New Solar Technology

Good to hear. Solar seems like a solid choice of energy to pursue, given that it isn't going to run out any time soon; it's the essential equivalent of free energy.

 

The expensive parts are the mirrors and the tower. Take those and run a water/steam power plant with that energy. Take the electrical power and put it on the grid, thereby backing down a coal-fired power plant. That (net) puts CO2 into the ground as coal.

I wonder which way saves more CO2?

 

In 21st century, solar power has already become a small part of daily life. Technology is moving fast to keep up with the renewable revolution. Yet many wonder if small applications will be all solar power is capable of handling. Certainly, the difficulties of large solar plants are many, although many experts continue to insist that the future of solar energy is quite sunny. According to some experts, the sun is our best source of renewable, clean energy. Some estimate that the sun can produce 10,000 times as much energy as the Earth uses at the turn of the 21st century. The future of solar energy depends mostly on how it is applied, rather than whether it would be enough energy to be viable world power source.

 

reminded me of a stirling engine until the bit about making H. That's pretty cool. It's basically a solar powered syn-gas plant. We could actually make carbon-neutral liquid fuels with this technology. Yes the mirrors are pricey, but standard CSP plants already prove that those costs are pretty easily managed while producing power that not that expensive and will continue to get cheaper. Being able to make liquid fuels with solar power and atmospheric CO2 would be pretty sweet.

 

That may even be today in cali. They have outlawed coal, and do not produce nearly as much energy as they use. If another drought hits, California will again spike the price of natural gas. I doubt unsubsidized economics really work out in much of the rest of the country for sun, but there are other renewable that do. Given the choice Texans are adding wind power as fast as the grid will take it. Household solar with the subsidies also makes economic sense today.

Storage is not a problem. Like it does with Texas wind, natural gas can even out the power. In California there is plenty of natural gas on line to even out the demand until much larger amounts of solar/wind/biomass are added. The California grid though needs improvement to move power from the good solar sources to the people. That is part of this project, but more grid work also needs to be done.

 

Plug in hybrids/evs in large numbers become the storage bank for solar and wind. They would allow two way energy transaction. Absorbing excess Pv/wind at times of low demand, selling power back to the gird at times of peak demand,, cutting down on the wasteful idle spinning capacity.

Icarus

 

Sadly, coal "costs" are often not reported as costs. Mine injuries and the colateral pollution in just running & decommissioning mines are not taken into consideration

 

seems like molten salts are the storage solution for solar thermal plants. They're cheap and very efficient.

 

That seems like a help when we get to much higher levels of solar. I'm not sure we will ever get their in the south west. It seems that with all the natural gas generating capacity, and the ease to turn on an extra turbine in a combined cycle plant, natural gas seems the natural load balance. One problem is the grid for California covers half the nation, and it needs to be improved to drop in Concentrated solar where it makes sense. I don't think we need to add molten salt capabilities in the Mojave.

In texas gas is used to load balance wind, and we believe this will work up until we get to 30% of the electricity from wind power. There are even political fights on whether wind providers should have to subsidize the ng plants for the changing loads. Texas has its own grid and is improving it with the help of state and federal monies to bring large amounts on line. California must deal with other states and the federal government to get their grid ready more sun and wind.

 

Adding storage allows for a higher production factor, which increases profit so as long as the price of the storage is reasonable, it seems like a no brainer to add it.

Of course, as we move away from coal to more and more NG fired plants we're going to chew up our NG at a faster and faster pace (remember when we had > 600 yrs of coal reserves here in the 1970's and we're down to about 200-250 now, 40 years later). That'll make technologies like CSP w/thermal storage all the more important.

 

No I can't remember, I seem to be too young for most of the forum. But I had been reading 100 years for coal. I think it is longer only because we will shift away from it.

Given the high prices and high ng use in California adding CSP makes perfect sense. I was only adding that in California, they don't need to wait for thermal storage to be cost effective, they have plenty of peak leveling capacity. Other parts of the world can and will use thermal storage. So I'm in agreement with the general sentiment, IMHO california should move faster with CSP even without thermal storage.