Future Looks Bright for Large Scale Solar Farms

Hugh Pickens writes "The economist reports that Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems that capture and focus the sun's rays to heat a working fluid and drive a turbine, are making a comeback. Although the world's largest solar farm was built over twenty years ago, until recently no new plants have been built. Now with the combination of federal energy credits, the enactment of renewable energy standards in many states, and public antipathy to coal fired power plant, the first such plant to be built in decades started providing 64 megawatts of electricity to Las Vegas this summer. Electricity from the Nevada plant costs an estimated 17 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), but projections suggest that CSP power could fall to below ten cents per kWh as the technology improves. Coal power costs just 2-3 cents per kWh but that will likely rise if regulation eventually factors in the environmental costs of the carbon coal produces."

Cost comparisons...

Concentrated solar power isn't competing with coal for cost-efficiency. Coal isn't an option, and we are (or should be) working to run the hell away from coal as quickly as possible.

The real competition is other forms of clean power generation, like nuclear. Nuclear's costs are about the same as coal; why build a concentrated solar plant when you can just build a nuke plant?

Re:Cost comparisons...

The nuclear leftovers have to go somewhere. And if something were to happen to a solar power plant, you don't have to worry about sunlight being scattered across the countryside. Nuclear radiation, on the other hand...

Nuclear waste

But solving the nuclear waste issue (or, more accurately, permitting one of the solutions to the nuclear waste problem to be implemented) is not optional. We have to do it to dispose of the waste we've already got. So one of the solutions to disposing of this waste will ultimately be implemented, even if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily, thank you very much.

Once we dispose of existing waste, we can dispose of new waste the same way.

Re:Nuclear waste

>if it's just shipping it all to France, where they are disposing of the waste quite handily,

Sigh, instead of making uninformed comment like this, would it kill you to research the topic first?
A few facts:
- France has currently *zero* long term storage location: our politicians weren't able to pick one (the not in my backyard effect).
- Sure we have a good processing factory which is able to process the radioactive waste, it doesn't make radioactivity magically disappear and the 'waste from the waste' is sent back to the orginating country.

Re:Cost comparisons...

Eventually, we're going to have to get a fear of the word nuclear...

Absolutely. However, we have, AFAIK, around 500 years of coal reserves at our current rate of usage. We just need to figure out a better way to mine it. Natural gas availability is declining, with rising dependence on foreign imports of LNG. New nuclear technologies are important considerations, but not for an Executive Branch of oil men. Unfortunately, if the pendulum swings too far the other direction, NIMBYs (Not In My Back Yard) and BANANAs (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything) will put a stop to anything nuclear because it's scary.

I don't understand where they get the number of 17 cents per kilowatt hour of production from this solar plant, unless it's ridiculously expensive to build. Solar, like wind and hydro, which are really just solar plants of a different nature, are mostly capital cost to construct, then operations cost (minimal) and maintenance down the line. Construction costs are commonly amortized over 20 years, so .17/kW, declining to .10/kW seems expensive.

Re:Cost comparisons...

Coal isn't an option

I take it you haven't been to China recently?

Nuclear power isn't all bright...

Nuclear power, though promising in terms of cutting emissions, does carry a lot of other hidden costs. Nuclear power for the US at a large level would require importing Uranium from other countries, as the US only has a small amount of Uranium ore. Whereas solar/wind/etc. would be generating the electricity right here on American soil without foreign imports.

Uranium ore is also a finite resource, and like coal will eventually run out. Also, utilizing several technologies at once to produce power has its benefits. Relying on a single energy source for power doesn't have the same inherent security of having many different kinds of energy sources. My opinion is we should spend the mega billions needed for building a large Nuclear power network when you could spend that and develop a large, multi-pronged sustainable energy system that requires no imports.

Re:Nuclear power isn't all bright...

In the mid-1970s, a Japanese firm demonstrated extraction of uranium from sea water via an ion exchange process at a cost of about $200/pound (1976 dollars). That represents a ceiling price on the cost of uranium, as that's as close to an inexhaustible source as you can get.

There's enough energy available from uranium that $724/pound (2006 dollars, according to the inflation calculator at http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ [westegg.com]) would not be a show-stopper.

Re:Used

Depending on where you get your figures, as much of 50% of US nuclear power is generated from recycled Soviet uranium, either extracted from decommissioned warheads or excess manufactured product that was in the pipeline at the time of collapse. The US also has a large number of vintage-era nuclear weapons that are no longer considered militarily viable (the trigger mechanisms decay quite a bit) and so could be recycled. Finally, if the going ever gets really bad, we can always reprocess our spent fuel for Plutonium and/or use breeder reactors to make the stuff - this is the primary mode in which the Japanese nuclear industry sustains itself without outside supply, although the cheap price of Uranium makes them feel kind of dumb.

In short, the US does not need to import a single gram of fissile material to run indefinitely. Solar/Wind/etc. . are fine ideas for the long term but do not meet our power needs today. We should absolutely invest in these alternative technologies and, while we are at it, invest in conservation and efficiency. Unfortunately, right now, we are making almost 50% of our power from coal that is massively environmentally destructive from the second it is strip-mined out of the ground to its large final carbon contribution. Nuclear power is the only technology currently available that can put a dent in coal usage. If you show me an alternative that can scale to 400 TerraWattHours, I'll withdraw that claim.

References:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/epm_sum.html [doe.gov]
http://www.usec.com/v2001_02/Content/News/NewsTemplate.asp?page=/v2001_02/Content/News/NewsFiles/04-13-03.htm [usec.com]
http://www.defencetalk.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-215.html [defencetalk.com]

Re:Nuclear power isn't all bright...

Uranium fuel is actually almost infinite. If supply ever became a concern, we'd just start reprocessing the waste to remove the neutron poisons instead of buying fresh new uranium (which is so ridiculously cheap that it's silly not to at this point).

The amount of uranium that actually gets *used up* (the amount that gets turned into non-radioactive material, turned into neutron poisons, or especially the amount actually converted from mass to energy) is almost negligible on a macro-scale.

There's also Thorium, which while a little trickier to use and has significantly less energy potential per unit, is so disgustingly plentiful that it would easily last us until the sun goes red giant (At which point solar energy is definitely the way to go *snicker*)

Coal is just too abundant

Coal isn't an option, and we are (or should be) working to run the hell away from coal as quickly as possible.

In principle I agree that coal is not a fuel of first choice (or second or third...) from an environmental perspective. It's dirty, dangerous to mine, hard to clean and has other problems besides. Unfortunately the two biggest manufacturing economies in the world (China & the USA) have HUGE coal reserves and are relatively poor in most other economically competitive fuels. (note the word relatively, obviously both have access to oil, gas, uranium and any other fuel you care to mention) Coal's simple abundance and the installed base of coal fired power plants means it's not going away any time soon. I'm fully in favor of regulating coal to be as clean as technology allows, even at some economic cost. But hoping that the worlds biggest economy will turn its back on a cheap, abundant energy supply, even if it is dirty and undesirable, is just not realistic.

Re:Coal is just too abundant

>>I'm fully in favor of regulating coal to be as clean as technology allows

The idea of "clean coal" is mostly a marketing gimmick.

Even perfect coal burning will release mass amounts of CO2 and require continued mining.

(Whenever miners die in a mine collapse, why don't people protest coal? _NOBODY_ has died from a nuclear accident in the US yet plenty of people are anti-nuclear.)

You mean...

We're actually going to start charging industries for the environmental cleanups that tax payers have to pay for? What a novel concept.

Re:You mean...

No. That would make sense. Common sense and reason are dead in our country. Dead. We do absolutely NOTHING that makes sense. We never change ANYTHING. This must be what Rome felt like in the end...A few people jumping up and down screaming at the top of their lungs while the majority stumbles around blindly patting themselves for being the absolute best...

Re:

ah but Rome didn't have slashdot!

I mean that does give us an advantage right?...

right...

Missing information in story

One bit of information I could not find in the story --

How many acres of desert ecosystem are plunged into permanent shade to provide this 64 megawatts of power?

Re:

Probably 1 acre would be 1 acre too much for the Earth First types.

Can't use coal because it's a CO2 producer.
Can't use nuclear because radioactive waste is scary.
Can't use hydro because those damns endanger the snail darter minnow.
Can't use tidal be

Re:Missing information in story

It just goes to show that you anti-environmental types are happy to believe whatever absurd caricature allows you to feel justified in keeping your Hummers.

Show me one frakking environmental group that has come out in opposition to solar or wind energy. C'mon, just one.

Re:Missing information in story

So?
New Jersey is 8,722.
Just cover that...

17 cents/kwh and it MIGHT get down to 10?

Sorry, but those costs suck donkey dick. Consumers aren't going to be very happy about doubling or tripling the cost of electricity, no matter how much better it makes people feel about screwing up the environment.

This sounds like a waste of money on a technology without much hope of being economically viable. I'm quite certain that photo-voltaic is a lot cheaper than this, and wind power definately is. It sounds like there's a good reason why this technology was abandoned.

Las Vegas is an ironic choice

Since most of those captured photons will eventually be converted back into photons, via low pressure neon tubes.

Future Energy

I think the most promising future energy sources, beginning with the best, are. . .

1. Aneutronic fusion / IEC Polywell reactors. If this works -- as seems likely, based on experimental results thus far -- it could begin displacing *all* other forms of power generation within 15 years. The potential is mind-boggling. This could make coal, fission, natural gas, wind, and the majority of solar power and petroleum fuels hopelessly obsolete. Rapidly.

2. Enhanced geothermal. According to a study from MIT, a relatively small R&D investment could open up enhanced geothermal energy production, at competitive costs, over wide geographical areas, including large parts of the USA. It could scale to meet a very large portion of electrical demand. An enhanced geothermal plant is conceptually similar to a nuclear plant, except that the atomic pile is safely tucked away under the earth's crust.

3. Nuclear fission. If fusion doesn't work out, there's good old fission, and you can build it anywhere, even places where enhanced geothermal won't work. We've learned a fair bit about designing and managing fission reactors, but very little has been put into practice in the USA since we haven't broken ground on any new nuclear plants for several decades. We need to start building *now* just to hold our ground as aging plants come up for decommissioning.

4. Solar. It's intermittent, expensive, and requires large amounts of land. And yet, the hype around solar is scary. Nuclear and geothermal have so many practical advantages, I have a hard time imagining solar providing most of the world's energy -- something all the faithful sun-worshippers expect. Still and all. . . Solar technology is being researched, progress is being made, and there's no question it will work at some price level. It may be useful for rooftop systems and assisting peak power demand, at the very least.

5. Biofuels. This is an inefficient method of gathering solar energy, and it competes with food production for the same resources. Realistically, we're not going to power our whole industrial society off this stuff. However, it does produce concentrated liquid fuels, which are highly useful for certain tasks. There will probably be some kind of long-term role for biofuels -- especially if we can get away from food crops and move to cellulose or algae.

Greedy greedy greedy

Coal has hidden costs, such as the effect of the additional carbon in the atmosphere and the pollution from the plants. We should un-hide those costs, and put them right in the purchase price so people can make informed decisions when choosing their energy sources.

Anything less is willful ignorance.

Re:If they sold the "waste" heat

You don't, you co-locate industries which might make use of the high temperature waste steam on site. Including things like adsorption chillers.

Then you pipe the rest of the heat as hot water to homes and businesses which want to use it for space or water heating.

Tell your "engineering friend" to look up "District Heating [wikipedia.org]" on Wikipedia or Google. It's been in practice for more than a century and is widespread in places like Iceland, Denmark and New York.
 

Re:Jimmy Carter invaded Iran ...

Carter did not start a war. He did authorize a rescue attempt that went bad when some equipment got fouled by sand, and a couple of helcopters crashed into each other in the darkness. The military has since developed technologies to deal with the those issues.

And it cold be just as correctly (that is, not correctly at all) argued that the US started "the war" by backing the Shah and overthrowing Mosaddeq.
_

War on terror is a metaphor
The war on Iraq is a mess