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New Record Set for World's Cheapest Solar, Now Undercutting Coal (bloomberg.com)
Anna Hirtenstein, reporting for Bloomberg: Solar power set another record-low price as renewable energy developers working in the United Arab Emirates shrugged off financial turmoil in the industry to promise projects costs that undercut even coal-fired generators. Developers bid as little as 2.99 cents a kilowatt-hour to develop 800 megawatts of solar-power projects for the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, the utility for the Persian Gulf emirate. That's 15 percent lower than the previous record set in Mexico last month, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The lowest priced solar power has plunged almost 50 percent in the past year. Saudi Arabia's Acwa Power International set a record in January 2015 by offering to build a portion of the same Dubai solar park for power priced at 5.85 cents per kilowatt-hour. Records were subsequently set in Peru and Mexico before Dubai reclaimed its mantel as purveyor of the world's cheapest solar power. "This bid tells us that some bidders are willing to risk a lot for the prestige of being the cheapest solar developer," said Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BNEF. "Nobody knows how it's meant to work."
I'm sure there won't be any overruns. I mean, there's no reason we reject suspiciously low bids in other projects, right?
It doesn't rain in Dubai. Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators.
somebody should trademark that.
Don't you mean a bet? A wager? Speculation? I think we should wait to see what is produced...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
"This bid tells us that some bidders are willing to risk a lot for the prestige of being the cheapest solar developer," said Jenny Chase, head of solar analysis at BNEF. "Nobody knows how it's meant to work."
Well, I'm neither an economist nor an... electrician? But I have bought a lot of printers that I palmed off on the thrift store people after the original ink cartridge ran out, because it was cheaper to just buy a new one. So I'll take a shot.
The low bidders are selling their electricity for less than it costs to produce because, at some point in the future, they hope to charge a higher price for it, after all of their competitors have had to exit the industry, and, due to inertial effects, would find it difficult to re-enter.
No other industry does this, of course. Oh, wait, almost every other industry does this now.
It doesn't rain in Dubai.
But it does where sane people live. (SoCal isn't sane.)
molten sodium to store the energy
Doesn't that jack up the cost?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
The most trustworthy of countries.
In government projects, bid cost has only a fleeting correlation to actual costs. See, for example, any major weapons system.
I imagine that the government of Dubai is not immune to this sort of behavior on the part of it's contractors.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I use something like 91% of my energy while the sun is up.
If only we could figure out how to move electricity from places where it's generated to places where it's consumed.
not so fast. https://science.slashdot.org/s...
lose != loose
Mostly because they don't have to deal with a Union
It doesn't rain in Dubai. Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators.
How many molten sodium plants are operational? There are lots of issues with using molten sodium as a heat transfer mechanism, given it's reactivity with water, and the inevitable corrosion and leakage from running hot liquids through steel pipes. The US and Soviet navies had nuke subs that ran such a plant but gave up on the problem due to the technical issues; one of which is the need to always keep the coolant hot to avoid is solidifying and thus rendering the plant inoperative. I would get the Emirates would use some other storage mechanisms, such as batteries, compressed air storage or even pumped storage on the mountain they plan to build to increase rainfall.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
There are ways to capture solar heat and use it to power steam turbines at night. On a larger scale, it's always day time somewhere in the world so conceivably a series of interconnectors could be used to move power across timezones.
And wind, snow, etc. It doesn't take much imagination to guess what would happen if you installed one of these anywhere it snows more than an inch a year, or there's strong winds and heavy rain.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Are you sure it's sodium (the highly reactive metal), not sodium chloride (the much more inert kitchen salt)?
Note that these prices are for solar power plants, not for household solar. Here's a comparison with prices for some other types of electricity generation.
Still solar plants have been popping up all over, and this will only encourage more of them, which is a good thing because coal pollution sucks.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It doesn't rain in Dubai.
It might . . . all they need to do, is build a giant mountain there . . . or maybe a giant badger . . . oh, never mind . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
They've offered to build it for a price. Let's see if they deliver for that price, or if they can continue to build for that price.
It's also not clear if they've calculated that price based on the peak or average daily output figure. If the former, it'll still be dearer than the coal plant which can deliver peak 24/7.
Not likely they can get (much) more for their power, I guess they're counting on reducing cost through advancing technology or economies of scale, something like that. Just like your typical dotcom.
Until we get more solar power than our day-time consumption your point is moot. Night/rain isn't a problem when 99% of your energy comes from fossils fuels which must be the case in UAE. They'll simply burn less coal/oil/gas when it's sunny. And on average, that means 3/kWh which is fantastic.
Probably not the second one. Now - give me back my mod point . . . it was a bad moderation to begin with.
In this case, very low per MWh bids are most likely going to have a requirement to purchase 100% of the output for a very long period. But low bids often come with other terms that can easily show up as change-orders or cost adders. Things like riders for covering costs for maintenance or natural events come to mind, but contract writers can be quite clever.
But if they can use the power that time of day, which is likely, it might be a very good deal. Considering they have very high costs for coal, which I assume is do to shipping it from afar.
Well there is still solar collection when it is cloudy. There is very few times where it rains so hard that it is like night outside. While it may produce a lower output that could affect the cost calculation. However night is probably factored into the cost, with storage of excess.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
There is a technology, that is rather simple and effective, where they store solar thermal generated heat in salt.
The heat stored in the salt is there overnight and can be used to turn turbines to generate electricity.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Solar power plant produces power during the day which is usually the peak period for demand where the power is usually produced by peaking power plants and gas turbines which are twice or more times as expensive as coal baseload power plants. The solar power plants are actually far more economical than that comparison would indicate.
For about 5 hours a day the sun passes by areas that are (mostly) very hostile to human life with little land at all, with most of the land being so far north less solar power can be gathered, and I'm betting it will be a very long time indeed before ocean based solar farms are particularly reasonable.
Except at night, when solar is a lot more expensive. Or when it rains.
I am sure the scientists and engineers here completely forgot about night time.
Well then it seems like the best option is to just burn coal or oil, because it has no draw backs.
How many molten sodium plants are operational? There are lots of issues with using molten sodium as a heat transfer mechanism, given it's reactivity with water, and the inevitable corrosion and leakage from running hot liquids through steel pipes.
Whoa! You mean there might be ongoing costs? Fuck, that's like having to purchase an energy supply forever, isn't it?
There's lots of issues with using coal, but somehow that doesn't count in this equation?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Here's some quotes from the article that undercut the headline:
" âoeNobody knows how itâ(TM)s meant to work.â
"Plunging costs along with the bankruptcy for the biggest developer, SunEdison Inc., has spurred questions about whether the cheapest projects will ever be profitable."
It seems like there's more to this story that isn't being stated. Unless the costs are subsidized, it appears there's no real way to actually meet those energy prices.
We have an outdated system of electrical transmission lines which are unable to distribute power from large numbers of producers.
This needs to be upgraded before we can deal with millions of solar (and/or wind) power generators
As the poster suggested, there are ways to store energy. Pumped water storage is a pretty interesting one, where the solar or wind energy is used to pump water up, and then more typical hydroelectric generators produce the power. There are solutions out there, some need work, but they sure won't get the investment they need while fossil fuels like coal are subsidized heavily and protected financially from the ill effects they cause.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If you get an electric vehicle, that'll probably change significantly.
So...they are building a solar plant in the most favorable place on this planet for that technology, and one of the least favorable for coal (have to ship it in from far away); and we still are not sure if the ACTUAL cost of power production is better for solar. This is some kind of bid that might lead to huge losses or need big government subsidies.
If we could improve electrolysis of water splitting, we could generate raw hydrogen which we could then transport efficiently to where it is needed. The problem is, that process isn't really efficient. And it has energy density that is highly functional. The danger is that it is really dangerous when exposed to O2 (see Hindenburg for example).
Personally, I would love to see the whole energy system opened up into a huge competition, between traditional fuels / energy generation and new renewables in the form of Xprize for efficiency improvements for various methods.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Except at night, when solar is a lot more expensive. Or when it rains.
I am sure the scientists and engineers here completely forgot about night time.
Well then it seems like the best option is to just burn coal or oil, because it has no draw backs.
I know, right! Gosh, we should always consult our experts here on /. first before starting, like... anything!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
They are doing it to get in with the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority, which has a large budget and will likely keep paying them to build more stuff and maintain it maintenance for decades to come. Happens in every industry, companies with capital buy contracts by making an initial loss on them in the expectation that it will reward them later.
For example, in my own industry (water) a company lost a couple of million supplying data loggers to a large French company, but how they have an installed product base, software that talks to those loggers and understands their data formats, staff with experience in those products and systems... It's hard for any else to sell them similar loggers even if they are cheaper now, because the TCO is lower.
Same reason Linux found it so hard to make inroads on the desktop - it's not just the cost of Windows licences, it's the cost of retraining, making other stuff compatible etc.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There's lots of issues with using coal, but somehow that doesn't count in this equation?
Not sure what is your point. What does coal have to do with finding a way to store excess solar production for use when solar isn't generating power?
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It's ironic that you didn't read your own link. 765kV transmission lines have losses of between half a percent and 1.1 percent per hundred miles, and the losses are even higher for lower voltages (according to the link you provided). Cumulative losses can become quite large if you are sending power too far away from the place where you generate it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Except at night, when solar is a lot more expensive. Or when it rains.
Sigh. Here we go again.
Next thing you know, they'll be telling us that software doesn't run forever either!
Now fix my copy of Lotus 1-2-3!
transporting electricty will always be more efficient.
The issue with reactors is that if the salt solidifies the reactor won't cool properly when restarted and can go into meltdown if not properly moderated. With molten salt solar plants it's not much of an issue since the heat just re-liquefies the salt and if the tower somehow gets too hot you just angle the mirrors away from it, and even if that fails at worst you have a nasty but not terribly dangerous fire.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So wind affects the sun's rays?
That's a new one to me.
especially in Dubai where AC has to compensate for being a bazillion degree outside.
It looks like most plants use a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate. This ref says that molten sodium has been tested.
that's why HVDC exists
I use something like 91% of my energy while the sun is up.
your lover lives a life of quiet regret
According to wikipedia, HVDC has about 3.5% losses per 1000 km, or 96.5% is kept. This means, on a hypothetical, 20 000 km long power line that spans half the globe to the other side where the sun shines you would have a ratio of .965^20 == .49. I'm no physicist, perhaps you would require stations on the path to convert the sunk current back up to more efficient levels. But even with this simplistic calculation, you have 51% losses.
Hydrogen is actually kind of obnoxious to deal with. It's not alien acid blood or anything; but such a small atom is capable of diffusing merrily through what any honest substance would consider a solid barrier(this usually requires elevated heat and/or pressure; but just merrily soaking into steel and reacting with the carbon in the steel to form little pockets of methane in the now-weakened iron matrix is a very cute trick). It's not terribly dangerous as a fire/explosion hazard unless allowed to build up in confined spaces. The Hindenburg's problems were at least partially down to having a giant envelope coated with aircraft dope; and 'nitrocellulose lacquer' is at least as unwise to mix with flammables as the name suggests.
Though, think of like this: all the food we grow is made with solar power. Imagine making the energy to produce the food we need with nuclear power, gas turbines or coal. Even with the most efficient diodes that would require tremendous amounts of energy.
Meanwhile insolation in the absence of clouds is about a horsepower per square meter even in the high latitudes we are at here in Sweden. This will likely transform energy generation and electricity costs worldwide and may in the medium turn well even impact European manufacturing.
> Well there is still solar collection when it is cloudy. There is very few times where it rains so hard that it is like night outside.
Unfortunately your eyes are tricking you. Your eyes perceive brightness exponentially. It looks like a cloudy day is maybe half as bright as a sunny day, and your house maybe half as bright as that. In fact, a sunny day is around 100,000 lux, a cloudy day around 1,000. Inside your home is probably around 50 lux.
So the cloudy day has only 1% of the energy as a sunny day.
This is an important issue.
We don't want some slipshod low-ball bid construction to cause solar energy spills that contaminate the environment and poison wildlife. If they don't correctly build the solar ash retention ponds, a rupture could pour hundreds of thousands of gallons of poisonous solar waste into the rivers.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
:-) You feel a disturbance in the empire?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You're right! It jacks it all the way up to 2.99/kwh.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
That's not really applicable here, because the governments aren't buying kW of capacity - they're guaranteeing purchase of kWh of produced electricity. Now, there's an advantage on the builders side that they know they have a buyer for every last drop of juice they're going to produce, whether or not there is demand for it, but generally they're not going to get paid unless the taps are flowing.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
It's interesting how folks on here are all too willing to put their engineering hats on for, say, nuclear, and come up with solutions to the problems with the technology. But when it comes to solar, suddenly there's nighttime! cloudy days!
Why are those not just engineering problems to solve. Certainly nuclear waste storage and potential theft / dirty bomb issues are bigger challenges than a source that's not 100% available all the time, but is essentially free during the times that it is available. Seems like there's a strictly political aspect to the resistance - and while there may be a political'ish aspect to resistance to nuclear, there still is that issue of highly poisonous waste and overall high cost of the plants, fuel, and safety measures. Easily as big a technical challenge - arguably less solvable as regards the waste issue.
Something similar could be said about fracking. Fracking is at best an interim solution - but it's potentially a good interim solution. Still, there have been some horrendous pollution side-issues. But instead of treating those as solvable engineering challenges, the right (and those on Slashdot that mouth the right's arguments) chooses to portray those that complain about pumping poisonous chemicals into the ground as unrealistic hippies - rather than to question whether fracking could be done with less poisonous materials. Perhaps a bit less efficiently, but balanced by fewer long term costs in terms of environmental degradation.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
My solar panels would beg to differ. Very cloudy days production goes down but I still get 25-50% of full sun days.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Half a percent per 100 miles is really low.
Contract is for 2.99 cents /kwh for energy delivered. Contractor eats any overruns. This is not the US Military pork barrel cost+ contract.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
It does. When it blows clouds in the way. Additionally wind kicks up sand which tends to coat everything in a desert.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
It doesn't rain in Dubai. Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators.
The project appears to be PV, not CSP. CSP has seen its share of challenges, and it is more expensive than PV. CSP is pretty much dead in the US;
https://www.technologyreview.c...
They forgot the price of the land.
Solar panels takes up a lot of land, but coal doesn't.
Coal is also stack-able, and can be used at anytime.
Solar can't.
then you break out the wind turbine....
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
How many molten sodium plants are operational
I was able to find two that were operational: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plan - US Gemasolar Thermosolar Plant - Spain
which isn't as much as I would have expected. However, the these types of plants are relatively new, and molten salt is the latest and greatest in the industry, so it's not a total surprise.
If you are worried about heat loss, molten solar only loses 1 degree F per day. source: http://www.solarreserve.com/en...
I work on controls for solar systems in CA, and I have never seen that. Never. Sounds like you're making something up or are talking about something republicans will not let us have.
As the poster suggested, there are ways to store energy. Pumped water storage is a pretty interesting one, ...
Except the ruling party in the US has declared that to be worse than coal. The President announced about a month ago that a pumped storage facility was being destroyed by the US Army Corp of Engineers, and that he was also destroying four more hydroelectric damns in the Northwest US including Copco and Iron Gate where my brother has worked. The US is very anti-hydroelectric. If Hillary wins, expect even more hydro power to be destroyed.
Dams are damn bad for the environment. I'm glad for the Democrat's war on hydropower.
This is truly excellent news that solar can compete and win on a cost basis, since short term $$$ is apparently literally the only thing that decision makers ever care about.
The issue with reactors is that if the salt solidifies the reactor won't cool properly when restarted and can go into meltdown if not properly moderated. With molten salt solar plants it's not much of an issue since the heat just re-liquefies the salt and if the tower somehow gets too hot you just angle the mirrors away from it, and even if that fails at worst you have a nasty but not terribly dangerous fire.
While reactor cooling is an issue the problem with molten salt is once it solidifies throughout a loop it is very hard to re-liquefy the loop. The Soviets rocked up 4 of their Alpha class submarines, despite their best efforts to keep the salt liquid. As for a fire, the Na-H2O reaction can be quite nasty.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Poetic and funny! A genuine slashdot AC first
Note that the contract sounds like the contractor gets to sell the power at 2.99c whether or not there is a demand. In some cases cost of power can go to 0 if baseload plants are providing excess capacity into the grid cannot ramp down production. So the plant gets 0c/kwh. In this case, even when the power must be dumped somewhere at 0 value to the utility, the solar producer gets paid. Conversely, when there is demand, and the solar producer has no additional capacity, nat gas peaking plants or some other carbon based generation will be there. I don't mind solar, in fact I have panels, but cost must include the cost of when the solar/alt energy cannot provide the power.
somebody should trademark that.
"Nobody knows how it's meant to work." Anyone involved with government or software contracts already knows how it works: Lowball the bid, then cost overrun to obscene profits. Come on now, are you gonna say I am shocked, shocked!
I know in Phoenix, stores will turn their AC way down when the electricity is inexpensive (in the middle of the night) in order to offset some of the costs when it is expensive during the day.
The OP is wrong, I think. It's sodium chloride that they heat up, not sodium. It reacts with water in the sense of dissolving, rather than exploding.
As far as I know, it's used for concentrated solar power sources, and rather than photovoltaic cells.
It's not like they are right next to major oil fields where natural gas is currently flared off at prodigious rates.
I suspect they will be getting at least some of the first 'solar' power that is generated at night.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The energy striking the surface per square meter of full sun is in fact about 100 greater than the energy striking the surface on of overcast day. That's a fact. Look it up anywhere you like.
If instead of capturing 100 times as much, your system only captures four times as much, that can only mean that your system is failing to capture 96% of the available energy on sunny days. That of course assumes you aren't mistaken.
It wouldn't be terrible unusual for a home solar-electric system to be extremely inefficient, as they are designed as much around taxpayer subsidies and marketing as they are technical effectiveness.
Too bad solar generates 0% of it's energy while the sun is 'down'...
That's like saying a Hydro plant has been built on Niagara Falls, forever proving Hydro's dominance over Coal!
Unless of course you don't have a massive water source.... or you live in the freaking desert.
> It looks like most plants use a mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate.
Which are the same oxidizers used in making fireworks. Nitrates + carbon = black powder. Nitrates + metal = flash powder (a few mg of which provide the bang in a firecracker) .
Large quantities of potassium nitrate and sodium nitrate heated to very high temperatures will undoubtedly provide some pretty impressive explosions from time to time.
They'll make it up on constructive changes.
How much power do the solar arrays generate at night?
It cut my electricity bill by 91%.
AC is far more efficient at cross-planet ranges. HVDC exactly halfway around the planet would lose about half its power. Higher-voltage AC would lose maybe 10%.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"molten salt is the latest and greatest in the industry,"
Wrong. molten salt has been around for two decades. The latest and greatest is Lithium-Ion and its derivatives.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"So the cloudy day has only 1% of the energy as a sunny day."
My god there's so much bullshit in this post I don't know where to begin.
First off, we perceive brightness in a LOGARITHMIC CURVE, not exponential.
Next, PHOTON FLUX DENSITY (which is what matters for solar, not lux which is weighted at green light) on full cloudless day is ~2,000 umol per square meter per second. On a cloudy, non-rainy day, you can expect about ~1,100 umol, about as bright as it is on Mars (Mars is like closer to 900 umol.)
You've got zero clue what you're talking about. Be quiet.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
But it does where sane people live. (SoCal isn't sane.)
I don't think sane people exist. We're all a little wired.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Though, think of like this: all the food we grow is made with solar power
No, think of it like this: imagine that all of your crops would fail if they didn't get sun every day. Growing plants are a bad analogy, because they can coast (by slowing down their energy use) when they're not given good sun. But the electricity you need to run the refrigeration you need to preserve antibiotics or keep a hospital running or keep your food frozen and water flowing and datacenters up ... doesn't get to coast on cloudy days. All this talk about how a given solar panel's output being cheaper than coal always avoids the extra infrastructure needed to bridge that cloud-period gap.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Why are those not just engineering problems to solve
Who says they're not? That's not the point. The point is that disingenuous articles talking about how much cheaper per kwh a given solar device is than burning coal without mentioning all of the extra infrastructure needed to make all of that solar actually useful 24 hours a day, year-round, is just nonsense. It's deliberately misleading.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Hydrogen really isn't that bad, it's so much lighter than air that it dissipates very quickly; leaking through most metals because the molecule is so small and metal embrittelment are bigger problems.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
My kingdom for a mod point!!
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Which part of 2.99 cents / kwh don't you understand?
They get 2.99 cents for every kwh they deliver.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Wait!! Molten salt or molten sodium? Molten salt doesn't have the same series of problems as molten sodium. (It has a different set. But fires aren't even nearly as dangerous.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy, which then use it to create steam to run generators."
No, that's solar thermal concentration, this article is about a photovoltaic (PV) project.
Why is parent modded +5 informative? Did any of the mods actually read the article? Of course not.
OK, you cost just doubled. What now?
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
which part of whether there is a demand for the power or not do you not understand?
Nope, doesn't work that way. The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) is based on the efficiency, degradation rate, and solar availability of the region. Projects are financed based on LCOE not some wishful thinking that the price will go up some day. If anything, it will go down as PV conversion efficiency goes up and manufacturing/supply chains get cheaper and bigger.
I swear, now that PV is finally getting to cost parity with fossil fuel sources, people have switched from saying "it'll never happen" to making up conspiracy theories. Well, at some point you'll just have to accept it - the end of the fossil fuel age is near.
The stone age did not end because we ran out of rocks. The fossil fuel age will not end because we ran out of fossil fuels. It will end because we replaced fossil fuels with something better, and that something is PV.
US (First Solar) and Chinese (Jinko Solar) put in bids at 0.039 $/kWh. The Middle East firms may be subsidized, but these two international developers basically just set the floor for profitable, unsubsidized solar. 10 to 1 both these firms have better net profit margins than gas turbine manufacturers. No need to even mention coal, its a dead technology.
The contractor is just responsible for generating the power, not managing the grid. That's a problem for Dubai to handle.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
hey man mod parent up informative, funny text here text
these are called switching costs
Also these solar plants generally use molten sodium to store the energy
No, they really don't. Molten sodium would be very dangerous. And molten anything would be much more expensive than the ever-more-economical photovoltaic technology.
Ezekiel 23:20
You probably wouldn't transport anything over 20e3 km. Why? There are places closer to you with sunlight even when there's midnight around you, and the sun is not the only remote resource you could use. Geographic smoothing works for wind, too. (Also, even half the amount of energy purchased for three US cents on the other side of the world would still be price competitive around where I live.)
Ezekiel 23:20
An easy fix: Date a vampire!
Ezekiel 23:20
Dam those Damocrats!
Ezekiel 23:20
> Dude it's not 1995 anymore
I was figuring it must be 1992; Clinton is running for president and the Democrats are saying all the problems are Bush's fault.
Power goes to negative numbers in pricing as you lose less money at negative cost than you would in shutdown and startup plant costs.
I wish people would stop using this stupid argument. Solar works fine when connected to a grid with other power sources, because *demand* goes down at night too. Guess when peak demand for power is in Las Vegas in the summer? That's why they built a 400 MW solar plant about 10 miles away, it produces the most power exactly when it's needed to run air-conditioners.
You're assuming that he drives around all day and only parks his car when the sun is down. In reality electric cars are an opportunity to shift some of the demand to when there is excess supply.
Nobody who understands power grids proposes using *only* solar and nothing else for power. Rational grids use a mix of power sources. Since power demand is higher during the day, solar can supply "peaking" power, while other sources can fill in on "baseload" (the part of demand that's there all the time).
Did the evil democrats turn the school system to shit, leaving you with misconceptions about how the sun and clouds work? :(
What part of the plant being built in the UAE don't you understand? There is no such thing as a lack of demand for electricity there when the sun is up. Have you heard of AC? They have and they love it.
http://economictimes.indiatime...
How it works is you underbid a bunch of stuff, build half of it, then go bankrupt.
It's a proven model.
There's nothing "newsy" about the idea that solar power is most-optimal in arid regions near the equator. But the fact that a form of energy in the most-optimal place for it is as cheap as it is has no bearing on whether it's good as a power source in Scotland or in Minnesota.
This headline is meant to fool idiots into thinking some breakthrough has made solar much more affordable and practical in everytown, anycountry.
It's on-par with a statement that a facility preserving food at the South Pole proves that it's now more efficient to use blocks of naturally-occurring ice to keep food cold than to use a refrigerator.
The current generation of under-30-year-olds are the most-propagandized people in history, nearly all the information they are spoon-fed at school, on Facebook, in television, etc is propaganda designed to manipulate them and served-up by people with strong political ties to special interests. It's really sad to see a free people voluntarily slumping into subservience.
He means molten salt. This is being used in some thermal solar plants, such as Ivanpah in California, to store power for off hours.
What plans does Dubai have to get around the low-output problem that is plaguing Ivanpah, which is located in the same desert climate zone and is a short transmission line away from large energy markets?
baseload plants are providing excess capacity
Base load plants never provide excess capacity.
Perhaps you should read what a base load plant actually does.
Hint: they provide base load, hence the name. However: I have the sad feeling you don't grasp what I just wrote.
2.99c whether or not there is a demand
We are talking about solar power, obviously it is daytime, obviously there is always demand.
Solar plants never get 0c price as they always provide power when there is high demand. Your reasoning is idiotic.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
During daytime there is always demand. It is about 100% higher than during night time, or other way around: at night the demand is half of what it is at daytime.
Also, what don't you grasp? We are talking about a single plant here. How can a single new plant produce so much energy that it eclipses the production of the whole country, so that there is no demand?
(*facepalm*)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
all of that solar actually useful 24 hours a day
You don't need solar power 24h a day.
At night the power consumption of a nation is approximately half as big as during daytime.
So unless 50% of your total power production comes from solar, you have no single issue at night.
without mentioning all of the extra infrastructure needed to make all of that solar actually useful
There is none needed. The infrastructure is already there. Or do you think Dubai has no electric power and no grid?
(*facepalm*)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
All this talk about how a given solar panel's output being cheaper than coal always avoids the extra infrastructure needed to bridge that cloud-period gap.
Always? Nope. There's plenty of discussion of grid management, but then you'd know that if you bothered to be part of any discussions of say, Solar Thermal power generation, that it can operate as a heat bank itself.
Of course, as anybody with a hospital or medical refrigeration system knows, or running a water company, you have to have backups anyway, because SOMETIMES the local plant goes offline. Even the grid itself has to compensate. Sometimes it does it poorly, as folks who suffered the Northeast Blackout found out.
And if you're a nuclear plant, if you don't have a place to dump power, you're likely going to emergency shut down.
But hey, maybe next time you can back off the hyperbole? Always is a high bar, and easy to disprove. They don't avoid it. It's faced head-on.
I know you'd like to believe otherwise, because then you can just smirk and walk off in some sense of superiority, but it's really just empty arrogance.
I live in Australia and that is the mecca for the solar power! We use it all the way: in our houses, in the cars, in the streets. That is very affordable and convinient, you only once install the battery or the panel and then get a service from http://servicemy.solar/ - done! Everything works and you pay very low amounts on your bills. That's the future of the world, of the sunniest countries, indeed :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Las Vegas isn't that far away. What "that" have you never seen before?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
and that he was also destroying four more hydroelectric damns in the Northwest US including Copco and Iron Gate where my brother has worked.
Which is quite sad, as most of the damage has already been done in existing dams, so all that work to build a exhaustless power source, and it is being demolished because it is "bad"
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Yes, but how does that technology improve solar photovoltaic setups like the one being discussed?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?