this is sweet........

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6616651.stm

looks like something from a sci-fi movie. i hope it really proves to be viable in the long run.

5/4/2007 12:22:30 AM

Quote :

"A concrete tower - 40 storeys high"

Fucking Brits and their goofy English English

5/4/2007 3:04:13 AM

This was in some movie.

There is also one of these in Cali.

5/4/2007 3:10:47 AM

^Sahara

5/4/2007 4:04:53 AM

I was wondering how they got any decent power out of modern day expensive as hell solar panels, turns out they didnt.

Mirrors for the win .

5/4/2007 8:34:33 AM

there's one of these plants out west somewhere, and several supermax prisons use similar setups for providing hot water to the inmates. It's a really smart concept, although I think it takes a lot of manual adjustment to keep it working correctly.

5/4/2007 9:12:01 AM

11 MW out of that monster is nothing to write home about. However, the article is saying that they eventually hope to get 1100 MW. That would be spectacular. However, there is some downsides to this style of plant:

1) Not being able to produce power at night: this is a non-issue since load drops dramatically at night and other base load forms of power can be used instead
2) Alignment of all the mirrors: all of the mirror must be focused at the tower for optimum steam production. Which means that the mirrors have to be moved continuously to capture the sun's light, which with modern control systems is almost sneezable, but not completely a non-issue. However, any external means of misalignment would be a challege (e.g. hail).
3) Cleanliness of mirrors: If the mirrors are not clean they will not transmit as well. This means preventitive maintenance will have to be done to clean the mirrors. To make these PMs managable areas that are dusty, sooty, or polleny will not be good.
4) Amount of land used: Since all of this equipment is spread out and outside to gather sunlight, weathering of actuators and concerns about other natural phenomenon is larger (e.g. lightning). With appropriate planning these can be managed though.
5) Dealing with Cloudy Days: On cloudy days the effectivness of this plant will drop greatly. This means that either locations that don't get very cloudy will need to be selected (not really feasible on a local scale) or the utility will need to either diversify with other base load capable sources or trade for the energy from other utilities. If the utility diversifies that will be extra O&M and capital revenue that will be sitting in idle to support this plant. If the utility relies on energy trading, they could end up living with a bill of $2000+ per MWh when it only charges around $100 per MWH

Bottom line: If we can get these stations up to a managable size for peaking or even base load demand (500+ MW) with managable O&M and capital costs, great. Otherwise I feel we should be developing zero-emissons coal plants and nukes. It is predicted that solar will become cheaper than combustion turbines for extreme peaking load, but I think it is a while before utilities start building these for base demand.

For this plant:
11 MW * 12 hrs/day usable * $100 MWh = $12100 per day - remove the 12.5% allowed to be made: $10588 per day to not only support this power plants O&M, but it's original capital depreciated cost and all costs associated with transmitting and distributing the power produced. There is little room there...

5/4/2007 9:23:02 AM

1) "What happens when the Sun goes down? Enough heat can be stored in the form of steam to allow generation after dark - only for an hour now but maybe longer in future." Maybe put some gimungous mirrors on the moon, yeah
5) That's true. Luckily, it is sunny as heck in southern Spain.

Overall, I'd say it's a good step in the right direction.

5/4/2007 9:59:14 AM

Quote :

"11 MW out of that monster is nothing to write home about. However, the article is saying that they eventually hope to get 1100 MW. "

I don't think that's what the article was implying. I think they meant they were hoping to improve the efficiency of energy use in the town so that they could be sustained off of the power plant, not that they could incr4eas the power production 100 fold. Increasing generation capacity to that extent is completely impractical.

These types of facilities would be great for peak shaving in summer load areas, but I don't foresee them being practical enough to build for base load right now. 10-20 years from now when someone comes up with a practical way to store energy either with stored hydrogen from electrolysis or a gigantic revolving drum, that might change.

5/4/2007 10:12:45 AM

solar panels are complete crap for large scale energy production. These solar collectors are your best bet for making some kind of renewable source out of the sun.

I'm kind of a fan of this design, frankly, it sounds better to me than the parabolic trough design:



But I've seen some really good numbers posted for that design (like 11 cents/kWh), but it's like like you can trust the numbers you hear quoted from anything like that. It doesn't take into account replacement power when the sun's not out and there's no limit to ways you can fudge the numbers to make it look better. This kind of plant cannot currently be used to deliver power to your house at anything close to 10 cents/kWh.

5/4/2007 10:32:07 AM

:old:

5/4/2007 10:44:58 AM