Large Scale 24/7 Solar Power Plant To Be Built in Nevada 475
RayTomes writes "The Obama administration has provided a loan guarantee of $737 million to construct the first large-scale solar power plant that stores energy and provides electricity 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."
This solar power project, a heliostat rather than a photovoltaic system, with a molten salt system to store power as heat for times when the sun isn't shining, will be constructed in Nevada and, says the article, is expected to create "600 construction jobs and 45 permanent positions."
Perfect name (Score:2)
They should totally name this the HELIOS One.
Re: (Score:2)
Amazing, (Score:2)
Re:Amazing, (Score:5, Funny)
pernament employees per MW (Score:5, Interesting)
At slashdot's favorite nuclear power plant Vermont Yankee, there are more that 650 employees for a plant that does not manage to run at 620 MW all that well. Let's give them 80% up time. That is 1.3 employees per MW.
Nuclear power seems less efficient than solar power by this measure. Maybe nuclear power is just a "make work" type jobs program which actually hurts the economy overall.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Alternatively, maybe human resources is not the largest expense of a power plant?
I know, for computer programmers this is a hard attitude to get used to.
Re: (Score:2)
OK, let's compare the cost for production and transport of fuel. Solar: Zero. Nuclear: I don't know, but certainly larger than zero.
Re:pernament employees per MW (Score:4, Interesting)
Interesting metric. What probably counts more is the level of education required for those employees. My guess is in a heliostat most of the labor involved has to do with cleaning the mirrors, now you are talking an unskilled $10/hour job vs a nuclear plant tech that is making $50+/hour, even if there were 5 employees per MW in the solar plant it would still be better. Looking at raw employees per MW doesn't seem to be of much use. The much more important issues are rather obvious:
1) no nuclear waste
2) no nuclear fuel
3) the worst that could happen is some molten salt all over the desert
4) workers require less training and clearances
5) the plant is much less of a terrorist target
About the only downsides are cost and land space, since in the USA we have an abundance of both (compared to every other industrialized nation) we should be building these things all over the place, even in not so sunny places. Since no body wants to cut the defense budget (which is massively overinflated and a waste IMO) we should have the army start building and running these.
Heliostat effeicency (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
nuclear waste is a tiny issue with modern plants.
No event that has cause an issue in the history of nuclear power can happen with modern plans built for modern nuclear power generation. 4th gen plants, for example.
And yes. we should be building solar plants as well. I would love to see the government build a massive solar plant to power a city at cost. Open it up and use it as a learning facility. Someplace the private sector can see working power generation, and built from the designs.
And when I say massiv
Re:pernament employees per MW (Score:5, Informative)
What planet are you from? 80%? Complete fiction. Vermont Yankee is very reliable, and had, from 2003-2009, an amazing 92.6% capacity factor. Which gives an employee/Mwatt ratio closer to 1.09, which while still slightly higher than the solar plant, isn't particularly bad.
The source for my claim [meredithangwin.com] is an open letter from an Entergy executive, being mirrored at the website of Meredith Angwin, who runs the Yes, Vermont Yankee blog.
For more actual *facts* about VY reliability, see this posting [blogspot.com] at Yes, VY.
In general, nuclear power plants in the U.S. have had an *industry average* of over 90%. That's not a cherry picked record for an individual plant - that's the *average* capacity factor. There are certainly some things to be worried about Nuclear plants, in terms of risks and costs, but reliability just isn't one of them. Let's stick to real problems, instead of making up fake ones.
As for number of employees per MW at nuclear plants, there is probably room for improvement there, with newer designs. However, I don't see that 650 employees for 620MW seems like a particularly *bad* ratio. As mentioned above, it's less than 1.09 empl./MW, so it's in the same general ballpark as the solar plant.
Maybe Nuclear plant uptime is so high . . . (Score:2)
Re:pernament employees per MW (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
The proper role of government (Score:5, Interesting)
Keeping it safe (Score:2)
Wrong approach (Score:5, Interesting)
In the end, the question should not be how efficient it is, but how economical it is. A thermal storage that has little costs to set-up, but will last for 20-30 years (within 10-15 years, ultra-caps will become the dominant form of new storage, and would then replace this). That approach extends this equipment for very little costs. More importantly, it would enable ALL FORMS of Alternative Energy to provide power as they can, since the salt storage would act as a buffer for demand systems. Right now, America loses something like 12 GW yearly because they have to feather wind generators at night. Likewise, we have gas turbine generator that are built to handle the demand, esp. when AE falls. With a thermal storage, it provide our demand system, while allowing AE to run at full power.
We need 24/7 power that is practical. (Score:2)
You Have to blame the Japanese government and power plant management for not replacing the Fukushima power reactors. We simply can not expect sol
Funny. (Score:5, Insightful)
I remember reading about plants like this on Slashdot a while ago. A lot of people said that was a good idea, and we should start building them!
Well now that we're actually doing it, suddenly it's a bad idea. Why is that?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
So is a metal spoon.
It all depends on context.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Haven't we learned anything? (Score:5, Insightful)
an hydro dam is a dangerous thing: more dangerous than a nuclear plant looking at history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam [wikipedia.org]
a coal plant is a dangerous thing but it's a sort of low level constant danger.
http://www.ecomall.com/greenshopping/cleanair.htm [ecomall.com]
drilling a hole for gas or geothermal is a dangerous thing
http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Locals_Block_Work_At_Indonesian_Mud_Volcano_999.html [terradaily.com]
etc etc
Every energy source has dangers and problems.
So it makes sense to simply pick the ones which kill the fewest people overall.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:3)
3 - Proliferation - Ya, we're clearly stopping openly-hostile, fundamentalist Iran from building nuclear power plants. That's totally happening. If you call Stuxnet on this, you're crazier than Ahmadinejad.
Not entirely true. We don't have a problem with them having nuclear plants. We have a problem with them refining nuclear fuel. There is a huge difference. The US, Russia, and France, have all offered extremely cost effective fuel delivery and disposal solutions to Iran. They don't want it because it means they can't refine nuclear weapon grade fuels.
Nuclear power isn't a problem. Nuclear fuel is. It just so happens, the details of Iran's fuel refine is also the best path for nuclear weapons grade fuel. This
Re:Haven't we learned anything? (Score:5, Informative)
You seem to have thought this out a lot though your point 4 I'd challenge.
Professors can be wrong sometimes or simply misleading.
16% of the worlds energy already comes from nuclear.
There is apparently a 230-year estimate supply extractable at today's consumption rate with current technologyat current market prices at current rates of use.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last [scientificamerican.com]
36.8 years if tomorrow every single plant was replaced with nuclear if you don't use breeder reactors.
With breeder reactors you could multiply that by something like 50-100
Long enough that it's not a significant worry.
Current market prices is also important: if you increase the price, say double it, then that dramatically increases while not significantly increasing the price of running a nuclear plant as the fuel is very cheap compared to building the reactor.
Now there's claims that it is possible to extract uranium from seawater for about 5 or 6 times the current market price which effectively sets an upper limit on the price of uranium and would supply it forever but I'll wait till I see any kind of large scale operation.
point 2 is valid though it's also true of most industry, hazardous waste can be a serious long term issue even if it's not radioactive, it just doesn't get the same media attention.
point 3 is the most significant one for much of the human race and extremely valid.
Re: (Score:2)
What's the danger of solar power tower?
Re: (Score:2)
What's the danger of solar power tower?
The can, on occasion, turn into Eye of Sauron towers, and fry nearby hobbits.
Tribulation will start once... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Fusion in Sol is hardly uncontrolled (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So where's their documentation?
I believe it's called the Bible [clarifying...ianity.com].
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but when metal spoons explodes (like they do all the time)....you can just walk over and pick up the pieces.....right then, no need to evacuate for 500 years.
And when this explodes, we'll have to clean up salt, glass, and water. I highly doubt that any of those things will force a 500 year evac.
Re: (Score:2)
But it could hurt anyway, the article says they store the energy where the sun doesn't shine.
Brilliant use of logic there... (Score:3)
No nuclear plant has yet caused a 500 year evacuation.
And should a nuclear disaster happen yesterday, there won't be a 500-year evacuation caused by that particular nuclear disaster for about... oh... say, another 500 years.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Metal spoons don't create radioactive waste with a half life of centuries.
Re: (Score:2)
Nuclear reactors don't make radioactive waste. The depleted fuel was radioactive prior to use in the reactor, otherwise they wouldn't be using it as fuel. The main difference is that unlike the radioactive waste from a coal plant, the nuclear plant's waste is bundle up for disposal rather than being spread all over the planet.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but what has that to do with solar energy?
Re: (Score:2)
Where do you get nuclear from it?
From the sun. WOOOOOOSHHH...
Re:Fix the fucking water problem first. (Score:4, Informative)
Nevada will have no problem selling power to California. In state power generation is not always consumed in state, intrastate power transmission is very common.
Re: (Score:3)
If you RTFA, then you would notice that the US government doesn't actually pay for this. It's a private enterprise that takes the loan... all the US government does is guarantee that this (admittedly high risk) investment will be paid back.
And please note that the high risk doesn't so much come from the technology, but more from the regulations and utilities (like cables and the electricity network which will need a 110 MW upgrade at certain places). So, that guarantee means in practice that power lines wil
Re: (Score:2)
If you RTFA, then you would notice that the US government doesn't actually pay for this.
' Quite right. The US government pays for it when the company defaults on the loan. Before that, it's a loan guarantee and not a budgetary item.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Maybe you should have taken classes beyond 101?
It's a lot more complex then that; especially when you are talking about peoples lives.
Re: (Score:3)
It's not complex in this case. If most homeowners still find it affordable to frequently water their (non-xeriscaped) lawns, then the utility isn't charging enough for he water -- at least, not while this is coincident with an upcoming water shortage.
(But what about the poor? Fine, only charge for water used above some threshold, or pay everyone the cost of the water up to that limit so you preserve the incentive to save.)
And yes, it would also help to have clearly defined, tradeable usage rights for unde
Re: (Score:3)
It's estimated that Lake Mead will go up ~30 feet this year [elynews.com] due to the extreme amount of snowfall we had last winter. Nature will solve this problem for us!
Thank God for Global Warming(tm)!
Re: (Score:3)
so only one group is allowed to make snarky unsubstantiated remarks based on cherry picked data to prove conspiracy?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
2 Minor Points (Score:4, Insightful)
1st, the loan is 737m. That's not the total cost.
2nd, you are looking at capital costs. What is going to be the running costs and lifespan of the project? Drop that into a spreadsheet to calculate the IRR and cost per Watt. [and what the heck - one could be generous and throw in some type of carbon credit / R&D thing too.]
Re: (Score:3)
And personal photovoltaic setups cost (or at least once did) $10k+ per home, capital costs don't have to be made back in a month you know.
Re: (Score:3)
To Clarify (Score:4, Informative)
First, the $737M loan is not from the government, it's from private investors. The Feds are just insuring the debt. They will only pay out if the project fails.
Second, yes, $737M/75,000 houses is $9826. Assuming the facility lasts for 15 years (which seems exceptionally short), it would take $54 per month per household to pay off the principal. No feedstock to purchase, but the article mentions 60 jobs and likely some materials for maintenance. so if you figure it has a $5M-10M annual opperating budget (assuming staffing costs average 40-80k per head and having money for maintenance) you'd have to add on another $5-11 to the customers' monthly bill.
So yeah, $737M sounds like a lot, but it means the median power bill can be right around $100/month for 75k consumers, and it'll be turning a nice profit.
My local power is primarily coal with a smidge of wind, and I pay roughly $100 per MWh (last bill was ~$65 for ~700KWh). So this really doesn't seem to out of the realm of possible. Especially if they keep opperating costs low.
-Rick
But not in one year. . . (Score:2)
$9826 sounds like a lot of money. . . until you realize that the cost is amortized over some period of time. I don't know what the actual life of the facility will be, but I would think 50 years sounds reasonable. So, if we divide by 50 years, that comes to about $200 per house per year.
However, we also have to factor in that on top of construction costs, there are ongoing maintenance an operation costs, so maybe it comes to about $250/house/yr. That still doesn't sound outrageous to me. I think I pay like
Re: (Score:2)
$9826 sounds like a lot of money. . . until you realize that the cost is amortized over some period of time.
The cost is over the time of construction. Sure, it could get amortized to the end of time, but accounting doesn't change when the money is actually spent.
So, if we divide by 50 years, that comes to about $200 per house per year.
Which still sounds like a lot of money especially when you take time value of money into account.
Re: (Score:2)
Just market it as a power generator and Archimedes Bug Zapper.
Re: (Score:3)
Molten salt has been used before. Spain opened the Andasol Solar Power Station [wikipedia.org] in 2009. The Wikipedia article says it basically doubles the output of the plant, and the thermal reserve can keep it generating electricity for almost 8 hours in total darkness.
More interesting is that it takes twice as much water (per kwh) to run as a normal power plant, and that could end up being a problem in Nevada.
Re: (Score:3)
Definitely an issue for Nevada, however, air cooling and hybrid cooling systems that reduce water consumption by 50% to 85% have already been studied. Either option would bring water consumption inline or lower than coal fired plants and possibly even in the range of gas fired plants.
http://www.quora.com/Solar-Towers/How-much-water-for-evaporative-cooling-do-solar-thermal-power-generators-need-per-watt-hour-generated [quora.com]
I guess we'll have to w
Re: (Score:3)
Somebody posted a link to the plans in a comment below....
http://www.tonopahsolar.com/pdfs/Tonopah_Crescent_Dunes_POD_2009_11_23.pdf [tonopahsolar.com]
They will be utilizing a hybrid cooling system so the water consumption and usage will be in the range of a gas fired plant.
It will be a 110 Megawatt facility and the plans expect total water consumption of 600 Acre Feet per year. Assuming only an 80% utilization rate that would be around 253 gallons / MWh as compared to around 500 gallons / MWh for coal and nuclear and 200 gal
Re:Dunno, article leaves out information (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course the second it actually works the greens will be dead set against it. Gotta be some obscure critter living out in that desert ya know,
Because, just like Slashdotters, "The Greens" isn't a homogeneous group of people with identical opinions, nor is "environmentalists".
You can be an "environmentalist" and only care about the aesthetic appearance of countryside during your own lifetime (therefore opposed to onshore wind turbines).
Or you can be an "environmentalist" and only care about CO2 emissions and their long term effect (probably in favour of onshore wind turbines)
Or any of hundreds of differing viewpoints.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We have a 10MW and a 15MW commercial heliostat in Spain ... since years.
angel'o'sphere
Re: (Score:2)
Of course the second it actually works the greens will be dead set against it. Gotta be some obscure critter living out in that desert ya know,
Although I like your sense of humor, and I partially agree with you, I would like to ask you to differentiate between green entrepreneurs (people like the guys who want to build this solar plant, who aren't about maximizing profit, but are still practical and realistic) and the nature freaks who are just unreasonable.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you really want more detail? Look at the plan of development. It was too much detail for me to handle. http://www.tonopahsolar.com/pdfs/Tonopah_Crescent_Dunes_POD_2009_11_23.pdf [tonopahsolar.com]
Re: (Score:2)
"The initial cost is much higher than a fossil fuel plant."
So? I know in todays political environment, this will come a a shocker, gut I ton' mind paying an extra half cent a KW to get non CO2 emitting and non-wind power
And this isn't untried technology, I'm not sure why to think that.
Re: (Score:2)
No, you can use air or some sort of wiper mechanism. Lots of ways to deal with this problem if getting water is that hard.
Re: (Score:3)
These "Greens" are not one big group sharing a hive brain. There are lots of viewpoints. Personally I would love to see something like this take off. We have lots of deserts that are pretty much unlivable and would be finally put to good use. At the same time I think we should prevent any new coal plants from being built. Nuclear might have a little issue every couple decades, but coal kills people and destroys air quality all the time. Then for extra fun every couple decades it destroys large area when a s
Re: (Score:2)
I am too, I would hope they are using wastewater if at all possible. Using a closed loop ammonia cooling system, that you "charge" with cold at night would also be neat. Not practical though.
Re: (Score:3)
You're an idiot if you believe that.
I would probably be classed as a green, in that I would rather we didn't f*** up the environment whilst using industrialised processes. I certainly like the price of the fuel for green energy - after all we spend millions of $ per year on the sun. Oh no - that's right it's free.
But I'm also a realist. I like my car, but I would prefer an electric one, especially if the power used was produced with green energy.
I like having the conveniences of cities, although I prefer a
Re: (Score:2)
after all we spend millions of $ per year on the sun. Oh no - that's right it's free.
Efficiently harvesting energy from the sun does cost millions of $ per year.
Re:Dunno, article leaves out information (Score:4, Interesting)
Granted - in Nevada they will need to ship lots of water out to the plant to keep the mirrors clean. But its still cheaper than coal or oil. But it won't be subject in any meaningful way to the whims of the coal or oil markets.
Re:Another $1B wasted (Score:4, Informative)
It's a loan guarantee, meaning we cosigned with the bank for them. The taxpayers are only out if this thing can not pay back it's loan.
Re: (Score:3)
It's a loan guarantee, meaning we cosigned with the bank for them. The taxpayers are only out if this thing can not pay back it's loan.
But if it made financial sense, it probably wouldn't need loan guarantees.
Re:Another $1B wasted (Score:4, Insightful)
Not true. Banker don't like to make loans into now established items. You could literal have a proven way to build a perfect fision/fusion machine with no waste and all the power anyone could ever want. You would STILL need to get a loan guarantee.
Of course, that example was to illustrate a point. This project, like all large project, has a risk.
And it's a good program. The question isn't the technology, it's the company.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, for one thing this isn't about financial sense. The market has failed to provide the best solution as usual and so the best solution turns out to not be the cheapest.
I realize that there's a lot of free market believers out there, but the free market at best provides the cheapest solution to a problem, and rarely if ever is the cheapest solution the best. And frequently it isn't even the cheapest solution as huge amounts of money go to paying the executives to rob the consumers blind.
Re: (Score:3)
You are likely referring to quarters of the financial year. In those periods, public companies are required to report earnings and other information about their company. That's a regulation, not a facet of a free-market system.
The free market, in and of itself, does not work on three month plans. It works for maximization of profit. When the actors are required to do certain things at certain intervals, then the maximization of profit will tend to occur inside the intervals that are introduced into the
Re: (Score:2)
Non-headline-worthy things still need power (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A) Its a loan guarantee.
B) Clean power is a worthy item.
C) A billion guarantee sin't really that much for this kind of project.
D) Yes we ALSO need a revamped education system.
Re: (Score:2)
[...]technology is mature for both (PV solar is semiconductor, and if semiconductor industry is not mature, I don't know what is).[...]
Semiconductor industry may be mature, but PV-tech has a long way to go before it becomes as efficient as simple turbines. And I'm talking about 'in the wild' efficiency, where many frequencies are encountered and the light is often diffused, not a laboratory setting, where the light is single-frequency, direct illumination.
[...]But I was always against building nuclear power plants in deserts, like Saudi Arabia or Nevada. These places receive lots of sun, every day. Use that energy. Solar-thermal solutions are 100% efficient at converting energy into heat. 25-35% final efficiency is very reachable and it is base load capable. Something that we can't say for PV solar.
Now that's true, like I said, PV has ways to go before it can compete with more 'traditional' power generation methods.
Re: (Score:2)
Education is a very important part of a sustainable civilization. Not countering your or his argument, but it needed to be pointed out.
Re:Why does this cost 3/4 of a billion dollars? (Score:4, Funny)
A lot of it is probably insurance. Nobody really wants to be liable for the costs of a solar spill.
And then there's the extra construction cost, due to the workers all having to wear SPF 5000 sunscreen. Extra security, because of all the monotheists who will be protesting the false god Apollo. Fuel costs. MirrorUniverseWalls. You can't imagine all the expensive problems involved in a project like this.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We aren't spending that money, just co-signing the loan. If you want a good ration of money spent to people getting paychecks we should just put everyone on welfare.
How do you plan on reducing the cost of mirrors? Because those are the only panels in a molten-salt plant like this.
Re: (Score:2)
When I read posts like this, I frequently wonder if they mean to troll or are just so stupid they honestly just don't realize they are being stupid.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, it's a common scam: The electric current they send you through one wire, they get back through the other. Therefore they don't need to produce new current, they just sell the same current over and over again. ;-)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Loan guarantee, not subsidy. It can create those jobs for 0$ in government money spend, or it can waste the full amount in government money or anything in between (if the company goes bankrupt but government wants to see it finished rather than just paying of the debt and forgetting about it, it could chose to pay for the cost overruns to finish it to recoup some losses).
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah - that's right because the money always "trickles down". Right?
Re: (Score:3)
Dude, this is Nevada we are talking about. Even I know that the people living there use air conditioning at the time of peak solar, so a solar power plant is essentialy a good idea there.
Power generation for the night hours is an additional bonus, low power production meets low power demand.
Re: (Score:2)
Dude, this is Nevada we are talking about.
So would you rather be paying for solar $7 per watt or $1 per watt (which is what solar cells are expected to hit in a few years)? You can use scrap paper for calculations, if you're having trouble figuring this out.
Re: (Score:2)
Because all of national endeavors must make sense financially, yes? If so, so long space program...
Sometimes we have to do things for reasons other than making the almighty dollar.
Re: (Score:2)
Because all of national endeavors must make sense financially, yes? If so, so long space program...
I call your bluff. Sure, get rid of the space program as well as anything else that doesn't make sense fiscally.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't really get that kind of measurement. 100MW a 5 cents a KW is 250K dollars and hour. So it pays for itself in 3000 hours.
", there's no way the power plant will be as valuable as the money being laid out for it and I don't see the power producer paying off the loan."
Why not? it's over 20 years, so it's not a lot of money. It certainly isn't a gimmick.
No, this is a great investment. For clarification, it's not a fiscal investment, an infrastructure investment. And infrastructure is an on going rising
Re: (Score:2)
(slightly) more realistically, the heliostats could be aimed at overhead flying objects to destroy them. (at least during the day)
Re: (Score:2)
That's not a very catchy headline, though.