Here's a short but fascinating BBC story about a ginormous (11MW, with plans for expansion) concentrated-solar power plant in Seville, Spain -- the first commercial concentrated-solar plant in Europe. Hundreds of mirrors reflect sunlight at a single point at the top of a tower, where the heat boils water for stream that drives a generator.
I'd only quibble with one thing:
Is it true that this power is three times more expensive than power from conventional sources? Yes, but prices will fall, as they have with wind power, as the technologies develop.
Also, a more realistic comparison is with the cost of generating power from coal or gas only at times of peak demand - then this solar system seems more attractive.
Any time a reporter mentions the cheapness of conventional power, it should be followed with an addendum: the power is cheap because the costs of particulate pollution and climate-warming emissions are not included. If they were, the price would double or treble. That is the "realistic comparison." The point can't be repeated often enough.
Oh, and PS, watch the video -- just aesthetically, this kind of plant is amazing.
Why buying cheap energy certificates worsens climate change
‘Heretic’ battles straw man
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sunflower Posted 6:46 am
04 May 2007
I am focused on this technology and believe central tower receivers with heliostats are the cheapest form of solar steam and power. The technology deployed in Spain is old technology due to information inertia and consensus (like the IPCC. Making the power via high-intensity pv instead of thermal turbines and using smaller mirrors with shorter towers, plus some clever mechanical redesign using the new low-cost abilities of micro controllers then the cost will indeed be three times cheaper, and cheaper than coal sans externalities around the world.
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GreyFlcn Posted 7:47 am
04 May 2007
For instance a 40MW thinfilm solar farm in Ontario Canada.
http://tyler.blogware.com/blog/_archives/2007/4/26/290665 ...
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In particular, today they announced a breakthrough in "quantum dots" for PV solar.
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/05/method_ ...
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Quantum dots have the potential to double, triple, or "Seventuple" the number of electrons solar panels can capture per photon.
http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20060603/bob8.asp
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Meanwhile thinfilm CIGS solar has the potential to reduce the manufacturing costs of solar panels by a factor of 10x. Although the resulting panels only capture sunlight at about half the effeciency of silicon panels.
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Combining these two technologies, and THAT will be your explosive growth in solar power.
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Delay And Deny Posted 8:45 am
04 May 2007
That's right...save the earth -- except when it comes to:
Turning farmland over to bio-diesel and raising the price of food.
Blanketing the plains with destructive wind turbines.
Littering acres with expensive and negative ROI producing solar panels.
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 11:45 am
04 May 2007
Thats Silicon solar.
Thinfilm CIGS panels are reaching a point which makes them look cheap compared to coal.
And if they could combine it with quantum dots, there'd be no holding it back.
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Lastly, an ROI doesn't make much sense if you're comparing it to burning Coal with Carbon Capture and Sequestration AND IGCC.
Since the cost of that would make even silicon solar look cheap.
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dsarokin Posted 11:52 am
04 May 2007
According to some newly released research, PV solar panel use in homes is due to soar in the next five years:
The Growth of Photovoltaic Solar Energy for Home Use
But you all knew that, didn't you!
David
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caniscandida Posted 4:14 pm
04 May 2007
<<
The vision is of the sun-blessed lands of the Mediterranean - even the Sahara desert - being carpeted with systems like this with the power cabled to the drizzlier lands of northern Europe. A dazzling idea in a dazzling location.
>>
If "cabling power" can be done, practically, well then, it should be observed that there are plenty of "sun-blessed" areas in the southern US where a concentrated-solar-power project might be tried. E.g., Imperial Valley, CA, which would be much better off converted from being an agricultural center -- it requires obscene amounts of channeled Colorado River water in order to get anything to grow in that desert -- to being a CSP generator supplying, say, San Diego.
As a point of cultural trivia, we might remember that back in the early Middle Ages, Islamic civilization was at its height, Arab scholars and scientists were preserving the achievements of classical (Greek) scholars and scientists, and building on them, and Western Europeans were relatively backward. One of the sciences that the Arabs advanced is astronomy; another is optics; another is the mechanics involved in the movement of water and the harnessing of water power. And so it is quaintly appropriate that one of the most brilliant centers of Arab culture in Spain, Seville, should now become the site of this CSP project, which involves all those disciplines.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:10 pm
04 May 2007
And more interested in geothermal in colder regions.
The idea being you get easy access to really cold water to run the opposite side of the T-low + T-high engine.
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caniscandida Posted 5:35 pm
04 May 2007
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:49 pm
04 May 2007
Low Temperature Geothermal
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/ate/story?i ...
Large Geothermal Resources
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=1723 ...
Better geothermal exploration
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070406171041 ...
Raser Technology's big Geothermal push
http://jcwinnie.biz/wordpress/?p=1206
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/1001
http://www.insidegreentech.com/node/1088
http://www.rasertech.com/media/movies/html/well_to_wheels ...
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General overview for people who don't know Geothermal so well.
http://www.calenergy.com/html/aboutus4.asp
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caniscandida Posted 6:24 pm
04 May 2007
Probably people who understand these things, totally unlike myself, can comment on how sustainable it truly is, to be relying on drawing up the subsurface superheated water, then sending it back down again.
Whether or not this method of harnessing geothermal energy is sustainable, it illustrates what I mean when I say "in principle," vs. "inside-the-box thinking." The heat is really there, the magma is really there (and that is in the mantle, I think, not the core, which is what the CalEnergy tour says). The superheated water is as it were an accidental by-product of the conditions of Earth's crust and mantle, which happens to be currently utilizable. And absolutely, that resource should be carefully managed and utilized.
But really, when we say "geothermal," we should not be restricting ourselves to talking about the superheated water. We should be talking about the magma itself. We should be engineering some energy collection device that can be thrown down the throats of volcanoes.
Chickens are our cousins!
So are other sensitive animals!
Enough is enough!
No more factory farms!
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Pangolin Posted 7:48 pm
04 May 2007
And more interested in geothermal in colder regions.
The idea being you get easy access to really cold water to run the opposite side of the T-low + T-high engine.
I think you might have that equation reversed. CSP stirling systems combined with a geoexchange (geothermal) heat sink should be MORE efficient in cold climates.
Using CSP systems capable of combined heat and power applications you have a heat source for your house/business/whatever.
Now presuming that it's summer day and you have sufficient piping in the ground you dump your excess heat into the ground from both the house and the stirling unit. Plus you get that hot tub real hot.
At night you aim your stirling unit at the sky and draw the reduced load you need by reversing the thermal flow using the ground as a source and the sky as a sink.
Here's the fun part. In the winter you collect less power during the day and shunt more heat towards your sink(geo). At night you pump heat from your geo-source into your house and still have energy to extract from the stirling engine due to the high T-low + T-high difference due to hot ground, very cold night.
In California I couldn't use all the extra heat. In Chicago the waste heat from a solar-stirling unit gives you double duty as house heating and extra winter power. If any solar PV system could beat that kind of power throughput I'd like to see it.
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GreyFlcn Posted 8:32 pm
04 May 2007
You'd need to make some sort of elaborate trough based solar.
And past that, you'd also need to get the snow off of the panels, which could easily break curved mirrors.
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Pangolin Posted 9:56 pm
04 May 2007
Except that you can't combine a stirling dish with anything.
You'd need to make some sort of elaborate trough based solar.
And past that, you'd also need to get the snow off of the panels, which could easily break curved mirrors.
The link I gave was for a company in Germany. It doesn't snow in Germany? Also they combine that stirling unit with everything. Infinia seems to agree that stirling engines can provide combined heat and power. Nobody says nothing about snow limitations; the mirrors don't have to be Hubble quality.
Last time I checked stirling engines as a class only care that there is sufficient difference between the high temp and the low temp within their operating parameters. Depending on where your cold loop goes to it can go to the air, water, house or ground. As long as you can dump the heat what's the difference where it goes?
As I see it using the ground as your cold side as the ground heated up your electricity generation would zero out but until t1=t2 you would be pumping heat into the ground. Heat that could be used for power minutes later simply by using crossover valves in your heat exchangers and pointing the dish away from the sun.
So where's the problem?
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sunflower Posted 1:07 am
05 May 2007
http://people.linux-gull.ch/rossen/solar/deathray.html
The key to heliostats, like all solar collectors, is cost per square meter aperture and system efficiency. A mirror is 96% efficient.
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