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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."
I was wondering why my solar panels suddenly went dark.
Damn.
our solar overlords.
"Because it can store electricity" Someone doesn't understand how it works...
Nighttime lasts longer than that.
Frist post
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.
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?
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)
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actually, this provides shade. If you'd ever lived in the desert, you'd get why that's good.
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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.
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.
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/
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.
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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."
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....
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
I hope so
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
That's only $29K per house. Cheep!
..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....
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.
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
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.
Hope you don't choke on that cloud of smug.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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!
The only hope of cheap power is distributed homeowner owned generation. Anything centralized will be sold at market or even higher "green" rates forever, and i do not believe those rates will ever come down. If you had 3x the generation capacity you needed, why would you ever sell the excess for less than what it is worth?
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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Oh, please, you're just jelling.
We rule.
You drool.
Adapt or die.
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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?
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?
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.
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.
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