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1. 

   Jonas Posted 12:26 am
   10 Jun 2008

   Give it a few years

   Very good. Give the engineers a few years to develop efficient energy storage media, and with time concentrated solar power may become competitive.

   If storage is not developed swiftly enough, we need to phase out coal (as Hansen suggests) and replace it with biomass, which would function as the baseload and peakload for CSP.

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2. 

   GreyFlcn Posted 1:00 am
   10 Jun 2008

   That silly

   Give the engineers a few years to develop efficient energy storage media

   Uhm they've already made a very efficient storage media.  It's the same one they've been using for 40 years.

   Or is maintaining 99% of the stored heat not good enough for you?

   http://greyfalcon.net/solarthermal

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3. 

   Jonas Posted 1:34 am
   10 Jun 2008

   Oh I see

   Uhm they've already made a very efficient storage media.  It's the same one they've been using for 40 years.

   Oh, great, I had never heard of molten salts! So that problem is solved then!

   When do we get to see a working example that functions on a commercial scale?
   

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4. 

   Erik Hoffner Posted 2:05 am
   10 Jun 2008

   land

   I sure hope that installations like concentrated solar, as necessary as they are, are landed in places like brownfields, etc, close to the markets they'll serve, and not willy nilly carving up the remainder of the open habitat the critters of the southwest and southern CA rely on.  

   Erik

   The Orion Grassroots Network: 1,200+ grassroots groups working for conservation & more

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5. 

   stopgreenpath Posted 3:19 am
   10 Jun 2008

   cheaper doesn't mean better

   how many of these rapacious projects do we need to cheerlead before we realize that we cannot suck the millions of gallons of groundwater, and permanently destroy the millions of acres of fragile desert wilderness these ill-conceived handouts to Big Energy will cost?  

   these gigantic projects average 10,000 acres for very modest outputs.  it's great that Google has a thermal system on their roof (which probably supplies only about 10% of their usage, since they are one of the biggest consumers in the state), but unless they restrict their "competition" to rooftop systems, and, as Erik says, brownfields, it's not gonna be a solution at all, just a new problem.

   The solution has to be LOCAL, POINT OF USE renewables which use no water, need no new transmission and which do not kill off our wilderness.  oh, and coincidentally, which are more reliable than giant, remote power plants (hellooo, 19th century), which will not require huge exercises of eminent domain, which will not further entrench the scary Big Energy Monopolies which have bought our government off, and which will not provide endless opportunities for market manipulation by unscrupulous pigs like Big Oil, Enron, etc.

   Diverting all the money going into wilderness-killing energy projects back to responsible ratepayers who want to do the right thing is the critical step now.  Tax breaks, subsidies, super-cheap financing and market-rate feed-in tariffs should have been in place for 30 years now.  Instead, we get this crap that kills our planet to save utilities a buck.

   more skilled LOCAL jobs, a free market in energy production for people like you and me,

   the greenest energy is that which you needn't ever produce.

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6. 

   WWAGD?! Posted 3:19 am
   10 Jun 2008

   Put A Solar Panel...on Boardwalk!

   Guys in Monopoly Tux and Tails cleaning the clocks of Sandal Clad Hippies:

   DuPont eyes $1 billion in solar revenue by 2013
   http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/dupont-eyes-generat ...

   The materials technology company said it'll ramp up production of its Solamet thick-film metallization paste for solar cells as it eyes the booming business of generating precious electricity from the sun.

   "The photovoltaic industry is in the midst of a substantial surge globally, and demand for solar as a renewable energy source will continue to increase," said Timothy McCann, vice president and general manager in charge of DuPont Electronic Technologies.

   Specifically, the company said it expects that the photovoltaic market will grow by more than 30% in each of the next several years, "driving demand for existing and new materials that are more cost effective."

   
   

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7. 

   hapa Posted 11:27 am
   10 Jun 2008

   dupont's footprint shrinking by a leap?

   a lot of my hippiest friends would call that a win.

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8. 

   KenG Posted 2:40 pm
   10 Jun 2008

   Efficiency

   When looking at storage efficiency, ability to retain heat is only a part of the story. Installation and operating costs are critical issues. A very cheap storage system that loses 50% of the energy may be more practical than a very expensive system that retains 99% of the energy.

   Also, the conditions of storage are very important. The referenced molten salt system stores energy at a maximum of about 1000F. An efficient steam turbine may generate steam with salt at 600 to 700F and use some reheat energy at, say 400F salt. At the lower temperatures, the energy can't be used and the salt just sits there, waiting to get heated up again (and losing energy). Not a big efficiency deal but it means the system must be very large.

   Another issue - the water usage issue is a red herring - for solar, nuclear, coal or any other steam cycle plants. The water isn't used, just heated up and, in areas with no available water, closed loop cooling can be used with a slight reduction in efficiency and cost increase.

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9. 

   hapa Posted 3:39 pm
   10 Jun 2008

   @keng

   ooh! do you know about cooling!!!? can you talk a little about open, tower, and closed loop cooling, in terms of efficacy and input requirements for solar, geothermal, and fission? other than solar not really using towers.

   and do you know anything about the costs involved.

   i haven't been able to assemble good information on this. it's been frustrating. input dependency and effectiveness during heat waves being important.

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10. 

    gzuckier Posted 3:20 am
    27 Jun 2008

    cooling the water

    far from an expert, but it seems to me that if all you need to do is condense the steam for the next pass through the collector, a pipe buried six feet in the ground oughta do a pretty good job, even in the desert. all those prairie dogs don't emerge from their dens parboiled.

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