively minimal baseline load just fine as is. Sure we can (and should) ditch coal and oil for the environment or strategic reserve options eventually, but this is a great process to use right now for new plants. I say ths as a PV guy. Solar thermal is where big plants should be. PV+grid tie is great for your own home/business, but solar thermal (and desalination in certain areas) is a the big win combo.
Someone's going to start bitching about gila monsters catching cold because they don't have enough sunshine at ground level to bask in.
The only people bitching audibly about that are the "clean coal" companies who front fringe environmental groups. Buy yourself a panel or three and run attic fans and 12V lights off it. Only idiots think you need to completely sever yourself from the grid. Your PV doesn't have to handle the inrush surge of your central AC's startup in a 108* heat wave, it only needs to offset a fraction of the cost so you can set it to 75* instead of 78* without feeling "cheap or hot" in summer.
Most PV seems to have a limited life span. From what I understand, you can expect a MTBF of 10-20 years or something like that and then they are garbage. With thermal, you can more or less infinitely replace parts. The downside is that thermal requires more maintenance because you have the generator bit to take care off, but if your scale is big enough, it might be worth it?
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
Yeah, it stores energy.
I'm not sure this type of land use could really scale.
Oh, it will scale. (But to see the beauty of solar, one must assume that power storage and long distance power transfer will get more efficient over time.) An area the size of Spain of solar plants will power the entire world in vastly overestimating power needs for the year 2030. That's 496,000 km2. Seems like a lot until you consider the Sahara desert is 9,400,000 km2.
Initially, the cost for solar power seems high compared to nuclear. But over time, say 100 years, considering the cost of operation of solar is vastly cheaper than nuclear, and the cost of indefinite nuclear waste storage and the ridiculous costs of decommissioning plants... solar power, even with today's technology, absolutely crushes nuclear power.
No, TFA clearly says that it can run for 6 hours after sunset, not six hours from some indeterminate point where the sun reaches a low angle before sunset.
Anyway, peak time is during the day, not the evening. It's when people need air-con and industry is active. In the evening it gets cooler and commercial buildings shut down.
You also make the classic mistake of judging the technology as if it were the only source of energy, which of course it isn't and was never intended to be.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The problem with most large powerstations is they're generally some distance away from the towns and area they're generating electricity for. A massive chunk of electricity gets lost in the miles and miles of cable used to route it to people's homes, massively reducing efficiency.
You never build a Solar plant because you need more electricity. Because if you build one you also have to build a traditional plant in order for cloudy days and night. it just doesn't make economic sense.
I think you left out the bit that because it's a solar THERMAL plant, it still generates power for hours after the sun goes down, but yeah, the details from reading the article probably aren't that important if you have a point to make.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
That's only $29K per house. Cheep!
Sunset usually happens right at peak demand time
Any actual data on that you might want to link?
Ezekiel 23:20
..Don't get caught up so much on thinking the people of one particular area are worth more than the people of another area. That's what wars are made of...
Actually, that has very little to do with it. Wars happen because the LEADERS of a country want them. Goering had a famous quote about it. The individual people in all countries generally get along just fine....
You've collected up to 16 TJ of heat. That's not all going to turn into electricty, some of it needs to be carried off. A closed loop can move heat as steam, but it still needs a heat sink to condense that water. if you don't care about reuse, you can vent not just the steam but also the associated heat into the atmosphere. (The heat will be released when the steam condenses to form a cloud, on a large enough scale everything is closed-loop)
In 2010 there were 114,800,000 U.S. households, 114,800,000 / 70,000 powered homes = 1,640 of these facilities at 3 square miles per facility = 4,900 square miles! Airizona is 114,006 square miles, that is 4.2% of the state covered in panels....or roughly the entire state of Connecticut if you have some room for growth.
neorush
No one has seemed to have noticed that the capacity factor is, exceptionally for solar, 38%; so the actualised $/kw installation is considerably more than $7.1m/MW figure.
- 280MW @ 38% capacity factor
- 30 MW for plant operation
- 10-15% transmission losses
Bringing the average actualised rating to a measly 80-90 MWs or $25m/MW capital costs.
http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/2013/10/solana_10_facts_you_didnt_know.php?print=true
That some group of Greens and dirty hippies bands together to protest this because it might harm some heretofore unknown desert lizard.
The synopsis states that the facility was... "creating enough energy to power 70,000 homes". This is, as every physics 101 student knows, fundamentally incorrect. The facility may have converted or even harvested enough energy to power 70,000 homes, but it did NOT create that energy. Even the sun, from which the converted energy came, merely converted some of its mass into the heat and light which eventually reached the facility. Yours etc, Viscount Pedantic Bastard.
it also seems stupid to use a turbine that requires water in the middle of a desert and is subject to the energy lost in conversion. I'm a fan of the "by all means necessary" approach to solving our energy problems but this is just a huge waste IMO. Perhaps it has use as a prototype, otherwise I'm not convinced it's a good idea, at all.
Can you think of another way of generating electricity from heat on a commercial scale?
I can think of several that generate electricity from heat. But the one I'd back right now is nuclear fission.
If it's good enough for operational environments as demanding as submarines or ice-breaking ships, why isn't it good enough for the land?
Except that the $0.11/kWh is without maintenance or operating costs. Or debt service on the capital gathered to build the thing.
Technically nothing stores electricity except for super-cooled superconductors. Batteries "store electricity" in the form of chemical energy and even capacitors only "store electricity" as two charged plates. But I think we all know what they meant, that it was storing the potential for electricity.
It stores energy. That's the important thing. If you can store energy, you can tap it to convert it to electricity. That's all that really matters. Providing it's economical for financial and environmental costs, anyway.
A loan guarantee is not financing. The DOE has provided no money. The financing is from private institutions.
The loan guarantee means the private institutions get paid even if the project fails, true. But why should the project fail? This is proven tech that's cost competitive. It would take some true catastrophe for the loan guarantee to ever be called on.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Except for the fact that, in the southwestern US, peak power demand tracks sunlight pretty well. And that peaking plants (run on coal) are fairly expensive. And that all that solar power can simply displace daytime use of hydro, which can fill-in the shortfall on cloudy days of high demand.
So, you're just *completely* wrong... That's not too bad here on /.
AND that every kilowatt you can generate from carbon-free, non-imported sources is a kilowatt saved from uglier alternatives.
AND that Arizona is mostly desert and the Colorado River was over-allocated a century ago so adding hydro-power is probably not going to be a good alternative.
Even in that case. Lots of datacenters in fact turn off servers at night to save money on power and cooling. Even my own pathetic vmware setup can scale in this manner. At night when less people are using those resources more idle machines can be shifted onto less hardware and the unused hardware turned off.
Technically, capacitors "store energy" in an electric field if you want to get pedantic about it....
Transmission losses are 3-8%. Not trivial but "massively" less than the inefficiency of power generation. A small improvement in generation efficiency would negate those losses.
Since we're being pedantic, what does temperature have to do with anything? Wouldn't superconductors of any temperature store electricity just as well?
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
You've collected up to 16 TJ of heat. That's not all going to turn into electricty, some of it needs to be carried off. A closed loop can move heat as steam, but it still needs a heat sink to condense that water. if you don't care about reuse, you can vent not just the steam but also the associated heat into the atmosphere. (The heat will be released when the steam condenses to form a cloud, on a large enough scale everything is closed-loop)
There are a few different types of cooling for a plant of this size. They use varying degrees of water depending on the design constraints. For a desert environment, generally you would use what we in the industry call an "air cooled condenser". It is essentially a giant car radiator and releases no water into the air. It is less efficient than methods which use water, but makes obtaining a water permit much easier.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Except for the fact that, in the southwestern US, peak power demand tracks sunlight pretty well. And that peaking plants (run on coal) are fairly expensive. And that all that solar power can simply displace daytime use of hydro, which can fill-in the shortfall on cloudy days of high demand.
So, you're just *completely* wrong... That's not too bad here on /.
Nobody runs a coal unit as a peaking plant. It takes far too long to start them up- 2-3 hours if they are "hot" and maybe 8-10 if they are cold. By the time you get it running, the high demand period is over.
Natural gas is the fuel of choice for peaking since almost every design can hit 60% load in 10 minutes, with many reaching 100% load in 10 minutes.
Hydro during the day is generally used as a kind of buffer. They have to run anyway (you can't completely bottle the river up). Adding solar isn't going to displace hydro at all.
So YOU are mostly completely wrong. And since I have pointed this out, I am likely wrong in some respect also.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
And how do you think they extract electricity from nuclear fission plants?
Fission -> Heat -> Steam -> Turbines -> Electricity
This solar setup does the same thing, except replaces the heat source with sun / molten salt.
This definition of current, Maxwell's "displacement current" term not only explains the current flow through the insulator separating the plates of a capacitor, it also defines current in nano-scale circuits where only one electron is moving.
An electron is a point source of an electric field, and if you move the electron, you move the electric field, which means that current flows across boundaries some distance from the exact location of the electron. Yes, there is quantum mechanics and no "exact location of the electron", even more the reason to define current in terms of the change in the electric field.
It's not a real question at all actually. There's little to no fracking anywhere in AZ because there are no viable shale/oil fields in the state. If you don't believe me see what the Arizona Geologic Survey Director has to say: http://arizonageology.blogspot.com/2012/04/is-hydraulic-fracturing-threat-in.html Besides, even if there was fracking there is no evidence of fracking causing any damage to surface structures. The widely publicized case of minor earthquakes in OH isn't directly related to fracking, but to the reinjection of frack wastewaters in wastewater injection wells, which are many, many miles from where the fracking occured. Great job getting in the first response to the first post though.
It's just a question of efficiencies. Some methods have high efficiencies for heat transfer, other methods have high efficiencies for water recapture. Obviously, in the desert you're going to give a higher weighing to the water recapture and choose a cooling system appropriately. As dj245 pointed out, you don't have to release water, you just lose some heat transfer efficiency by not doing it. If you were on the coast and could get more water for free/cheap you wouldn't use it, but in the desert it looks like a better idea.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Hope you don't choke on that cloud of smug.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Supraconductors store energy in the form of magnetic fields. Adding and removing energy from a supraconducting loop requires conversions between electrical and magnetic forms.
Electrostatic storage is the only form of direct electrical energy storage: simple electrons go in, simple electrons come out, no conversions to or from chemical, magnetic, thermal or other energy forms. The main problem with it is that plain electrostatic capacitors have awfully low energy storage density.
This isn't the only electrical plant available. By 3 hours after sunset most people are in bed (in summer at least) so you can go to your smaller plants to cover the night shift. When people start getting up in the morning the sun comes back out and your generator starts working again. Moving to more renewable and cleaner power generating technologies will make us change what we think about base load power generation.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
While hydro electric production does not produce greenhouse gasses during electricity production there are other issues with it.
1. There are only limited places where hydroelectric is viable and they are rapidly being utilized.
2. The building of the facility uses massive amounts of concrete. The production of that concrete creates massive amounts of CO2 as the production process burns a lot of fossil fuels.
3. The lake produced kills thousands of trees which release their stored CO2 back into the atmosphere.
4. The lake produced destroys habitat and interferes with migration which can cause extinctions of land based species.
5. Dams have caused the extinction of a number of aquatic species due to spawning interruptions and change in habitat.
6. Hydroelectric dams are not permanent. They accumulate sediment behind the dam and the reservoir fills. Dams eventually need to be removed as they become no longer viable.
These are reasons why hydroelectric is not as green as some people think.
Keep in mind that peak power is usually the most expensive power.
And is usually supplied by fossil fuels; the price of which fluctuates, and over time, always increases.
People seem to omit this fact. Over time the benefit of solar increases over almost anything else.
Every time you avoid needed to fire-up a petrochemical based power plant to produce some peak power you're saving, for that period, double or triple the base rate - sometimes more. Never less. We need to be building more infrastructure and alternative systems, like solar and geothermal, not less. Anything else makes zero economic sense to anyone but the people who benefit by selling fossil fuels.
God damn these vampires!
Using renewables effectively takes a bit of rethinking beyond just plugging them into the same old centralized industrial model. You don't need to generate the equivalent amount of power to a coal plant, because you are free to deploy it onsite. You can adjust it for a minimum of conversions between AC/DC or voltages, and you don't have to put it across a sprawling electric grid and lose power to electric resistance. Hell - they make DC air conditioners with directly coupled solar panels now. Think about it - they're going to get power when you need it most. You can't do that with coal.
You can also produce just a little more than enough with broad-based redundancy. A coal plant needs to shut down every once in a while, and it needs a backup plant or two; this means that overproduction of electricity is endemic in the mainstream economy, and needless with renewables.
A more complete vision of renewables is highly dispersed, diverse, efficient, and democratized. It's also deadly to the fossil fuel industry. They're going to do their darnedest to make sure that the public gets incomplete and out of date information about renewables for that very reason.
A relatively small chunk, typically.
For example, in the UK average transmission loss over high-voltage lines on the way to consumers is 2% and then another 7% gets lost in the lower-voltage distribution circuits to (eg) houses.
That's 10%.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
We don't just use hydro - we use wind and solar and tidal and geothermal here.
Adapt or die.
Meanwhile industry gets cheap power and Seattle gets massive job growth.
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You are thinking correctly. The base load generators are slowly needed less fuel till mid of the night. What this plant is doing is providing peak energy at peak energy times, reducing ( not eliminating ) the need to bring on the gas turbine plants to cover the low supply and high demand moments.
it's small steps like this that will over a 30 to 60 year period of time reduce our consumption of fuel.
next small steps that I would like to see, that all roofs in the lower part of the USA be required to have at lease 20 percent of the sun facing portion covered with solar power panels within 45 years ( life cycle of a roof is about 30 ). I use 45 years since we could provide real estate property tax incentives to those developers and home owners starting now, and in 45 years make it mandatory.
I keep thinking it's needs to be done in small steps, the early adopters get more benefits due to the extra risk they are taking ( wind might lift the roof due to the panels, fire risk because of a bad install ... ). and as demand increases we might benefit with smart electrical grids.
if you see me, smile and say hello.
Oh, please, you're just jelling.
We rule.
You drool.
Adapt or die.
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How much do you think it woo cost if we don't do theses things? You got some oil up your puckered ass to supply the world?lol Everything that begins cost more money how much did personal computer cost? how much did ram cost. This is a necessary step they will lead to another and another.
Jack of all trades,master of none
We don't use coal to make electricity.
I can't help it you're stuck in the 18th Century.
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Wrong. The money from that literally is used to buy more solar cells for local schools and bus shelters - which provide automated reader boards - and more wind turbines.
I can't help it if you're stuck in the 18th Century.
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Heck even the stupid story mentions it is 280 megawatts in the first sentence. 70,000 homes? Who cares. How many Library of Congresses can it power?
No, hydro is very much used as a power source during the day. Why wouldn't they? You make it sound like hydro power practically isn't used at all.
That's somewhat true, but it doesn't support your point in the slightest. That's the reason hydro makes up such a large percentage of nighttime power, but you're completely wrong about it being a stable and constant power supply... Hoover Dam has 17 electricity-generating turbines. With high demand they can run all of them, or with low demand they can drop down to just one of the small ones, and can even run it at lower water volume. Though hydroelectric operators do generally keep some water going through at all times, they have a HUGE amount of control over just how much power is generated, and when.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
as far as I can tell, the so called "in rush" current would effect everybody sitting on the same transformer. mostly more then one household. me too thought that there is a magic secret blackbox between my wall socket and the "low volt" powerlines on the poles. it's the same thing. the main circuit breaker and fuse boxes do nothing to change the electricity. the cables coming out of the transformer carry the same stuff as your wall socket. just sized abit bigger for the amps ... and I dunno how your pv system is hocked up, but me thinks the regular grid-tie in is that your pv is just a generator hocked up to the pole lines. what you acctually use is a seperate line.
Guess you didn't read my other comment. According to this Seattle uses 89.8% Hydroelectric. Wind, solar, tidal and geothermal make up, at most, another 4.4%. I do not believe that 4.4% is much to crow about.
If you want to donate money to do those things then go right ahead but touting it as buying green electricity is just a cover up.
Most of the Green up money goes to by Renewable Energy Credits to support existing producers.
Right 4.4% rules, lol. By the way, 0.07% of that subsidy comes from Green Up money. Notice it is not the whole $1.15 which means that Green Up helps buy new solar panels but needs a lot of help to get it done.
Smug
(stares at idiot)
I said that I:
1. Buy Green Up (which is about $12 a month)
2. Buy GreenPower (another program)
3. DIRECTLY BOUGHT 1 unit of the Seattle Aquarium solar cell array - cost me $150, reduces my bill by $46 a year on average, so that means (wait for it)
5. PROFIT!
Now realize that the BASELINE is 89.8 plus 4.4. I am ABOVE THE BASELINE.
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If you want to donate money to do those things then go right ahead but touting it as buying green electricity is just a cover up.
Most of the Green up money goes to by Renewable Energy Credits to support existing producers.
You just hate modern energy sources. Stick a fork in you, you're last century's dead weight.
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It really doesn't matter what you subsidized folks in the rest of the country think.
The reason our economy is booming is cheap green energy.
Stick a fork in your denial.
Adapt or die.
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No I hate lies tat make things look better than they really are. Take off your rose coloured glasses and look at the facts.
Look, you're just in denial.
I've been investing in energy firms since 1976, mostly oil, coal, nuclear fission, and other ones.
You don't know how to read appendices.
My dad lives totally off-grid on solar, and you probably have all these wonderful objections, but even Red states like Idaho are using wind and hydro.
Adapt. Because the world isn't waiting for you to come up with objections about how it's flat.
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1. Buy Green Up (which is about $12 a month)
Which goes to subsidize a small portion of small green energy project but most go to renewable energy credits for existing installations.
2. Buy GreenPower (another program)
Green Power is a donation program to support education and local demonstration projects. How much did you donate?
DIRECTLY BOUGHT 1 unit of the Seattle Aquarium solar cell array - cost me $150, reduces my bill by $46 a year on average, so that means (wait for it)
Which is subsidized by the Green Up and Washington State to the tune of $1.15/Kw. The Aquarium project only opened in July so you have no real output figures to work with. According to you you will make $46/year. According to Seattle Power you should make about $28/year. I will go with the supplier's numbers.
5. PROFIT!
You also need a little help with math. $29 solar credit - ($12/month * 12 months) = 29 - 144 = -115. That makes it a loss to you of $115 and a loss to the taxpayers of Washington State of $26.30.
Now realize that the BASELINE is 89.8 plus 4.4. I am ABOVE THE BASELINE.
You are 5% above baseline. That is only double the gains you slagged in the original post and it cost you over $115/year to do it..
I just look at the fact and taxpayer subsidies mask the real costs of green power.
You don't know how to read appendices.
What appendices are you referring to considering that the one article you linked does not have an appendix?
My dad lives totally off-grid on solar, and you probably have all these wonderful objections
Off the grid is great and I have no objections at all.
but even Red states like Idaho are using wind and hydro.
I have no problem with wind power except that is is expensive compared to conventional sources. Idaho produces 6.3% wind generated electricity and 30% coal generated electricity. Talk to m when those two numbers get a lot closer together.
Adapt. Because the world isn't waiting for you to come up with objections about how it's flat.
Look at reality and realize that money does not grow on trees.
To do a proper full chain analysis you need to do cradle to grave for all inputs, actually. This means you have to source the mining/extracting of all the inputs, including turbines, mercury outsource from coal oil and even the infrastructure lights and vehicles used for maintenance, fab costs for the switching equipment and transformers, and so on down the line.
You can keep arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
Won't do you any good.
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That reply has nothing to do with your original assertion that Seattle is way ahead of everyone else on Green power and your false assertion of "profit" in your last post.
This means you have to source the mining/extracting of all the inputs, including turbines, mercury outsource from coal oil and even the infrastructure lights and vehicles used for maintenance, fab costs for the switching equipment and transformers, and so on down the line.
Green energy has similar issues including mining rare earths that go into PVs and magnets for wind generators.
You can keep arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin.
Sorry to bring facts into the conversation but your perceptions and reality are very far apart.
I'll tell your false "points" to all the businesses moving here.
Then we'll laugh at how naive you are.
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as far as I can tell, the so called "in rush" current would effect everybody sitting on the same transformer. mostly more then one household. me too thought that there is a magic secret blackbox between my wall socket and the "low volt" powerlines on the poles. it's the same thing. the main circuit breaker and fuse boxes do nothing to change the electricity. the cables coming out of the transformer carry the same stuff as your wall socket. just sized abit bigger for the amps ... and I dunno how your pv system is hocked up, but me thinks the regular grid-tie in is that your pv is just a generator hocked up to the pole lines. what you acctually use is a seperate line.
The inverter does the "magic" in converting the PV power into grid power. There's no real inrush as far as that goes, even in "eclipse" sudden on situations.
The simple household circuit breaker is what prevents 1) your house form catching fire when the wiring burns up in overload situations and 2) prevents your flaming home's surge from wrecking the neighbor's house.
My buy 1,2,3 panels was actually for a more test the waters run a distinct set of lights though. Good for charign laptops/phones in power outage situationn too of course. Works great and easily, if not maximally efficient, to use a few panels, and inverter and a UPS to handle light overnight loads (CFL lights, radio, etc, all night long).
I'll tell your false "points" to all the businesses moving here.
What are false about my points? They are all based on documented facts.
How does businesses moving to Seattle relate to Green energy?
Since you can't make a valid argument about how Green Seattle is you move even further from the discussion. That is an excellent way to admit that your argument is baseless.
I never said it was green. Cheap per MW definitely, but anything that big has consequences.
The quantities are very small, especially photovoltaics since it's doped silicon which means utterly tiny traces of other elements.
One thing I can't understand is why that area is not big on geothermal like New Zealand is. Isn't there an active volcano just down the road?
2. AFAIK there's one solar-thermal plant that managed 24 hours of energy output... Once.
It's not really possible.
You mean this plant?
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2013/solar-storage-plant-gemasolar-sets-36-day-record-247-output-12586
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Well, that's all well and good for you people in areas that don't have 99.8 percent green energy like we in Seattle do.
Without the hydroelectric, 89.8% the green power in your original exagerated post drops to 4.4% making your original boast completely false.
Keep in mind what we are currently getting out of silicon PV and even the cutting edge in the lab, then look at that 40% again. Doesn't look too bad does it? Now do you see why there is a crossover?
Major advances have been made even since I first went near the field in the 1990s and there's a lot of work ongoing. Check out the article here less than a week ago about improved condensor efficiency.
It wasn't my "boast" so back off and let the adults discuss energy sources on their own merits of advantages and disadvantages without some colouring in bullshit. There is no "completely green" energy source on the planet - everything has consequences. It's how you balance them and deal with them that matters.
$1000 per year for 30 years, and that's just paying back construction costs. No ongoing operational cost included. No profit for the utility. None of the major components will likely last more than 15 or 20 years (that is being generous), so then add those replacement costs. This thing will never pay back, its not even close. If anyone really cared about the environment, they would DEMAND that this $2B went to improving energy efficiency of existing electrical consumers. Both the environmental and financial benefits would be many times greater...... but then we couldn't yell "look at me, look at how wonderful and green I am".
Wind power has been at grid parity about 10 years in most places in the US & Europe and its LCoE is still falling.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Anything can be done badly and rare earth mining does require the use of many toxic chemicals but that can be managed.
From http://azstarnet.com/business/local/big-pollution-risk-seen-in-rare-earth-mining/article_c604dd80-7a8d-5ab5-8342-0f9b8dbb35fb.html
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Some basics regarding solar energy project press releases.
Most energy project press releases contain limited information, and performing analysis based on that information must be done with care. Some points to consider;
Any project PR, be it green energy or just about anything else, will provide the most optimistic and positive numbers and projections. Particularly if public financing is used. There is nothing nefarious or wrong with this, it is what it is, but it must be recognized when making comparisons using historical data or proven cost and performance data of other technologies.
Megawatt Capacity: For thermal solar plants, be careful to distinguish between megawatts electric vs. megawatts thermal. Thermal generation efficiency is very important. For small thermal plants with varying output, thermal efficiency is low. MW electric may be less than 50% MW thermal. But it will vary by plant and this efficiency will likely not be available in a press release. If not specified, don't assume they are stating MWe. Many vendors will state MWt. "Enough energy to power X number of homes": This is a common inclusion because it gives many people an idea of scale, as most folks would find it hard to quickly figure that out if it was only stated as megawatt capability. The assumed average energy usage per home is usually not stated, so it really is of limited use. This number is often calculated as the number of homes that could be powered at the moment the power plant is producing its maximum output. For solar, that usually means a cloudless day at peak mid-day hours with all systems operating at full estimated efficiency (i.e. no dust on reflectors or panels, no faulty generating equipment, etc)
Cost = $XXXX: Typically, the stated project cost is the cost of construction and materials. It likely includes startup and testing costs, but may not. It will not include ongoing "normal" operation and maintenance costs nor will it include financing costs (interest payments), both of which are large factors in the overall power delivery cost. A press release will not include other recurring costs such as taxes and regulatory fees as well. Also, when discussing end user power delivery cost, don't forget to consider profit margin for the utility.
Operating Life: You will rarely see this stated in a PR, but it may be the single biggest factor in evaluating the cost model. What is the expected life of the major high cost components? If it is stated, it is likely to be optimistic. You can probably find good data on PV panel lifetime, probably little for large solar thermal facilities. Environment (dust, humidity) plays a major role. Thermal solar equipment goes through a lot of heatup-cooldown cycles as opposed to baseload technologies. The thermal stresses of these cycles is a key life limiting factor. Couple that with efforts to keep costs low and the fact that reliability is not as important as it is for baseload generation, you may find that this equipment is not likely to be built to the highest reliability standards. In other words, the cost of equipment failure is low, so investment in preventing it is low as well.
Just some stuff to think about when working with PR numbers.
It wasn't my "boast" so back off
Sorry, I was referring to the OP and keeping to the topic, green power, of this thread.
discuss energy sources on their own merits of advantages and disadvantages without some colouring in bullshit.
What part of my post was bullshit? Every point I made is backed up be research and facts.
I grew up in the mountains of BC and most people in our area are tired of turning beautiful valleys into lakes and killing species to produce electricity for export.
It's how you balance them and deal with them that matters.
How do you balance long term loss of habitat and species extinction? The final nail is that there are not many places left to put hydroelectric plant. The main point is that idea that HVDS will allow millions more people to use hydroelectric may not be as easy or as low impact as you seem to..
According to this there are issues with comparisons using LCoE. The biggest one being comparing dispatchable and non-dispatchable sources.
both, of course. ask any nuclear power plant, it's the same tech
The advantage is the 3-5 hour lag. The Southwest, led by CA, is poised to totally change the net demand curve. Traditionally, peak is late afternoon, say 4pm. But, with all of the distributed solar behind the meter, it's pushing the demand during daylight hours down, so the daily peak is just after sundown.
This array, with a 3-5 hour lag, will serve the grid from roughly noon to 9pm. Those last few hours will be extremely valuable on a $/MWh basis, *and* they'll get much higher capacity payments ($/kw-month) than regular PV.
You are not that dumb. Let's try a little lesson in reading comprehension. The words "some colouring in bullshit" are followed by "There is no "completely green" energy source". Do you get it now? Stop taking needless offence and try reading what is written.
I suppose I should have expected that since you insulted me instead of the person you meant to insult.
The great irony of the situation in the US is that renewable generation is NOT the the biggest factor impact coal-fired power - natural gas is. I'm not a fan of fracking and consider it to have considerable drawbacks but prefer it, for now, over coal.
I see that the chart is using more up to date capacity factors for wind than the 20-25% figure that's typical of the windbagger sites and are still improving.
Some newer turbines with better designed, lighter blades and more sophisticated controls are typically in the 45-50% range or even higher.
And the most recent report on CCS doesn't fill me with hope that coal plants with underground storage are going to be prevalent any time soon.
Even the Chinese are cracking down on dirty coal plants - their new emissions rules are as good or better than any in the US or Europe, have applied to any new plant built since Jan 2012 and ALL plants must meet the standards by Fall 2014 or be shuttered.
Also most existing coal plants are only really dispatchable in theory - it can be done but doing it frequently has an enormous impact on efficiency, emissions and operating life. Apparently Germany has some advanced coal plants that can be ramped up & down quickly and are 25% more efficient but these are all quite new and expensive.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Madness.
And how do you think they extract electricity from nuclear fission plants?
Fission -> Heat -> Steam -> Turbines -> Electricity
This solar setup does the same thing, except replaces the heat source with sun / molten salt.
You forget dear fellow, that a fission plant can be made a heck of a lot smaller than a solar plant of equivalent power output and is available to generate energy on command whenever it is needed, 24/7 and is location independent.