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World's Largest Solar Power Plant To Supply Enough Energy For 1.1 Million People (computerworld.com)
Lucas123 writes: The world's largest solar power plant is now live and will eventually provide 1.1 million people in Morocco with power and cut carbon emissions by 760,000 tons a year. Phase 1 of the Noor concentrated solar power (CSP) plant went live last week, providing 140 megawatts (MW) of power to Morocco. Phases 2 and 3 will be completed by 2018 when the plant is expected to generate more than 500MW of power. The Noor plant, located in south-central Morocco, will cover 6,178 acres and produce so much energy, that Morocco may eventually start exporting the clean energy to the European market.
You are comparing a developing technology with a very mature (and still highly subsidised) one. Much of the investment in this plant will be paid back by exporting the experience, knowledge and technology developed for it.
Plus, Morocco can't just decide to build a nuclear plant. It has to rely on foreign assistance for the designs, the knowledge, the fuel, handling the spent fuel and the clean up. Moroccans see how much money they have to export to get the nuclear they do have and figure they could develop their own clean energy source and start having people send them money instead.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Nuclear power: 500MW is considered a "small/compact" nuclear plant, costing about $1.5 billion with a footprint of a few acres with a lifetime of approx. 40 years.
A nuke plant will cost far more than what you are claiming. Costs currently are running between $5000-8000/KW. And that is just to build it - you didn't consider operating costs at all which are far more substantial for a nuke plant than a solar one. The waste disposal alone is a huge cost that doesn't exist with solar.
Why the hell are people investing in solar? The economics make absolutely no sense whatsoever.
Really? You can't figure this out? Solar has no failure modes that can render a location uninhabitable. Solar has no serious fuel waste disposal problem. Solar has no weapon proliferation risk. Solar is insurable by private companies rather than nation states. Solar doesn't require getting fuel from elsewhere. Frankly solar has quite a lot to recommend it over nuclear in many (though not all) cases. Nuclear has its advantages but let's not pretend that it doesn't have some very substantial drawbacks.
"An interesting tidbit. Despite its desert location, this plant needs 1.7 million m3 of water per year to keep the reflectors clean."
That is not interesting. That is meaningless. 1.7 million m3 of water per year compared to... what, exactly? How much water does a coal/nuclear plant use? How much to mine, refine and transport the coal/uranium? What's that calculated in litres per megawatt hour? What's the tradeoff in terms of emissions and waste?
Also, I found $3.9 billion per 160 MW peak is just for stage one; the total project is projected at $9 billion for 580 MW peak (and NOOR uses molten salt storage - so unlike Ivanpah, the NOOR plants will continue generating power at night). That rather alters the ratio, doesn't it.
As it happens, the amount of water usage is apparently about twice that of a wet-cooled coal plant, though (1) only NOOR's first stage is wet-cooled, (2) the post-process water quality is also important and (3) really, a proper study would examine the complete life cycle of solar vs coal vs nuclear power generation including all ongoing costs (e.g. fuel, emissions, cleanup, etc).
This is supposed to be news for nerds, stuff that matters. I am unimpressed when people offhandedly mention a big-sounding number and then go on to make vague derogatory apples-and-oranges comparisons.