"Crescent Dunes ...

[Wry Catcher]

got a big push, a $737 million loan from the Energy Dept. program that financed the failed solar manufacturer Solyndra. But Crescent Dunes is a much safer investment, with a 25-year contract in place to sell power to the Las Vegas utility NV energy. In fact, although the loan program has become a Republican punching bag - Paul Ryan called Crescent Dunes (CD) and "ill-fated venture" in his 2014 budget - the vast majority of its portfolio is doing fine".

[The willfully curious are invited to read the entire article, "The Green Revolution", in the June 16, 2014 issue of TIME. It might even enlighten the willfully ignorant but for the fact they won't read or listen to anything not approved by AM Radio Ideologues and the Fox Nutwork.]

Crescent Dunes | SolarReserve

 

[Wry Catcher]

"CD is a solar thermal plant, powered by 360,000 mirrors ... (which) will redirect the sun's rays to heat salt up to 1050 degrees F. The salt will then be stored in the plants hot tank where it's excess heat will be able to spin steam turbines and generate electricity at any time - even after the sun has set behind the Sierra Nevada".

"Solar power at night", says the CEO, "it's a new world"!

 

[Wry Catcher]

From TIME:

"All the energy stored in the earth's reserves of coal, oil and natural gas is matched by just 20 days of sunshine"

"The rooftop boom is turning families and business owners into electricity producers as well as consumers, threatening to upend the power sector the way the Internet upended the newspaper business"

"A NEW SOLAR-POWER SYSTEM IS NOW INSTALLED ON AN AMERICAN ROOF EVERY THREE OR FOUR MINUTES"

 

[Old Rocks]

We need to move as rapidly as possible toward a distributed grid, one capable of picking up the homeowners 2 kw's as well as the nuke plants 2 gw. And we need to put the grid into places like Wyoming that has a huge potential both for wind and geothermal. They already have the coal generation plants there, so as these are closed, the grid could be used for geothermal and wind.