Mixing Coal and Solar To Produce Cheaper Energy

Al writes "It might not please many environmentalists, but a major energy company is adding solar-thermal power to a coal plant and says this could be the cost-effective way to produce energy while lowering CO2 emissions. Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the coal plant, which is based near Grand Junction, Colorado. Under the design, parabolic troughs will be used to preheat water that will be fed into the coal plant's boilers, where coal is burned to turn the water into steam. Cost savings comes from using existing turbines and generators and from operating at higher efficiencies, since the turbines and generators in solar-thermal plants are normally optimized to run at the lower temperatures generated by parabolic mirrors."

Re:who would object?

[TheBilgeRat]

Oh, absolutely. I was not dismissing the article off hand, just providing a small proof of who might object. I am all for increased efficency and hybridization. I am still waiting for these to come online more places: http://www.res-energy.com/technology/index.asp [res-energy.com]
Assuming they can get it running as promised.

enviro waste

[zogger]

These traditional coal plants...seems to me they could be repurposed to burn dried wood, which is carbon neutral at least. You look at out west, every season, it never skips, we get all these news reports of one buhzillion acres going up in smoke, a total waste. No matter *what* we do, it seems this stuff is gonna burn up anyway, so we might as well create-back a lot of logging jobs and make use of it and improve the forests by managing them better. We don't have to scrap the coal burning infrastructure then, at least not right away, and can turn a liability-drought ravaged forests and now all those pines being killed by the pine beetle [wikipedia.org]-into an energy production asset. Some of them anyway, I am also in favor of some really large biochar facilities, and again, perhaps some coal plants could be re-engineered into production of biochar along with the electricity. So we'd have solar thermal, perhaps a windfarm in the same area to take advantage of the transmission lines, the coal, the wood scraps, and biochar, all at the same complex, with the goal of eventually phasing out the coal. Maybe, just a thought..