...but the salt-energy-storage concept worries me alittle.

If they need 20,000 tonnes of salt just to produce that much energy, it would take untold millions (billions?) of tonnes to apply that same technology on an even larger scale.

Just where would that salt come from?  And would there be any downside to heatin' it up like that?

Better to dewater the salt slurry effluent and use it for thermal storage than pump it into a saline aquifer, I think.

True.

...although I'd rather they not be usin' the salt domes as oil/gas storage facilities to begin with.

Though I guess they could take salt from bodies of water that were oversalted due to human activities...but you'd still have the transport issues to think 'bout.

And in reality, I doubt they'd go for it, since outright traditional mining of the salt would probably be the cheapest option.

"A salt is basically any crystalline ionic compound.

"Solar Two used molten salt, a combination of 60% sodium nitrate and 40% potassium nitrate, as an energy storage medium." So says Wikipedia, anyway."

Extract it once.  Use it forever.  It's not like it gets used up.

As a point of reference the world uses about 200 million metric tons of table salt per year.  That's use it and lose it and extract it again.

very disappointing.  these things operate like gigantic bug zappers, or giant magnifying glasses, concentrating light across long distances (this small plant will be roughly 500 acres killed).  there is simply no reason to slaughter our functioning desert ecosystems to create another pyramid scheme of energy consumption, exploitation and destruction with Big Energy Profiteers at the top and ratepayers and the environment at the bottom.

let's see the entire built environment maxed out with point of use generation, while research advances on storage and conservation solutions, and make decisions about killing off ecoystems at that stage - don't you wonder why that is the FIRST idea these mercenaries are jumping to?  it's so they can bottle your sun and your wind on your land and sell it back to you for profit.

wake up!  time to generate our own power and sell excess into the grid for decent tariffs.  let's save our important intact wildlife habitats so they can keep doing what they do (the Mojave happens to be a fantastic carbon absorbing ecosystem when left intact, so who knows about Spain's deserts?).  

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

Show us the math.  

Calc out the cost/methods of generating the power we need by "doing it ourselves".  Be sure to include late peak hour supplies.

Oh, and include ideas of how we force people to run their own utility companies when they have no desire and/or ability to do so.

(BTW, I call BS on the birds, bats, groundwater, acres killed part.  We might lose a lot of moths in the area.  But perhaps fewer than we kill via other methods.  I'm not sure the desert is chock-a-block with moths.)

(the Mojave happens to be a fantastic carbon absorbing ecosystem when left intact, so who knows about Spain's deserts?).

I agree that local on-site energy production is best.

However, there is an element here that should be noted.

Spain's deserts are not virgin.  

And in fact they can hardly be qualified as deserts anymore.  They've been irrigated and used for agriculture for many centuries now.

Much of the original ecosystem has been altered from it's original pre-agricultural state.

There's little to be lost from conversion of land which has already been altered for human causes.

The site is Sanlúcar la Mayor, just west of Seville. Check it out on Google Maps and you'll see a very settled landscape with just patches of uncultivated land. There's enough dense urban structure immediately adjacent to use all the energy product without the long-distance transmission lines that cause Stopgreenpath such concern: close enough to qualify as very local if not point-of-use. I do not mean to diminish SGP's other concerns, but this is clearly very different from the Mojave: I doubt we would call this desert, it is an article from a British newspaper after all....

Very interesting about the carbon absorption of the Mojave by the way, I would not have guessed it was so until I googled it to check. There are many types of desert in the world of course and one wonders how much of them carry the same seasonal microflora that apparently do this beneficial carbon work. The great Australian desert is possibly very similar to the Mojave in this respect: the amazing shifting dunes that are my perhaps uninformed vision of the Sahara (thank you, 'The English Patient') perhaps not so much. But certainly this information gives us extra reason to be skeptical of the desert reclamation projects that we have seen promoted here in Grist for additionality in carbon capture.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Note the Guardian article also describes a municipal PV installation near Barcelona mounted on mausoleum roofs in the town cemetery. "The crowded, working-class town (of Santa Coloma de Gramenet) outside Barcelona decided that flat, open, sun-drenched land was so scarce that the graveyard was the only viable spot to site the panels, which provide enough electricity to power 60 homes."

Again, not quite point-of-use. But you can't fault them for resourcefulness!

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.