California Built the World's Largest Solar Power Tower Plant. Now It May Close (latimes.com) 85
"Sometimes, government makes a bad bet..." writes the Los Angeles Times. Opening in 2014, the Ivanpah concentrated solar plant "quickly became known as an expensive, bird-killing eyesore."
Assuming that state officials sign off — which they most likely will, because the deal will lead to lower bills for PG&E customers — two of the three towers will shut down come 2026. Ivanpah's owners haven't paid off the project's $1.6-billion federal loan, and it's unclear whether they'll be able to do so. Houston-based NRG Energy, which operates Ivanpah and is a co-owner with Kelvin Energy and Google, said that federal officials took part in the negotiations to close PG&E's towers and that the closure agreement will allow the federal government "to maximize the recovery of its loans." It's possible Ivanpah's third and final tower will close, too. An Edison spokesperson told me the utility is in "ongoing discussions" with the project's owners and the federal government over ending the utility's contract.
It might be tempting to conclude government should stop placing bets and just let the market decide. But if it weren't for taxpayers dollars, large-scale solar farms, which in 2023 produced 17% of California's power, might never have matured into low-cost, reliable electricity sources capable of displacing planet-warming fossil fuels. More than a decade ago, federal loans helped finance some of the nation's first big solar-panel farms.
Not every government investment will be a winner. Renewable energy critics still raise the specter of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535-million federal loan. But on the whole, clean power investments have worked out. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that as of Dec. 31, it had disbursed $40.5 billion in loans. Of that amount, $15.2 billion had already been repaid. The federal government was on the hook for $1.03 billion in estimated losses but had reaped $5.6 billion in interest.
The article notes recent U.S. energy-related loans to a lithium mine in Nevada (close to $1 billion) and $15 billion to expand hydropower, upgrade power lines, and add batteries. Some of the loans won't get paid back "If federal officials are doing their jobs well," the article adds. "That's the risk inherent to betting on early-stage technologies." About the Ivanpah solar towers, they write "Maybe they never should have been built. They're too expensive, they don't work right, they kill too many birds... It's good that their time is coming to an end. But we should take inspiration from them, too: Don't get complacent. Keep trying new things."
PG&E says their objective at the time was partly to "support new technologies," with one senior director of commercial procurement noting "It's not clear in the early stages what technologies will work best and be most affordable for customers. Solar photovoltaic panels and battery energy storage were once unaffordable at large scale." But today they've calculated that ending their power agreements with Ivanpah would cost customers "substantially less." And once deactivated, Ivanpah's units "will be decommissioned, providing an opportunity for the site to potentially be repurposed for renewable PV energy production," NRG said in a statement.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that instead the 3,500-acre, 386-megawatt concentrated thermal power plant used a much older technology, "a system of mirrors to reflect sunlight and generate thermal energy, which is then concentrated to power a steam engine." Throughout the day, 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors track the sunlight and reflect it onto boilers atop 459-foot towers to generate AC. Nowadays, photovoltaic solar has surpassed concentrated solar power and become the dominant choice for renewable, clean energy, being more cost effective and flexible... So many birds have been victims of the plant's concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.
"Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises," reports the Associated Press. And a Sierra Club campaign organizer also says several rare plant species were destroyed during the plant's construction. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."
It might be tempting to conclude government should stop placing bets and just let the market decide. But if it weren't for taxpayers dollars, large-scale solar farms, which in 2023 produced 17% of California's power, might never have matured into low-cost, reliable electricity sources capable of displacing planet-warming fossil fuels. More than a decade ago, federal loans helped finance some of the nation's first big solar-panel farms.
Not every government investment will be a winner. Renewable energy critics still raise the specter of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535-million federal loan. But on the whole, clean power investments have worked out. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that as of Dec. 31, it had disbursed $40.5 billion in loans. Of that amount, $15.2 billion had already been repaid. The federal government was on the hook for $1.03 billion in estimated losses but had reaped $5.6 billion in interest.
The article notes recent U.S. energy-related loans to a lithium mine in Nevada (close to $1 billion) and $15 billion to expand hydropower, upgrade power lines, and add batteries. Some of the loans won't get paid back "If federal officials are doing their jobs well," the article adds. "That's the risk inherent to betting on early-stage technologies." About the Ivanpah solar towers, they write "Maybe they never should have been built. They're too expensive, they don't work right, they kill too many birds... It's good that their time is coming to an end. But we should take inspiration from them, too: Don't get complacent. Keep trying new things."
PG&E says their objective at the time was partly to "support new technologies," with one senior director of commercial procurement noting "It's not clear in the early stages what technologies will work best and be most affordable for customers. Solar photovoltaic panels and battery energy storage were once unaffordable at large scale." But today they've calculated that ending their power agreements with Ivanpah would cost customers "substantially less." And once deactivated, Ivanpah's units "will be decommissioned, providing an opportunity for the site to potentially be repurposed for renewable PV energy production," NRG said in a statement.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal notes that instead the 3,500-acre, 386-megawatt concentrated thermal power plant used a much older technology, "a system of mirrors to reflect sunlight and generate thermal energy, which is then concentrated to power a steam engine." Throughout the day, 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors track the sunlight and reflect it onto boilers atop 459-foot towers to generate AC. Nowadays, photovoltaic solar has surpassed concentrated solar power and become the dominant choice for renewable, clean energy, being more cost effective and flexible... So many birds have been victims of the plant's concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.
"Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises," reports the Associated Press. And a Sierra Club campaign organizer also says several rare plant species were destroyed during the plant's construction. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."
Drove past these a few times heading to Vegas (Score:5, Informative)
and every time I drive past it looks almost like water but it's wrong and then you figure out what it is. Very interesting site. I didn't realize it wasn't a bunch of PV panels until I had read an article recently talking about how the place worked. Those are mirrors directing sunlight to heat a boiler on top of a tower, which then generates steam to drive a turbine. I had no idea that was what was going on there. The tech works but is just a bit to pricey compared to today's solar panels.
Wonder how long it will take to decommission it all.
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It is an intermediary step. The plus side, if done right, is that you can do thermal storage pretty cheaply, and that was a huge factor when these were designed some 50 years (?) ago. By now battery tech and other non-integrated storage has gotten a lot cheaper.
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Reflected thermal solar was always a bad bet given how much more efficiency we actually expected to be able to get out of PV. These days you can just build fixed PV farms with no trackers and it's a lot cheaper to maintain and operate and not much more expensive to build, if at all. Fixed-rack PV solar with microinverters is just beautifully reliable.
On the other hand, while modern PV panels are fairly clean and easy to recycle, this should be even easier as it's mostly just a bunch of metal, and the salts
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In the overall cradle to grave sense, these probably have a comparatively small cleanup or replacement cost. They are essentially nothing fancy. Wholesale commodity components most of the way.
I'm thinking maybe death rays that can be pointed towards specific points in the sky should mainly be used for war, and not just left on every day all year long.
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and every time I drive past it looks almost like water but it's wrong and then you figure out what it is. Very interesting site. I didn't realize it wasn't a bunch of PV panels until I had read an article recently talking about how the place worked. Those are mirrors directing sunlight to heat a boiler on top of a tower, which then generates steam to drive a turbine. I had no idea that was what was going on there. The tech works but is just a bit to pricey compared to today's solar panels.
Wonder how long it will take to decommission it all.
The bug advantage of this design is that it is intended to produce hours of after-subset energy once the coolant is brought to full temperature, providing reliable power (this part of the desert is out of the Arizona summer monsoon belt that b rings cloudy and stormy weather to late-summer afternoons). for more of the usage day than photovoltaic plants. If solar in this location, of this scale, with this design isn't paying off, then it can't work anywhere.
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The tech works but is just a bit to pricey compared to today's solar panels.
maintenance consists of cleaning mirrors. How expensive could it be to operate something like this?
PV is killing thermal solar (Score:5, Informative)
The falling cost of photo-voltaic solar is killing thermal solar.
It's cheaper to shut down Ivanpah and replace it with PV than to continue maintaining it.
The same thing is happening to solar thermal in Spain.
Re:PV is killing thermal solar (Score:5, Informative)
Ivanpah was also supposedly a copied design from a similar, profitable (?) facility in Israel. Lots more background information here https://www.powermag.com/ivanp... [powermag.com].
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a technically complex photovoltaic system
For maintenance, PV panels are dead-simple.
I have PV on my roof, and I haven't gone up there to even look at them in years.
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For maintenance, PV panels are dead-simple.
I have PV on my roof, and I haven't gone up there to even look at them in years.
Depends on your installation and location. I pray for a heavy rainfall every so often, a light rainfall actually makes it worse, as dust buildup lowers the panels effectiveness otherwise I have to get up on the roof and pressure wash them down and that is why you will find many solar panel cleaning robots e.g. https://therobotfactory.com.au... [therobotfactory.com.au] and https://greenpowerclean.com/so... [greenpowerclean.com]
My
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This is an understatement.
> I pray for a heavy rainfall every so often [for natural washing]
Yes, but not *too* often, and more importantly, you don't want constant, frequently-heavy cloud cover, or heavy snow that stays on the ground for months at a time. Frequent freezing and thawing is even worse. Sleet, freezing rain, and hail are also not great.
Mirrors, in principle, can be made of polished metal, which is fairly robust and relatively easy to keep clea
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Grid scale PV still have adjusters for the PV panels. But they lack the pumps and the tower and it's easier to aim the panels for maximum power than to adjust mirrors to aim at the right spot.
The huge reason to go with heliostats though - base load pow
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You'd think that someone would've done thermal storage with PV: PV electrical power can either be shuttled to the grid or be used to heat a thermal storage medium, which can then be used to generate power when PV output is low.
Instead, we use batteries.
Re:PV is killing thermal solar (Score:4, Informative)
Instead, we use batteries.
Batteries have 95% round-trip efficiency.
Thermal has 40% round-trip efficiency.
Cost efficiency is biggest factor. (Score:2)
That still made sense when batteries and PV panels were 10 times more expensive than molten salt and mirrors. Solar energy is basically free other than the cost of the equipment to collect it.
But, well the stuff is so much cheaper these days.
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PV electrical power can either be shuttled to the grid or be used to heat a thermal storage medium, which can then be used to generate power when PV output is low. ...
With a loss of 90%
The most efficient heat to electricity plants on planet earth are in the range of 42%. Yes, combined cycle gas plants get close to 60% - they reuse the exhaust heat of the turbines instantly.
So: you have a PV set up, and store 100kWh as heat. You get far less than 42kWh back. As you are not operating on optimal temperatures.
I
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Battery storage is now cheaper than molten salt.
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It's surprising to me that a series of mirrors and a few pumps are still more expensive to operate than a technically complex photovoltaic system, or a natural gas plant with lots of moving parts. I guess those mirror adjusters must need a lot of maintenance.
As a rule, reliability is inversely proportional to the number of moving parts (probably to some power).
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As a rule, reliability is inversely proportional to the number of moving parts (probably to some power).
This rule seems to fall out apart for things like shock absorbers and heat expansion joints. How about phone cables vs. elbows. How many times can you bend the phone cable without it breaking vs. the elbow with its trillions of moving parts? How about a displacer in a Stirling engine? It seems like mechanical technology (and biology) is full of extra parts that make the system more reliable.
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As a rule, reliability is inversely proportional to the number of moving parts (probably to some power).
This rule seems to fall out apart for things like shock absorbers and heat expansion joints. How about phone cables vs. elbows. How many times can you bend the phone cable without it breaking vs. the elbow with its trillions of moving parts?
There's an implicit "assuming all else is equal" in that rule. The muscles in your elbow are a big, giant pile of living tissue that can heal itself. Wires are small-ish fibers that can't heal themselves. And your elbow might handle flexing more, but if someone ties one part of their elbow to the back of a car and the other part to a fixed object and has someone drive the car away, and then repeats the experiment with a metal cable, I think you can guess which one is likely to hold up better.
Significantl
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There's an implicit "assuming all else is equal" in that rule. The muscles in your elbow are a big, giant pile of living tissue that can heal itself. Wires are small-ish fibers that can't heal themselves
Right, the components of the elbow and the surrounding parts of the arm consist of trillions of moving parts. Whereas the phone cable is only several moving parts (and not even self-actuating) and the elbow is far more reliable. But the elbow is far more reliable when it comes to flexing many times than the phone cable. If you made a phone cable out of millions of moving parts with self-healing capabilities, it would also last much, much longer. What I really need to know is what is the scope and the parame
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Whereas the phone cable is only several moving parts (and not even self-actuating) and the elbow is far more reliable.
No, it isn't. It is less susceptible to damage from flexing because the material (other than the bone) is more flexible. But that's not the whole reliability story; it's just one very narrow aspect of it.
In terms of reliability, muscle fibers in your arm fail all the time — sprains, tears, etc. The fact that they can heal themselves is because that's living tissue, and that gives it the appearance of greater reliability. But you're comparing something living to something not living, and that viola
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Define reliable. If you told me you had a RAID1 system to store your data redundantly for reliability of data I will tell you you built a system that is half as reliable and twice as likely to fail mechanically in some way necessitating an expense and intervention.
When it comes to operational reliability complex is often better.
When it comes to maintenance cost and reliability as an expense, then complex is typically worse.
To follow your elbow analogy I do have to say that I got treated for a tennis elbow a
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Define reliable. If you told me you had a RAID1 system to store your data redundantly for reliability of data I will tell you you built a system that is half as reliable and twice as likely to fail mechanically in some way necessitating an expense and intervention.
I would say it's more up to dgatwood to define reliable since they proposed the rule. I would say that generally you would define reliable based on the operational requirements of the system and that the concept is context-sensitive. So in your example, the RAID array would be more reliable due to the redundancy, even if there's a higher chance of failure of an individual component since the reliability of the system is determined by the operational requirement of data integrity. Let's face it, RAID has red
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Just thinking out-loud....in text.....It seems like PV would be more modular/compartmentalized in the sense that you could have a percentage of component failure at any given time, but the whole operation doesn't shut down. Whereas with the thermal system, you kinda need everything working all at once, or nothing works?...granted, I'm sure there's some redundancy.
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You probably install more mirrors than you absolutely need, so if a few are out of focus, dirty, or even broken, you're still good. You'd want that anyways to keep up power production during the winter, on cloudy days, whatever.
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Yeah, you're probably right about the mirrors. I'm curious about the challenges of running a steam plant on a daily cycle like that. It would/will be interesting to see a post-mortem on this, and how all the numbers break down.
Re: PV is killing thermal solar (Score:2)
If I understand correctly it doesn't shut off at night because it uses molten salt. That's extremely hot so it can continue boiling water to spin the turbine for some time, if not all night. It's pretty interesting stuff but just obsolete now.
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It isn't just that it is hot. It is a huge amount of thermal mass, which you can economically upsize merely by expanding the storage tank.
And yeah, the idea was that it wouldn't shut off at night. Or, at least not all of the turbines would.
Re: PV is killing thermal solar (Score:2)
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A photovoltaic system is not more complex than opening your flash light, get the old batteries out, and put new ones inside.
What can be complex in a system that is completely passive?
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A photovoltaic system is not more complex than opening your flash light, get the old batteries out, and put new ones inside. What can be complex in a system that is completely passive?
Keeping it clean
Keeping them cool
Repairing after Hail/Storms and other forms of natures wonders
Stopping animals from chewing on the cables
Electronics/circuitry is not infallible
Etc.
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And that are all phantasy/fantasy problems.
Eating cables, loz. How would an animal get there?
Hailstorm? In the middle of Thailand? Yes, happens sometimes.
It makes sense to consider the "worst case scenario" ... it makes no sense to consider it the standard scenario.
Yes: we had hail in Thailand about a year ago. Solar panels have no problem with that.
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And there is nothing wrong with that. This tech is not in an end-stage. Thermal solar has one primary advantage: Pretty cheap power storage. Whether that will bring it back or not depends on the evolution of other storage.
As to the specific plant at hand, looks like a case of going to production too early. These are frequent when a technology evolves.
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Thermal solar has one primary advantage: Pretty cheap power storage.
Cheap batteries have obviated that advantage.
looks like a case of going to production too early.
Ivanpah was always intended to be a test project to find out if the technology was viable.
We have now answered that question, so in that sense, it was a success.
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Thermal solar has one primary advantage: Pretty cheap power storage.
Cheap batteries have obviated that advantage.
It is not that simple.
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The falling cost of photo-voltaic solar is killing thermal solar.
I'd surmise that the falling cost of energy in general is killing concentrated solar thermal power.
Solar PV doesn't really compete with solar thermal since PV can be installed on a small scale while thermal cannot. I believe solar thermal is more likely competing with wind power since both require large remote land areas to be viable. I guess technically wind power is also able to be deployed on a small scale but with the small scale windmills the costs go up per unit of energy and is rarely worth the eff
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the falling cost of energy in general is killing concentrated solar thermal power.
Energy costs may be falling globally, but not in California, where Ivanpah's output is being sold.
Solar PV doesn't really compete with solar thermal since PV can be installed on a small scale while thermal cannot.
True, but PV solar is much more cost-effective in large installations. Residential rooftop solar is politically popular but often needs subsidies.
I believe solar thermal is more likely competing with wind power
Solar + wind is better than investing in only one. Some days are sunny but not windy, and vice versa.
Re:PV is killing thermal solar (Score:4, Insightful)
Energy costs may be falling globally, but not in California, where Ivanpah's output is being sold.
If I'm understanding the article there's causality there.
Because there's a contract for California users to buy power from Ivanpah the high cost of CSP is making electricity rates higher. Break that contract and costs should come down. With that contract lost there's no more income to operate the power plant, and that means having it shut down and dismantled.
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Ivanpah provides 0.2% of California's electricity.
I don't think it is the reason for rising electricity prices.
The wildfires have a way bigger impact.
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Ivanpah provides 0.2% of California's electricity.
I don't think it is the reason for rising electricity prices.
The contract with Ivanpah is a symptom of larger issues of California energy policy. Every journey starts with a single step, and maybe the retirement of Ivanpah is a sign of California starting to make better choices on where they buy their energy.
The wildfires have a way bigger impact.
That's also a sign of bad policies out of California impacting energy costs, and costs of many other products and services in the state.
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The falling cost of photo-voltaic solar is killing thermal solar.
It's cheaper to shut down Ivanpah and replace it with PV than to continue maintaining it.
The same thing is happening to solar thermal in Spain.
Indeed you are correct Sir. Most people forget that before Ivanpah, there was the Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) in California (Wiki Link here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ). These were working thermal to electric solar systems and worked quite well for over 30 years. I routinely passed the Kramer Junction Facility. They have now all been decommissioned and replaced with Solar Panels. While the Practical part of myself understand this, the Mechanical Engineer part of my self was a bit sad. Tec
Re:Trump is killing everything (Score:5, Informative)
It's clean energy so Trump will make sure it closes.
The closure has nothing to do with Trump.
Ivanpah has been bleeding cash for a long time.
Ivanpah received Federal loan guarantees in 2011, but that money is long gone.
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Also, despite the birds it kills, it's probably fewer of them than a coal or natural gas plant there would kill off. Trump's big whine about "windmills" is that they kill birds, which are far less killed worldwide than birds killed by housecats. But he needs an excuse to get revenge on wind power for "destroying" the view of his Scottish golf course.
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Precisely. Who cares if a few birds get fried, it's all part of doing business.
Signed: Harland Sanders (Col, ret'd).
Re: Trump is killing everything (Score:1)
Will lead to lower bills... (Score:1)
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Well, it might be in relative terms: i.e. the rate of growth of the bills will be slightly less.
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I'm under the impression that it's not uncommon for renewable energy plants like this to be built with some guarantee from the power company to buy their power. The terms of the agreement may be a fixed rate with inflation adjustments, or perhaps based on the operating costs. Whatever the details are, it sounds like PG&E was under contract to buy the power from this plant at what are now above-market rates, so shutting it down will lower the average cost of electricity. Hence, power bills going forwa
Thermal provides easier energy storage (Score:4, Interesting)
At the moment solar thermal doesn't seem cost competitive with photovoltaic but its possible that could change. As solar produces an increasing fraction of total electrical power, the relative cost of evening / nighttime power vs daytime power is likely to increase. Its probably less expensive to add large scale thermal storage to thermal power plants, than to add batteries to photovoltaic plants, so we could see this technology become economically viable again.
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At the moment solar thermal doesn't seem cost competitive with photovoltaic but its possible that could change.
I doubt it because CSP has so many moving parts. Each mirror needs to track the sun precisely on 2-axes for the system to work while a PV system works well enough with a stationary panel. There's sun tracking PV which can improve efficiency some but the gain on 1 axis vs. 2-axes is so small that it's rare to see a 2-axes PV system anywhere. The reduced mechanical complexity means lower install and maintenance costs. I've seen theoretical static mirror designs that could replace tracking mirrors for CSP
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The working fluid cannot get hotter than the sunlight it is heated from
Sunlight doesn't have a temperature itself, it's just photons with energy.
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Sunlight does have a temperature. The laws of thermodynamics don't care about your light-rocks.
It's the temperature of the surface of the sun though, so it's not generally an issue.
Re: Thermal provides easier energy storage (Score:2)
That would imply that once a material reached that temperature, then energy would have to be lost from the material at the same rate it comes in or more. Is that true? And if so, what mechanism ensures that happens?
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There's a What If... XKCD that should answer that question.
https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/ [xkcd.com]
Re: Thermal provides easier energy storage (Score:2)
Thanks!
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Yes. In a perfect system the thing you're shining the light on warms up until it glows at the temperature of the thing emitting the light. Since optical systems work in both directions the energy flow ends up equal when the whole system is in thermal equilibrium.
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"Temperature" is a useful fiction. It's just an emergent statistical property of an ensemble of things that have kinetic energy. You can talk about the temperature of traffic, photons, whatever you want.
As I said:
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It has.
It is about 6k Kelvin.
And you can not heat anything with that light above 6k Kelvin.
It is a fundamental law in Physics that you can not heat anything up more than the temperature of the "original heat" it came from.
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It is a fundamental law in Physics that you can not heat anything up more than the temperature of the "original heat" it came from
No, it's not, otherwise things like ground source heat pumps wouldn't work. You can heat something up more if you expend additional energy.
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The working fluid cannot get hotter than the sunlight it is heated from
I think the rule in optics you're going for here is that nothing heated by conventional optics can get hotter than the surface of the source of the light being used to heat it. In other words, light from the sun can't heat anything to hotter than the surface of the sun. Of course, that's around 5,500 degrees Celcius. Since that's hotter than the melting point of any known solid you could possibly use to construct such a system. A nuclear power plant could not possibly manage to get the salt any hotter becau
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> Each mirror needs to track the sun precisely on 2-axes for the
>system to work while a PV system works well enough with a
>stationary panel.
Actually, the massive PVZ farm on the other side of Las Vegas, on the way to Boulder City, tracks the sun through the day. I think it's only on the single axis, though.
And I've seen the ones on one side of the highway failing to track at least once.
Re: Thermal provides easier energy storage (Score:2)
Besides what has already been mentioned, I don't see any way thermal storage is going to get a lot cheaper, whereas battery storage tends to get much cheaper over time.
'Investor? Just put your money in that hole...' (Score:1)
Worked out for who? (Score:1)
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Since a while renewable is cheaper than burning fossils, the remaining problem is to get 24/7/365 renewables.
These salt storage plants were part of the answer until batteries got more affordable.
Idiots do not understand science (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is (simplified) the process of expirementation.
Step
1) Create a Hypothesis (not theory).
2) Test Hypothesis with an Experiment.
3) Declare new Theory (fact) that it either a) works or b) does not work.
4) Repeat.
Negative results, i.e. failures are PART of the process, in fact they are almost a requirement.
This is why government pays for experiments rather than corporations that do not want to fail.
Negative results are GOOD for the system. We need them.
Stop trying to end science by pointing to 'failed' experiments. This is a 'fail fast' mentality that is needed for successes.
Morgages - government success (Score:2)
Banks wouldn't bother to loan people money for slow 20 year loans and had higher risk of failure during that span than much better loans. It took government investment in the form of insurance and regulations to make it a stable worthwhile investment.
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Science is (simplified) the process of experimentation.
Negative results, i.e. failures are PART of the process, in fact they are almost a requirement.
This is why government pays for experiments rather than corporations that do not want to fail.
Negative results are GOOD for the system. We need them.
Stop trying to end science by pointing to 'failed' experiments. This is a 'fail fast' mentality that is needed for successes.
This. SOOOOOOOOO much this. The government used to fund so much more basic research. I was part of that system. The government said "we want someone to try X", with "X" being some bleeding edge concept or idea. Companies (including mine) would bid for that research and attempt to do it. Sometimes we succeeded beyond all expectations. A lot of times we failed. But we LEARNED from the failure, so the next time the Government wanted to do "X", we would bid for it again and say "Hey, we failed last time but we
I've got an idea! (Score:1)
Convert it to solar cells (Score:2)
Replace the mirrors with solar cells.
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A mirror sends about 99% of its input to the solar tower.
Where roughly 40% of the heat is converted into electricity.
A standard solar cell has 23% efficiency.
The new perovskite cells are close to 40%, though.
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Yes but the article and other sources have said the solar tower method has a higher operating cost than solar cells. Therefore I am saying instead of wasting the infrastructure salvage it by putting a photovoltaic plant there.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, but stuff like this is depending on so many variables.
At that particular site, it might be true. It is an old plant ... and operational costs are what you pay to staff, stuff, and what ever.
What about nuclear? (Score:2)
Let's not make this political - I'm actually wondering here. What if we build more of the safer generation 4 nukes and charge people based on proximity to the plant? Within a mile and down wind - free power. Up wind and 10 miles away full price - you get the idea. Base the fees on level of risk exposure.
The massive bird killing meme should die. (Score:3)
From TFA:
"So many birds have been victims of the plant's concentrated sun rays that workers referred to them as "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair. When federal wildlife investigators visited the plant around 10 years ago, they reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes."
One every two minutes works out to 300ish per day.
Yet the data doesn't support the meme.
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
"In July of 2012, scientists from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement visited Ivanpah, Desert Sunlight, and Genesis as part of an informal effort to investigate bird deaths. Over the course of the next seventeen months, they recorded over 230 casualties of a wide variety of bird species.Mar 5, 2015"
230 per month is about eight per day.
"According to the firm H.T. Harvey and Associates, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System was the site of somewhere between 2,500 and 6,700 bird mortalities in the plant's first year of operation, between October 2013 and October 2014. The firm says the most likely actual figure is somewhere around 3,500 birds killed in that time."
3,500 per year is about 10 per day.
"Of those 3,504 projected fatalities, just under 1,500 are likely to have been caused either by burn injuries from the project's concentrated solar flux, collisions with structures, or entrapment in the project's buildings or other infrastructure, while about 2,000 would be expected to show no obvious sign of those specific causes of death -- raising the possibility, says H.T. Harvey, that at least some of those 2,000 other projected mortalities might have had nothing to do, at least directly, with the power plant."
1,500 per year is about four per day.
Eyesore? (Score:1)