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The World's Largest Solar Farm Rises in the Remote Egyptian Desert (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: In 1913 on the outskirts of Cairo, an inventor from Philadelphia named Frank Shuman built the world's first solar thermal power station, using the abundant Egyptian sunshine to pump 6,000 gallons of water a minute from the Nile to irrigate a nearby cotton field. World War I and the discovery of cheap oil derailed Shuman's dream of replicating his "sun power plant" on a grand scale and eventually producing enough energy to challenge the world's dependence on coal.
More than a century later, that vision has been resurrected. The world's largest solar park, the $2.8-billion Benban complex, is set to open next year 400 miles south of Cairo in Egypt's Western Desert. It will single-handedly put Egypt on the clean energy map. That is no small feat for a country that's been hobbled by its longtime addiction to cheap, state-subsidized fossil fuels and currently gets more than 90% of its electricity from oil and natural gas. [...] The Benban complex, which will be operated by major energy companies from around the world, is expected to generate as much as 1.8 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. It will consist of 30 separate solar plants, the first of which began running in December, and employ 4,000 workers.
More than a century later, that vision has been resurrected. The world's largest solar park, the $2.8-billion Benban complex, is set to open next year 400 miles south of Cairo in Egypt's Western Desert. It will single-handedly put Egypt on the clean energy map. That is no small feat for a country that's been hobbled by its longtime addiction to cheap, state-subsidized fossil fuels and currently gets more than 90% of its electricity from oil and natural gas. [...] The Benban complex, which will be operated by major energy companies from around the world, is expected to generate as much as 1.8 gigawatts of electricity, or enough to power hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. It will consist of 30 separate solar plants, the first of which began running in December, and employ 4,000 workers.
Fossil fool plants also cause bird deaths. Y'know, science...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/...
So. they're going to get 1.8GW of the ~25GW they produce in total? For 12 hours per day, or less, of course.
That seems to translate to maybe 4% of their electricity production.
Color me unimpressed....
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the US currently generates 1.4 percent of it's energy from solar, Egypt is about to cover 4% of it's energy needs from solar in one fell swoop. I'd say that's rather impressive, especially since the Egyptians have by now probably caught on to the fact that (A) sunlight, unlike oil and gas, carries no extraction costs with it, (B) it comes with no geopolitical baggage and (C) Egypt has a fantastic abundance of both sunlight and cheap desert land to put solar plants on. Meanwhile in the US, the nation's president thinks the future of the nation's energy generation lies in coal and natural gas of which one is being out competed price wise by Wind and Solar and the other soon will be.
Nah...but 10% might mean something. And 4000 people employed there??? For less than 2GW peak? Seems more like a public works project than a serious attempt to go Green....
One more time ... it's an iterative process.
That's fewer than 1% of the birds killed by hunters in Texas every single day. And just about the same as the number of birds killed by airplanes every month in North America.
Don't be a dope. And please, don't pretend you give one blessed fuck about birds getting killed when all you want is to spread FUD about solar energy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
It would take some kind of stupid bird to fry itself on a parabolic trough, don't you think? ( I know you don't understand the difference between the type of solar described in the LA times article and a parabolic trough but I will pretend you do.)
Five miles from the Nile and twenty miles from Aswan may be remote, but Egypt has far, far more remote locations. Like Bugs Bunny remote.
- "But night!!"
- "But this won't immediately cover all electricity generation, so it's useless."
- "Nuclear is the only answer. Please ignore the multiple nuclear plants under construction that have been abandoned in multiple countries."
- "I suddenly really, really, really care about birds, yet have completely forgotten about harm to birds from pollution."
- "What we really need is a physically impossible electrical grid that covers (insert very large geographic area here)."
- Elon Musk is a hero or a villain.
- "My calculations based on retail power costs in a different place, as well as a massive overestimate of the maintenance costs, indicate this plant could never possibly be profitable."
With low labor costs and zero fuel costs, it could be advantageous even if those 4k workers were permanent. Chances are they won't since later maintenance is low.
Ezekiel 23:20
No extraction costs? What do you call the $2.8 billion to build the thing? That doesn't even count transmission.
Egypt also has a ton of wind turbines along the coast of the Red Sea, which I was surprised to learn. These are positive steps.
That said, Egypt is also in the process of opening not one, but three gas power plants totaling 14.4GW of new capacity, dwarfing their solar initiative.
I have friends who sell and install private solar in Egypt, but with grid power directly owned and subsidized by the state, it's hard to compete. Which is a shame, because Egypt's air pollution and AQI is right up there with India and China, and has only gotten worse over the past decade. Unfortunately the government seems about as keen to actually address air pollution as it does to support human rights, which is to say, not very much at all.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
>> World War I and the discovery of cheap oil derailed Shuman's dream of replicating his "sun power plant" on a grand scale
Also, ya know, physics. Not everyone has access to abundant sunshine, cheap natives and water within arm's reach.
What boggles the mind is how NASA managed to convince the natives to help Spirit and where they got the water from! NASA sure are a crafty bunch!
>> Shuman's plant used parabolic troughs to power a 60-70 horsepower engine
Cool, so he was also a pioneer in "clean energy" frying birds as they flew. http://www.latimes.com/local/c...
I would prefer 10M dead birds from concentrated solar to the 10B dead birds that oil is killing.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
This has to be one of the most inane useless responses I've ever seen on Slashdot that wasn't supplied by an AC like myself.
Meanwhile, in 1916, Shuman was doing this.
What have you done?
I thought they were landing pads for the worst spaceship design ever conceived.
Yes, building a power generation station is a public works project. That's specifically what it is, in fact.
Also, see if you can guess the times of peak electricity usage in Egypt. You think it might be when the sun is out?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
No extraction costs? What do you call the $2.8 billion to build the thing?
I'm not a geologist or anything, but I call that a construction cost. Which applies to any power generation station.
Really, this isn't hard. Most of the same costs like construction and transmission will apply to any power generation station. But with things like solar, wind, and hydro, you only need to build them in the right location, you do not need to pay to get the fuel.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the US currently generates 1.4 percent of it's energy from solar, Egypt is about to cover 4% of it's energy needs from solar in one fell swoop.
No, they're not. The capacity factor of solar electric is pretty shit. If we assume that the CF of this plant will equal the best place in the USA (Arizona) then the annual output will be about 19% of the rated output. This means a total of 2,995 gWh per year. Since Egypt currently produces about 170,000 gWh per year of electricity, this new plant will only equal about 1.7% of their total electrical production.
It will of course be an even lower fraction of total energy production.
But you do know that power need more or less follows the course of the sun?
Hence you do know that the CF is completely irrelevant?
So why starting an argument about power with the dreaded CF?
Oh, my mistake!? You did not know?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No extraction costs? What do you call the $2.8 billion to build the thing? That doesn't even count transmission.
What do you call $X billion to extract the oil and then $Y billion to build a refinery to process it into a usable state and/or ship it to the consumer? ... which is the process with oil, natural gas and coal. You don't have to dig up the sunlight, you don't have to refine it, you don't have to ship it to the power-plant, it just shines down on you from the sky, onto your solar panels allowing you to go straight to the convert-it-into-electric-enery step.
Solar power in a Desert country that is reasonably close to the equator where solar would make seance. What is next Geothermal energy in Greenland?
No extraction costs? What do you call the $2.8 billion to build the thing?
I'm not a geologist or anything, but I call that a construction cost. Which applies to any power generation station.
Really, this isn't hard. Most of the same costs like construction and transmission will apply to any power generation station. But with things like solar, wind, and hydro, you only need to build them in the right location, you do not need to pay to get the fuel.
Extraction costs is getting the coal out of the ground, processing costs is getting the raw coal into a usable state, shipping costs is loading it onto a barge and shipping it down to Florida, energy production costs is building a coal fired power-plant in Florida and buying coal at market prices so you can burn it and generate energy for Floridians to use to air condition their houses. Contrast this with solar, where the is no digging up the sunlight, no processing the sunlight into a usable state, no shipping the sunlight down the Mississippi on barges to Florida, you get to go straight to the power plant building part and there your costs are basically fixed since there are no fluctuations in the price of sunlight the price of sunlight is pretty much always $0.00. The real beauty of this idea is to use the sunlight you are trying to escape to cool down your house.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration the US currently generates 1.4 percent of it's energy from solar, Egypt is about to cover 4% of it's energy needs from solar in one fell swoop.
No, they're not. The capacity factor of solar electric is pretty shit. If we assume that the CF of this plant will equal the best place in the USA (Arizona) then the annual output will be about 19% of the rated output. This means a total of 2,995 gWh per year. Since Egypt currently produces about 170,000 gWh per year of electricity, this new plant will only equal about 1.7% of their total electrical production.
It will of course be an even lower fraction of total energy production.
And yet 1,7% is still more than the US.
And yet 1,7% is still more than the US.
Correct. And?
But in that climate, solar is a more relatable 12-hour daily source than anywhere else with a significant user market and a lot of the kind of utter devastation that would be okay to pave over with solar collectors. Such a source could power, say, a large desalination project.
EDIT: "...reliable 12-hour..."
Bore through the Atlas Mountains to re-establish the inland sea that use to be there 6000 years ago. Would re-create rainfall in the western Sahara and add countless farming & fishing jobs.
Actually it's around 0.4% of total energy and 2.8% of electricity if Wikipedia's numbers are correct. But that's still nothing to sneeze at, plus they don't have the problem that Europe has with seasonal variations. They can build quite a bit more than this to cover most of the increased daily power use (3-4 GW on average).
Ezekiel 23:20
That's a decent, if not amazing price considering the output. LCOE comes out as around $50-60/MWh or something like that?
Ezekiel 23:20
Meanwhile in the US, the nation's president thinks...
whatever he's paid to think.
But you do know that power need more or less follows the course of the sun?
Hence you do know that the CF is completely irrelevant?
CF is relevant when comparing generating capacity with demand. Egypt currently consumes about 170 TWh per year. That means they need 170 TWh production capacity. The CF will become very important if they intend to replace oil fired plants that have a CF of (I'm pulling a number out of the air) 60% with solar panels that they can expect only 30% CF.
So why starting an argument about power with the dreaded CF?
Because solar power is notorious for over promising and under delivering. You live in Germany, no? Then you should be abundantly aware of the high costs and low reliability of solar power.
Oh, my mistake!? You did not know?
You are right, I should know not to have a battle of wits with someone that is unarmed.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
They need to get on the phone with Elon Musk or at least someone who can provide them with energy storage to cover the surplus they'll generate during peak daylight hours.
Assuming a petite 65kg worker composed of 17% fat @37MJ/kg and 5% carbohydrates @17MJ/kg, burning one worker would produce around 450MJ, at least if you first get rid of the water content which is easy to do by letting them partly fossilize in the hot Egyptian sun.
To produce 1.8GW would require burning 4 fossil workers per second. 4000 workers would last you less than 20 minutes. The whole population of Egypt not even a year.
HTH.
So, the Egypt killing him part is speculation, but the head engineer of a $5 billion dam project being built on a Nile tributary in Ethiopia was recently found dead in his car in what looked suspiciously like a faked suicide. There's a lot of potential for big energy money in Northeast Africa right now, enough to make whichever state can harness it first a major geopolitical player.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
>> sunlight.... :-)
>> (B) it comes with no geopolitical baggage
Kinda disagree. Tell this to people in Syberia...
Ok, fine, a "bit" more abundant than oil.
4wdloop
You're a lying jackass. $4,000 will get you a system that powers a small shack with a dozen lightbulbs and a TV. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy. Minimum cost for me would be $20,000 and that's if I do most of the work myself. Subsidies would offset some of that, but far less than half. Even if subsidies were high enough to bring it down to $4,000 that wouldn't make it a $4,000 system; it would make it a $20,000 system which was paid for mostly by other people.
That's a nice list of predictions, here's mine: "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
Seems like you have a bit of underdog syndrome going there blindseer. Nuclear has been going since the 50's when it was "too cheap to meter" and received billions of dollars of taxpayer funded subsidies - and still does.
Nuclear Ideologists have been laughing at solar, wind and geothermal projects for the entire time. You're a prime example of someone fighting those visions of the future by attempting to hold us to a failing nuclear past.
You've ignored solar, laughed at solar and you've been fighting solar so that it won't win.
I see nuclear power has now finally gone beyond being ignored. Seems we're at the "laugh at you" stage now.
No one is laughing at Nuclear Power, it's a very serious matter that we have to deal with in our generation. It's an onerous responsibility forced upon us by the Cold war generation. Our responsibility is to deal with the radionuclide AND carbon legacy left to us by a generation that didn't know any better because we do know better.
That's why people are tired of all your bullshit, and that's why they're laughing at you. Your Nuclear Ideology is so completely absurd and divorced from reality that you've made it clear it's everyone else. Here's my list of why they laugh at you:
While all the greenies were concerned with oil and coal companies polluting the air and water by protesting against that in previous decades, the oil and coal companies manipulated pro-nukkers into attacking greenies while they destroyed IFR in its infancy. You concentrated on blaming people that may have been your allies if you you weren't so morally superior and dogmatically skeptical.
Whenever anyone tried to explain that to you pro-nukkers you instead concentrated on destroying them for asking intelligent questions that you had no answer for. When they went out and found the answers themselves the true nightmare of the effect of radionuclide contamination on the human genome became apparent and you pretend it doesn't happen. That's when everyone could see that you were Nuclear Ideologists, that your worldview is a political system based in social proof, rhetoric and a very dangerous lie.
Nuclear Ideology, it's the false reality too expensive to maintain.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
And 4000 people employed there??? For less than 2GW peak?
When labor is cheap, you can hire a lot of people to do things that wouldn't be cost-effective in America. fwiw
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's still fewer than the number of birds killed by Texas hunters every year.
I don't dispute that it's fewer. I also don't dispute that lots of birds are killed by hunters in Texas. I'm just curious though where you got that number. Is that birds taken in legal hunts? Illegally killed? Both? I'm guessing that if this is all legal hunting then how is that relevant? The reason that hunters can take these birds as game is because it is deemed as part of population control of certain species. That's how conservation works.
Can you please stop pretending you care about birds?
Oh, right, I forgot my usual disclaimer. Birds are jerks. I don't care about the birds.
It is possible for you to say that you don't believe there should be any solar energy used in the US, and only nuclear plants should be built and subsidized by the government without having to make up some big narrative about saving the lives of birds.
I just thought it would be relevant to the discussion to put bird deaths by the different energy sources into perspective. I'm not arguing that nuclear should be used to the exclusion of all other energy sources, only that nuclear must be part of the solution to solve our energy problems if a modern economy is to continue existing.
If you loved birds, you would hate hunting,
I don't see why I can't love birds and hunting. Birds are jerks but they are also tasty.
and my guess is you're one of these brave militia types who believe that the tree of liberty has to be watered with the blood of innocent animals. Or something. For liberty. So don't play. Peddle your FUD elsewhere.
The whole of the arguments against nuclear power are based on fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Whenever there's a mention of trying to get a new nuclear reactor built there's mention of Chernobyl and Fukushima. Both those reactors were second generation designs, designs that required active safety systems to prevent a meltdown. With Chernobyl the active safety systems were disabled by drunken fools that wanted to impress their superiors. With Fukushima the problems were the active safety systems were overwhelmed by a combination of ignoring known faults in the design (just having the sea wall to spec could have saved the plant) and that it was hit by a rare tsunami that exceeded expectations. Well, we have new expectations now. We also have had passive safety systems, that don't require external power like second generation designs, for at least 20 years now.
What kind of FUD did I bring here? I showed my math. I know I didn't cite my sources but if you dispute them I'll go dig them up for you.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Solar is quite likely a suitable energy source for a nation like Egypt. Here's what I expect to happen though, if the people planning these projects plan this out like so many others in the past, they'll soon exceed their ability to match supply to load and end up with excessive costs and unreliable electricity.
It's real easy to go from 0% solar power to 10%. Getting from 10% to 20% solar is often a bit harder but still rather trivial. What usually happens when trying to get past 15% or 20% of wind and solar is there's a need for some kind of energy storage, or means to shed demand. This is what happened in California and Hawaii as a result of solar power subsidies. Germany is seeing this, but offset to some extent because they can still import electricity from it's neighbors with plentiful nuclear, hydro, and natural gas, and export excess wind and solar when they have it. Germany is basically using the rest of Europe as a battery, but paying for this service in having to buy high and sell low.
Egypt has already got to the point of having to import fuel for their electricity. They have some hydroelectricity that they might be able to convert to pumped storage, which would be helpful for expanding reliance on solar power. A quick search of the internet tells me that Egypt has signed a deal with Russia to build a nuclear power plant. I'm not sure if construction started yet as the news articles I found claimed construction would start in 2017.
Egypt will have to do something new. They've run out of rivers to dam up. They already started importing natural gas. On top of it all, oil is their major export and domestic oil consumption started to take a big bite out of their production decades ago.
Egypt will have to do more than just solar to solve their problems.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You would think a mature world-saving technology wouldn't need government support OR you trying to hijack discussions of solar power with FUD.
I'm fine with doing away with the energy subsidies. Let's not subsidize solar, wind, oil, coal, ethanol, or even nuclear. Let's level the playing field and see who wins.
Given how loudly the wind lobby screams (usually into my phone in election years) when their precious subsidies are threatened I suspect even "mature world saving technology" that is wind wouldn't be very successful without the subsidies they've been getting.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Bore through the Atlas Mountains ...
Elon has this plan...
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
Um. Not to point out the bleeding obvious, or anything, but taking away subsidy today doesn't account for the investments of subsidies in various tech types in the past. So it doesn't create a level playing field.
If you believe that solar is free, you're obviously a moron.
the equipment to collect solar energy cost money
As does the equipment to collect any other form of energy, plus maintenance and security. AND you have to pay the fuel extraction costs - along with capital, maintenance, etc for all the mining and refining infrastructure - and the same for all the transportation too (and its fuel costs).
all the hard currency you have to send to China to buy all that equipment
As opposed to their home-grown coal & gas plants? Most solutions require importing equipment. You're still pointing out the obvious.
the environmental effects of setting up solar collection facilities
.. are a heck of a lot less than the environmental effects of mining fossil fuels, transporting it, setting up a power plant, then burning millions of tonnes of it. And what makes you think you need water to clean solar panels? Some cheap labour and a broom is enough, or you can go more high tech.
Natural Gas is the cheapskate's fuel of choice these days.
You seemed to have missed the part of TFA where the whole reason for investing in solar was because their LNG imports were too expensive. And you're completely wrong about the relative LCOE of gas vs wind (comparable) and solar (US is within 20% on average, Egypt would be cheaper) - unsubsidised of course, except for the public still paying the bill for the health & environmental costs of the gas plant's emissions. If you factor those in then gas doesn't even get close to competitive.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Like building pyramids for example
Then you'd be wrong. Compare the unsubsidised LCOE columns, and look how nuclear is still double the cost of wind.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Extraction costs is getting the coal out of the ground, processing costs is getting the raw coal into a usable state, [...] Contrast this with solar, where the is no digging up the sunlight, no processing the sunlight into a usable state, no shipping the sunlight [...]
A reminder that solar and wind plants are made of tangible stuff, almost entirely manufactured and constructed with fossil energy, and will use more fossil energy at the end of their life.
A reminder that as renewables displace fossil fuels that problem diminishes and then goes away as fossil fuels are phased out. Fossil fuels are a transient thing, a dying legacy technology, not a universal constant without which the universe will be sucked into a singularly and cease to exist.
If you believe that solar is free, you're obviously a moron.
I didn’t say solar was free. I said that if you build a coal plant you then have to pay market prices at regular intervals to buy coal to burn in your plant. If, however, you build a solar power plant you do not have to pay for the sunlight. If you still do not understand this it is YOU who are the moron here.
You're a lying jackass. $4,000 will get you a system that powers a small shack with a dozen lightbulbs and a TV. Anything beyond that is pure fantasy. Minimum cost for me would be $20,000 and that's if I do most of the work myself. Subsidies would offset some of that, but far less than half. Even if subsidies were high enough to bring it down to $4,000 that wouldn't make it a $4,000 system; it would make it a $20,000 system which was paid for mostly by other people.
In the UK Ikea is charging ~$5600 for a basic solar package, throw in battery storage it comes in at ~$9000. These prices will only fall and the panels will only become more efficient over the next couple of decades at least.
If you actually bothered to read the report, rather than just look at the charts and graphs, you'd see that they point out that their cost analysis did not account for issues like the regional needs and existing electricity generation capacity.
In other words, it's complicated.
If wind power didn't need these subsidies then the wind lobby wouldn't spend so much money on push poll calls, radio advertisements, and letters in the mail, for me to vote a certain way. What has happened is that these wind subsidies have turned into a political money laundering scheme. A political party can now vote in favor of wind subsidy to encourage these subsidies getting turned into political contributions. The politicians can leverage a their vote in favor of a wind subsidy to get money for reelection.
I'll give you two guesses on which political party benefits from energy subsidies, like those for wind.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Yeah, they talk about regional variations further down; keep reading. But this is just illustrative anyway, and obviously the region of Egypt will likely vary rather more from those figures. Solar, for example, is likely to be somewhat cheaper per MW than listed, given their latitude and climate. I couldn't find any equivalent reports for Egypt itself, sadly.
I can see you prefer to believe that "politics" is the main reason why nuclear isn't as cheap as wind, but the evidence cited so far does not bear out that view. Feel free to provide anything that substantiates your point of view.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
"It will single-handedly put Egypt on the clean energy map"
Right, because Aswan doesn't exist.
Denmark is around 50% renewable electricity. The total cost of Danish electricity imports is LESS than the total income from Danish electricity exports, despite the fact that Denmark imports MORE than it exports.
Yes, that's because Denmark is conveniently situated near neighbours which struggle to get enough electricity in winter, and wind power in Denmark just so happens to be produced mostly in winter. If you mix your renewables correctly, there are LOTS of places around the world that are in similar lucky situations.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
This was paid for by a state guaranteed loan from Germany, which is never going to be paid back because Egypt won't stop being an economic basket case. Western governments are using loans as disguised foreign aid to prop up countries in a Malthusian trap ... trying to keep the status quo going for a bit longer. It's all going to come tumbling down, the only question is if there will be an Europe at the end of it or if we will join Africa and the Middle-East's descend into Anarchy.
I'm guessing we will, I'm also guessing the US and Israel have plans to sabotage/capture all nuclear material in Europe and the non Israeli Middle East for when it does happen. It would be silly not to have them.
You can be as unimpressed as you want. It along with other projects elevated India to one of the countries with the highest level alternative energy generation in the world.
Just remember to be even less impressed with whatever country you *think* is better.
100GW / 400MW * 6000 = 1.5 million
That has got to be the dumbest misapplication of maths I have ever seen. And I've seen some pretty dumb shit posted on Slashdot before.
Sigh, I have got to stop drinking and posting at the same time. Wrong country. But same goal. India has a plan to do 20% renewable energy by 2020. What's the USA's plan, throw baby seals into coal power plants to make the coal look greener?
You don't have to pay for sunlight? No way! Thanks Dr Science!
Any more useless observations? Like "gas for my car is expensive, but I don't have to pay for wind!"? Or "airplanes have to pay for fuel, but if I throw myself off a building I don't have to pay for gravity!"?
In the UK Ikea is charging ~$5600 for a basic solar package
$5600 won't get you shit. I ran their cost estimator for shits and giggles, on a random roof in a random average sized UK town, using generous assumptions (single story, etc). Based on the size of the roof, the calculator estimated they would be able to fit a maximum of 16 panels, at a cost of £5,499, which is about $7,200 USD as of today.
Those 16 panels at 270W each will produce a maximum of 4.3 kW at peak. The capacity factor for a solar system in the UK will be 9.7% according to the DECC. Which means that those panels will provide around 3,700 kWh per year. Given that the average UK household uses around 4,000 kWh per year, this system is still unlikely to meet all of the electrical needs of an average house over the course of a year, but at least it's close.
But wait, there's more!
The reason the UK has such low household electrical usage is because pretty much every household has access to natural gas, and they use a LOT of it. Average household gas usage works out to about 15,000 kWh per year. This dwarfs electrical usage. If you actually wanted to produce "an entire households power" like the original asshat claimed, you would therefore need a system which produces about 19,000 kWh annually. Given that our 3,700 kWh Ikea system costs $7,200 USD, it's safe to assume that a system that's 4 times as large would cost about three times as much. So you're looking at spending about $21,000 all in.
throw in battery storage it comes in at ~$9000.
Yes, if we throw in battery storage it becomes even more ridiculously overpriced. £9,780 for the system they offered me, which is $12,835 USD. Again, for a system that only provides about a quarter of an average households power requirements.
These prices will only fall and the panels will only become more efficient over the next couple of decades at least.
Wonderful. Maybe in another 20 years his claim will be true. Today it is not.
Okay then, how would you do the math?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
But, this whole argument goes away if the solar plant they're building uses molten salts.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Nuclear is nice if you want baseline power you can just anywhere that won't necessarily get cracked wide open by a fault line.
Nuclear has had a ridiculous, insane amount of bullshit FUD spread about it because of old reactor designs, two preventable disasters, and ignoring newer reactor designs that don't do any of the things people cry about. The most modern reactor designs could basically be bombed and cause less environmental damage than a shitload of coal sludge or a few years of fly ash.
The NIMBY crowd is still huge and encompasses basically everyone left center and right because...well, NIMBY people are pretty universally stupid and driven by a primal fear that bypasses party/political affiliation.
It's still way the fuck more expensive than basically all alternatives and still has its own drawbacks and hazards.
My answer: Nationalize electricity production. If we can spend a shitzillion dollars on a piece of shit jet that won't ever accomplish anything outside of asphyxiating pilots when they cross the international date line we can spend it on completely taking over power generation so we can just wholesale move to whatever makes the most sense in terms of protecting the environment and meeting our future power needs.
But, this whole argument goes away if the solar plant they're building uses molten salts.
That's a lot like the arguments against nuclear power going away if new nuclear reactors are built are using molten salts.
If you want to bring up some experimental technology in solar power to make the case for solar power then nuclear power advocates should be able to bring up experimental technology to make the case for nuclear power. Just like molten salt solar can use high temperature salts for thermal energy storage and load following so can molten salt nuclear reactors.
If pumped hydro can be used for solar energy storage then so can pumped hydro be used for nuclear energy storage. In fact, the Tennessee Valley Authority uses pumped hydro storage to allow their coal and nuclear power plants to follow loads. I've visited one of the facilities.
Barring some grand leap in solar and wind technology we will be using more nuclear power very soon. A leap in storage technology helps nuclear power adoptions just as much, if not more, than wind and solar.
I look forward to any use of solar molten salt technology. That will demonstrate many of the technologies currently proposed for fourth generation nuclear power. Maybe these next generation reactors won't use a molten salt fuel, but it could use a high temperature solid fuel and molten salt cooling.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
My argument is pretty simple.
You throw in a term you don't understand, CF.
I made that pretty clear in my previous post. Why you call this 'incoherent' is beyond me.
Perhaps you want to look at the power plant in question, and as a mental challange, calculate the amount of power it will produce over the course of a year? Hint: your idea of 'CF' wont help you in that. Another hint: perhaps it helps to read the linked article :)
No worries, judging from your braindead post before, you will be off by a factor of 2 - 3 ...
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, CF is completely irrelevant for that.
Then you should be abundantly aware of the high costs and low reliability of solar power.
Solar power is neither expensive nor unreliable.
You keep mixing up 'reliable' with 'dispatchable'.
Two complete different things!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, CF is completely irrelevant for that.
Perhaps then we'll just have to agree to disagree.
Solar power is neither expensive nor unreliable.
Well, things like "expensive" and "reliable" are relative. Solar compared to nuclear, coal, natural gas, or even wind, is expensive and unreliable. What's your metric for comparison?
You keep mixing up 'reliable' with 'dispatchable'.
No, I'm not.
Two complete different things!
I agree that they are two different things, I'll use "dispatchable" when it's appropriate and "reliable" when it's appropriate. I used "unreliable" to describe solar power and I meant that.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Then explain me why in a desert around 12AM solar power is unreliable ....
Or at any ofher place or time?
There is completely reliable no sun at mid night, and there is completely reliable ligh around noon, unless you live close to the poles.
Again: you are mixing up dispatchable with reliable.
Regarding the costs, solar is the second cheapest power source, after wind, since nearly a decade now ... get up to date man.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about, as usual. Capacity factor is directly related to annual output.
According to the article it's 4,000 people at one facility. This entire project is supposed to be composed of 30 facilities when completed. That would presumably be 120,000 jobs ...
And why is the anual output relevant for the power/energy the plant is producing tomorrow? :) )
(Your CF was wrkng anyway, as you did not read the article
Claiming that one has no clue, who worked about 10 years for power companies is idiotic.
Hint: the power plant in question has a CF of ~0.50, which you would know if you had botherd to read the article.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
And why is the anual output relevant for the power/energy the plant is producing tomorrow?
It's not; it's relevant to what percentage of electricity in Egypt will be generated by this plant. Which is what we were talking about, asshat.
Claiming that one has no clue, who worked about 10 years for power companies is idiotic.
I'm sure you mopped those floors real good. You still have no clue what you're talking about when it comes to the topic at hand though.
Hint: the power plant in question has a CF of ~0.50, which you would know if you had botherd to read the article.
The article doesn't talk about CF at all; you're just resorting to your usual tactic of making shit up. But, more importantly, if you think that it's possible for solar to have a CF of 50% anywhere on the planet, you're a raving lunatic. This is why they had you mopping floors instead of doing something more demanding like emptying garbage cans.
Then explain me why in a desert around 12AM solar power is unreliable ....
That's a very interesting definition of "reliable". I guess solar is "reliable" if you define it so narrowly to the point it's nothing more than "when the sun shines". My last car was "reliable" when the weather was warm and no snow on the streets, but in the winter it didn't like to start and had trouble getting up the steep hill in front of my house in the snow.
Or at any ofher place or time?
I'll remember that when a nuclear power plant has to reduce power or shutdown because of a heat wave. Nuclear power is "reliable" except in a time and place where the heat sink isn't cool enough.
There is completely reliable no sun at mid night, and there is completely reliable ligh around noon, unless you live close to the poles.
Maybe this video can clarify things:
https://www.prageru.com/videos...
Again: you are mixing up dispatchable with reliable.
Repeating your claim does not make it true. Perhaps you could explain further, such as why "dispatchable" is relevant to the discussion. Just repeating yourself is very childish.
Regarding the costs, solar is the second cheapest power source, after wind, since nearly a decade now ... get up to date man.
Then why is only 2% of the world's energy from solar? If it's so cheap (and reliable) then everyone would want it. Egypt is building a big solar energy collector but they are also building a nuclear power plant with four reactors. If solar is so great compared to nuclear then why is Egypt bothering with nuclear and not just building more solar instead?
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Opinion pieces that gloss right over construction and decommissioning costs aren't reliable sources either.
LCOE is not the whole story, I agree - dispatchable power has extra value, and you need a certain amount of that. While you can make renewables more dispatchable with storage, that adds extra costs, so the big picture is going to depend on local grid needs. And I'm not against nuclear; there are cases where nuclear makes far more sense than renewables. But you have to look at the costs of both objectively, and for a number of cases, unsubsidised renewables with added dispatchable storage are still cheaper than nuclear by LCOE.
No single energy source works best for all possible cases, so why not be objective about all the costs (including LCOE, health, environment, grid stability, capital risks etc), and just use what works in a given situation for the best overall price?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If someone could solve energy storage, we'd have something. Sun doesn't shine 24 hours a day after all.
Storing it is a bitch because, well it's energy. Can store it chemically, or against gravity with water say... nothing is free though. So far there is always a downside to storing say 1 megawatt/hour.
Of course the article is not talking about CF. :)
But you claimed the CF would be in the 20% range, which is wrong.
And the fact that you can not deduce that from the article makes you not look very bright
Your ranting is interestig ... Hint: every solar thermal power plant has a CF far above 50%
You have abolutely no clue what you are talking about.
The solar plant in question is in a desert, over the course of a year 50% of the time it is covered by sun.
The solar plant in question is tracking the sun by moving/tilting its panels.
Hence the solar plant in question has - minus a sandstorm every few years, minus a rainfall once or twice a year, minus the fact that the rising and setting sun loses about 1% due to the atmosphere thickness - a CF of ~50%
If you are not intelligent to grasp that, do us a favour and stay out of discussions about solar power.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Only x% .. you say 2% .. of the world energy is solar because not many companies invested into it.
Why you still rant about reliablity is beyond me.
Solar power is 100% reliable just like any other power source in the planet.
And unlike a coal palnt that could in theory have a malfunction, solar power never has a malfunction.
So yes: you still keep mixing up reliable with dispatchable. No idea why.
Or do you really want to claim that tomorrow at your location the sun might have a chance not to rise reliable as it did the previous 4 bilion years?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Of course the article is not talking about CF.
You fucking tool. In one comment you claim the article says it has a CF of "0.5" and bitch at me for not reading the article, and in the VERY NEXT FUCKING COMMENT you say "of course the article doesn't talk about CF".
Fuck you. I don't know if you're retarded or just a troll, but either way I have no interest in your bullshit. Go bother someone else.
You're arguing with a moron who has no clue how to utilise math or logic, and is completely incapable of ever admitting that he is wrong. Stop wasting your time.
Sure as fuck not by linear extrapolation. There is not a single thing linear in the power generation industry, not size of plants, not cost, and sure as heck not your doom and gloom "I care about a few birds" scenario.
Oh please. You really think that maintaining solar power plants requires one full-time worker for every fifty panels or so? That's not how any of this works.
Ezekiel 23:20
Renewables aren't displacing fossil fuels; see Germany. At best, they reduce fossil fuel consumption a bit, and they are not a particularly cost effective method of doing so. (Compare to any of the countries that have successfully decarbonized using nuclear.)
1) You're contradicting yourself in the first part and 2) the second part is irrelevant since historical experience is almost meaningless when the prices change as quickly as they do for the technology in question. That, e.g., Germany may have overshot deployment ten years ago when the equipment was six times as expensive as it is today is irrelevant for judging the economics of the 2030s when it will cost perhaps half as much again as it costs today.
Ezekiel 23:20
A reminder that solar and wind plants are made of tangible stuff, almost entirely manufactured and constructed with fossil energy
Actually, at the very least, solar is mostly manufactured using electricity. Silicon processing takes most of it.
Those variable energy flows also need storage, conditioning, and delivery by lengthy transmission lines, even if not by barge.
Nuclear plants might be built with fossil wealth today, but advanced designs are capable of producing process heat for industry and synthetic fuels, enabling a truly fossil-free energy system.
Ahh, so your "advanced designs" don't need any conditioning whatsoever, deliver power wirelessly, and can magically reach temperatures of 1500K or higher better than the existing electric solutions (or higher temperatures better than the existing chemical solutions).
Ezekiel 23:20
Rofl,
I did not say the article claimed it has a CF of 0.5.
I said: you did not read the article. ... so we are around ~48%, aren't we?)
If you had read the article you knew: the panels are sun tracking, hence: with a little bit of IQ, 85 or 95 would be enough, you can easily conclude that it has a CF of ~50% (considering that it is in a desert and you only need to account for 2 days of clouds and 1 or 2 days of a sandstorm
Have a nice day, you super expert for power production and GMO via "mutations" ;D .
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
No, I don't, but the article apparently does and maybe the Egyptians do also.
Seems more like a public works project than a serious attempt to go Green....
Which means it's time once again for the apocryphal/semi-apocryphal Milton Friedman anecdote.
A government official in some Asian country is showing Friedman excavation at a public-works project.
Friedman: Why are they using shovels, instead of bulldozers and other earth-moving equipment?
Official: This is also a jobs program.
Friedman. Oh. Why are they using shovels, instead of teaspoons?
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.