Solar thermal

[XemaSab]

Costwise, it's becoming more and more comparable to nuclear and IGCC, but without the waste problems.

The big shortcoming with solar thermal is manufacturing the mirrors.

One of the major benefits is that it takes 15 or so years to permit and build a nuke, and 10 or so years to build an IGCC facility, but only 3-4 years to build a solar thermal facility. Therefore, there are more development generations possible in a shorter amount of time, so there's more room for learning and innovation. Another advantage is that the best areas for solar thermal are in the desert southwest, where land is cheap because there is little water available. This shortcoming would preclude using the land for many other types of power generation, but it's not a major obstacle for solar thermal. In fact, it's so sunny in these areas, that they are the best areas for solar thermal.

[lvx35]

1. 1000 joules per meter

are there for the picking, we just need the technology to harvest it. I really hope we don't go nuclear.

edit: watts per square meter I mean, this is the amount of energy in the sunlight that hits the earth whcih could potentially be gotten at.

[Porcupine]

2. Fun stuff. It has to be tricky for the staff...

because it's wear the gear or go blind. But compared to falling off one of the new windmills on inspection day I think this is a bit easier.

Also good coastal defence.

Now where's my giant bottle of windex?

[Dead_Parrot]

3. Lol. Hadn't thought of that...

The Syracusans would have given their left arms for that setup.

Well, somebody's left arms, anyway. :D

[XemaSab]

4. Yeah, we were talking about having to reroute planes over fields of them.

Also, birds sometimes fly into them and get instantly vaporized. :o

[Porcupine]

5. Do the birds audibly pop? Smoke?

Vaporized?

You would think the glare anywhere near the focal point would keep them away on general principal. There would always be some air scatter up there.

Poor birds. It would be nice if one of our power schemes was good for them.

[Nederland]

6. Nuke's don't need to take 15 years

Japan builds them in less than 4 years.

[XemaSab]

8. 15 years including site selection, permitting, financing, etc.

It's not just the construction.

[Nederland]

16. I see

So the real question is, why does the paperwork take 11 years?

[XemaSab]

17. You ever read an EIS?

You ever write an EIS? :shrug: :P

[Nederland]

18. Actually Yes

My father worked for Rochester Gas and Electric, an upstate NY utility, for almost 30 years and I am very familiar with the process you have to go through to get a plant approval. The biggest reason that nuclear plants take so long to get approval is because for decades environmentalists threw every legal and procedural logjam into the process they could so as to delay start times and increase costs. The hope was that if they increased costs enough they could make nuclear power uncompetitive with fossil fuels. Unfortunately, they succeeded beyond their wildest hopes.

There is absolutely no reason that the paperwork for nuclear plant should take three times longer in the US than it does in France or Japan. None. If anything, those countries are far more concerned with environmental issues than the US is, and raising capital in those countries is far more difficult too. It's not about the environment, and its not about money. It's about a smaller and smaller minority of people that simply "don't get it".

[bananas]

19. In Japan, they cheat

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4518470.html

Feb. 1, 2007, 1:18PM
Japan: Utility Admits Past Data Fibbing

© 2007 The Associated Press

TOKYO — Japan's largest utility operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co., admitted that it falsified data at its nuclear power plants for three decades in an attempt to easily pass compulsory government inspections.

<snip>

The falsifications have passed the three-year statute of limitations and the company is likely escape punishment, Kyodo News agency reported.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged METI to determine how the falsifications were possible, and called on TEPCO to come up with measures to prevent an occurrence.

"Residents around the plants feel unsafe over the fabrications. They need to be able to trust in the safety of nuclear power," Abe told reporters Thursday evening.

<snip>

[Nederland]

20. Nice try

The link you provided shows how a Japanese utility falsified reports on an operating nuclear plant. It therefore has nothing to do with the permitting process in Japan.

[phantom power]

7. There are easier (and safer) ways to implement solar thermal.

linear trough-mirrors with lengths of pipe down the focal-line are more effective. Only one axis of motion is required to track the sun, since any loss out the end-points of each trough is insignificant. And the focal point is inside each trough, so there's no danger of incinerating objects with a mis-configured mirror array.

The part about incinerating things can be considered a feature, or a bug, of course.
:evilgrin:

[NNadir]

9. The comparison with nuclear energy is specious.

The solar plant will not run at night.

[IDemo]

10. Those using a Stirling gen-set can

and have. The "Sundish" ran on landfill methane at night time when it was trialled at the Pima-Maricopa Indian Reservation in Arizona a few years ago.

[NNadir]

11. How much energy do you expect they can generate that way?

Burning garbage directly is one of the largest contributors to "renewable energy" there is, outstripping solar by many orders of magnitude.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/trends/table1.html

Note that the "biomass" portion includes "municipal solid waste," aka "garbage."

No where in this plan do I see a plan to build a landfill near the solar station.

Solar thermal plants are not new. Decades ago a company called "Luz" went bankrupt building them. The financial status of the builders notwithstanding the plants still operate and have operated a long time.

It is relatively straight forward and simple to build a trash incinerator. It is nowhere near as safe to do so, however, as it is to build a nuclear power plant.

[IDemo]

12. They claimed 22-25kW for the SunDish with good solar insolation

So figure, what, 120 to 150 kW/hrs per day? Not sure how much using landfill gas or other fuels. That was several years ago, I'm not sure if they have improved on that since. The concept behind the SAIC/STM motors project was more targeted at local, isolated areas, such as the Pima Maricopa reservation, or for business and industrial parks. The SunDish demonstrated that a hybrid stirling system would work. I don't think they were attempting to create a market case for the finished product.

[NNadir]

13. It's a good thing they weren't trying to create a market case.

The amount of energy produced is less than trivial.

A solar plant even in a desert, does well to have 25% capacity utilization. As I calculate it, that's about 132 kw-hr of electricity.

Why do you suppose that everybody in the world is so knowledgable about an energy generating plant that is smaller than a generator in a small elementary school, that you, for instance, can offer up the technical details of this plant without much further research?

Are you aware of the technical details of the local gas fired generation plant? How about your closest nuclear plant?

Could this situation have much to do with wishful thinking?

I really can't understand why we spend so much time here, year after year, discussing solar energy and it's magical potential. I could have written all of both my posts here three years ago and they would be exactly the same.

I have seen more pictures of stirling solar plants than I can care to remember, all posted by enthusiastic adherents. Last year the amount of grid based solar electricity produced in this country fell from miniscule to slightly less than miniscule.

The Palo Verde nuclear station in sunny Arizona produces more energy than all of the world's solar stations combined. It does so on a few hectares of land.

[IDemo]

14. I was merely correcting your misstatement

that "solar plant(s) will not run at night." This one will. If by 'running', you mean only in the megawatts-plus realm, then yeah, it's not something to plan the entire energy future of mankind around. I happen to think the solar thermal hybrid concept has great potential for small to midsized applications, at least as much as photovoltaic.

I think you may be making a mistake in judgment of those like me who discuss technologies such as this. I do not identify myself as anti-nuke; if anything, I have come 180 degrees in the past couple of years in favor of it. What I have heard and read of what is happening at the INL in Idaho makes me feel there will be enormous benefit to come from the research being conducted there and elsewhere. I feel very strongly though that if there is anything like a reasonable future to be had, many energy sources and technologies must be explored, and soon.

[NNadir]

15. It is not a solar panel running at night. It's a gas plant.

That is my point.

Since it must by definition have redundant fuel systems, it has redundant costs.

I hope they build lots of solar thermal power plants in Southern California and displace lots of natural gas. To the extent that they are able to burn landfill gas - a climate change problem gas, I'm OK with it, since the alternative to burning it is having it vent to the atmosphere.

However this plant is not even remotely significant in the climate change battle. All of the world's solar plants combined are not significant. Combined they are all equivalent to three or four large scale gas plants.

I really don't oppose renewable energy. However if I let stuff like this stand without comment, I will be playing into the magical thinking that always accompanies it.

When I see "solar" and "nuclear" in the same sentence, I pretty much go ballistic. Is this because I "hate" solar energy? No. This is because the two subjects are unrelated.

Solar energy is an alternative to natural gas. It is not an alternative to coal. Neither is it an alternative to nuclear.