CSP plants could run at 80 percent capacity (or better) throughout the year

[ScienceRocks]

CSP plants could run at 80 percent capacity (or better) throughout the year
CSP plants could run at 80 percent capacity (or better) throughout the year

Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have conducted a study to examine the potential for solar power to provide reliable electricity around the clock, every day of the year. The team found that a large, distributed network of concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the Mediterranean basin or the Kalahari desert in southern Africa would be able to consistently run at 80 percent of maximum capacity or more throughout the year regardless of time of day, season, or weather conditions.

The potential to generate solar power in the Earth's deserts is essentially unlimited: there is more than enough land area to generate far more electricity than the whole world currently demands.

And yet, generating such vast amounts of power using photovoltaic (PV) cells would be unpractical, mainly because PV panels can't produce electricity at night, and are also subject to changing seasons and weather conditions. A power grid relying mostly on PV panels would need a very large number of batteries, which would drive electricity costs up.

One other promising approach to harvesting energy from the Sun is concentrated solar power, in which a system of mirrors and lenses focus a large area of sunlight onto a smaller area, heating a liquid which is then used to run a steam turbine and, finally, to generate electricity. The big advantage here is that the heated liquid itself can also be seen as an energy storage system. Intelligently controlling when and how this heat is converted into electricity enables such power plants to keep generating electricity whenever it's needed, even long after the sun has set.

In a recent study, researchers Stefan Pfenninger and colleagues simulated the operation of networks of CSP plants that also make use of thermal storage and optimized their siting, operation and sizing to meet what might be the realistic energy demand from the area.

"What we looked at was whether a solar power system based on CSP could provide electricity reliably," Prof. Anthony Patt, co-author of the study, told Gizmag. "Say you build 10 plants, each with some thermal storage, and with a combined peak output of 1,000 MW. How much of the time will you actually be able to provide 1,000 MW, or something like it? What we found is that a network of such plants, if optimized in terms of their placement and how they were operated, could indeed be operated such that they always provide between 800 MW and 1,000 MW whether it is summer, winter, day or night."

 

[flacaltenn]

Sure.. ON PAPER -- you could build 2 IDENTICAL CSP plants.. Run one during the day, and keep the other off-line storing energy til the evening. But then their definition of "efficiency" is f'd up. And spacing them over 2 or 3 time zones might add a couple hours to the operation, but are they counting the distribution losses?

 

[elektra]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

 

[TheJedi]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment. Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

In fact, if we closed every NG fracking site in the country and instead invested in putting Wind generators or Solar energy collectors in the same locations (depends on location), we would close to halve our demand for NG in the country and we would also see lower costs for fuel because we would be using far less.

This is the cold-hard truth. The energy industry has a monopoly on pricing a tradeable commodity and their speculators are constantly looking for reasons to bump up the price to increase profit margins. Renewable energy cannot be commoditized and even if it could, anyone can produce their own electricity which is why many cities have rules that you MUST be hooked up to their energy/water grid/sewage grid because if we all started doing this, the price of oil, coal and gas would plummet and long with it the money the energy industry uses to purchase politicians to do their bidding in Congress.

 

[elektra]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment. Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

In fact, if we closed every NG fracking site in the country and instead invested in putting Wind generators or Solar energy collectors in the same locations (depends on location), we would close to halve our demand for NG in the country and we would also see lower costs for fuel because we would be using far less.

This is the cold-hard truth. The energy industry has a monopoly on pricing a tradeable commodity and their speculators are constantly looking for reasons to bump up the price to increase profit margins. Renewable energy cannot be commoditized and even if it could, anyone can produce their own electricity which is why many cities have rules that you MUST be hooked up to their energy/water grid/sewage grid because if we all started doing this, the price of oil, coal and gas would plummet and long with it the money the energy industry uses to purchase politicians to do their bidding in Congress.

The problem with NG is Fracking? Really, so seeings how you can not build a CSP without NG how would you propose building CSP?

The cold-hard truth is California has spent over a $100 billion on Solar and Wind energy, California has diverted research to Solar and Wind, at the cost of Billions, and yet our energy prices are the highest in the USA, further each year the government is allowing the ONE MONOPOLY of an Electric Company to increase rates to cover the cost.

I appreciate the thought you put in your post, honestly, but in all seriousness, if you do the math, we would have to cover the entire globe with Solar and Wind, literally. To replace Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station it would take over 100 square miles of Solar.

How about the pumping of water? Nothing takes as much electricity as pumping water, currently California can not pump a 1% increase in the use of water using Green Energy.

Green Energy can not provide electricity to industry, period.

All we speak of is homes, add the fantasy of Mandated-Electric-Cars and the idea of Solar proves to be an impossible dream.

Solar works during the day only, so in your dream there are batteries, how heavy would they be, for one house, I say at the least they would way 1 ton. How long do batteries last? In a car only 5 years, maybe a little more. So how about tons of batteries, can you manufacture them with Solar Power, the answer is no.

How many Batteries do you think we need, 100 million plus back-ups. Maybe a trillion tons of material will thus be consumed. Solar Power can not provide the power to manufacture batteries so your idea depends on NG or Fossil Fuels.

You propose we should use Fossil Fuel faster, we should use all the Fossil Fuel now to build a Solar, to build batteries, which will not last ten years.

Its complete bullshit, to use Fossil Fuel as fast as we can, to increase the consumption of our most valuable resource for the fantasy of Renewable energy.

Solar Panels do not last forever, they need replacing, that takes Oil, nothing else. How will we make Solar Panels after we use all the Oil to build Solar Panels.

Same with Wind Turbines, in California the Wind Turbines are replaced every 10 years or less. Tens of thousands of Turbines constantly being replaced. Are you not concerned that this massive increase in Consumption for something that is not renewable is a waste of Oil?

People have zero understanding of the massive amount of energy wasted on Green/Renewable energy.

A great idea, lets use over a 10 billion tiny power plants to supply the energy to the world.

Banks support Green/Renewable energy, they make money on the interest of over $300 billion in loans of the last 2 years of Solar and Wind manufacture.

Industry loves the idea, millions of gear boxes, millions of electrical generators, all sitting idle as the clamor cries for more.

How much does GE profit.

I imagine General Motors would love to have millions of cars sitting in fields, what a great boon to business as well as government.

Solar Manufacture is a massive heavy industry, polluting the world and consuming Oil at an extreme rate. No wonder Shell Oil actually supports Solar Panel Manufacturing.

 

[TheJedi]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment. Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

In fact, if we closed every NG fracking site in the country and instead invested in putting Wind generators or Solar energy collectors in the same locations (depends on location), we would close to halve our demand for NG in the country and we would also see lower costs for fuel because we would be using far less.

This is the cold-hard truth. The energy industry has a monopoly on pricing a tradeable commodity and their speculators are constantly looking for reasons to bump up the price to increase profit margins. Renewable energy cannot be commoditized and even if it could, anyone can produce their own electricity which is why many cities have rules that you MUST be hooked up to their energy/water grid/sewage grid because if we all started doing this, the price of oil, coal and gas would plummet and long with it the money the energy industry uses to purchase politicians to do their bidding in Congress.

The problem with NG is Fracking? Really, so seeings how you can not build a CSP without NG how would you propose building CSP?

The cold-hard truth is California has spent over a $100 billion on Solar and Wind energy, California has diverted research to Solar and Wind, at the cost of Billions, and yet our energy prices are the highest in the USA, further each year the government is allowing the ONE MONOPOLY of an Electric Company to increase rates to cover the cost.

I appreciate the thought you put in your post, honestly, but in all seriousness, if you do the math, we would have to cover the entire globe with Solar and Wind, literally. To replace Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station it would take over 100 square miles of Solar.

How about the pumping of water? Nothing takes as much electricity as pumping water, currently California can not pump a 1% increase in the use of water using Green Energy.

Green Energy can not provide electricity to industry, period.

All we speak of is homes, add the fantasy of Mandated-Electric-Cars and the idea of Solar proves to be an impossible dream.

Solar works during the day only, so in your dream there are batteries, how heavy would they be, for one house, I say at the least they would way 1 ton. How long do batteries last? In a car only 5 years, maybe a little more. So how about tons of batteries, can you manufacture them with Solar Power, the answer is no.

How many Batteries do you think we need, 100 million plus back-ups. Maybe a trillion tons of material will thus be consumed. Solar Power can not provide the power to manufacture batteries so your idea depends on NG or Fossil Fuels.

You propose we should use Fossil Fuel faster, we should use all the Fossil Fuel now to build a Solar, to build batteries, which will not last ten years.

Its complete bullshit, to use Fossil Fuel as fast as we can, to increase the consumption of our most valuable resource for the fantasy of Renewable energy.

Solar Panels do not last forever, they need replacing, that takes Oil, nothing else. How will we make Solar Panels after we use all the Oil to build Solar Panels.

Same with Wind Turbines, in California the Wind Turbines are replaced every 10 years or less. Tens of thousands of Turbines constantly being replaced. Are you not concerned that this massive increase in Consumption for something that is not renewable is a waste of Oil?

People have zero understanding of the massive amount of energy wasted on Green/Renewable energy.

A great idea, lets use over a 10 billion tiny power plants to supply the energy to the world.

Banks support Green/Renewable energy, they make money on the interest of over $300 billion in loans of the last 2 years of Solar and Wind manufacture.

Industry loves the idea, millions of gear boxes, millions of electrical generators, all sitting idle as the clamor cries for more.

How much does GE profit.

I imagine General Motors would love to have millions of cars sitting in fields, what a great boon to business as well as government.

Solar Manufacture is a massive heavy industry, polluting the world and consuming Oil at an extreme rate. No wonder Shell Oil actually supports Solar Panel Manufacturing.

You are drinking the corporate Kool-Aid. The only thing that has hampered the development and increased costs of renewable energy has been the oil, coal and gas industries. They sue the pants off of these companies, use their political connections to get the results they want and they pressure the very owners of these technologies to sell off patents so they can sit on them.

This whole country could have been on a solar and wind network long ago. The auto and oil industries killed the electric car in the 90's and instead we got hybrids. This has nothing o do with politics and everything to do with evil corporate assholes holding innovation hostage until they make their money in antiquated, dirty technologies.

I am nothing short of right. You can argue with that but then again, you may as well proceed to the highest building and argue with gravity.

 

[TheJedi]

Who Killed the Electric Car? | Documentary Heaven

Florida Makes Off-Grid Living Illegal ? Mandates All Homes Must Be Connected To An Electricity Grid *

Utilities Are Trying To Kill The Solar Industry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasland

You can watch the whole documentary here:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV-bENteDiE"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV-bENteDiE[/ame]

 

[Mr. H.]

Who Killed the Electric Car? | Documentary Heaven

Florida Makes Off-Grid Living Illegal ? Mandates All Homes Must Be Connected To An Electricity Grid *

Utilities Are Trying To Kill The Solar Industry

Gasland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can watch the whole documentary here:
Gasland - YouTube

Oh my fucking god you're quoting Gasland?

Sorry s0n but you are a lost cause indeed.

 

[RGR]

Who Killed the Electric Car? | Documentary Heaven

The same folks who brought it back to life in a BIG way.

Florida Makes Off-Grid Living Illegal ? Mandates All Homes Must Be Connected To An Electricity Grid *

Write your state senator already, stupid political leadership is a consequence of the people living and voting there.

Utilities Are Trying To Kill The Solar Industry

It is called competition. Utilities are worried about it, and worse yet, it reduces their customer base. Sort of like wired home phone utilities worried about wireless knocking them out of the box.

It is considered to be a good thing in a free market system.

Gasland - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Propaganda pure and simple.

 

[RGR]

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment.

Propaganda. It has been going on longer than you have been alive (most likely) and the anti-everything folks can't even find a single example of these nefarious oilfield completion techniques coming up in someones basement. A clue…Gasland doesn't either…for those not familiar with what 1000's of psi does to a homes water distribution system.

Anti-oilfield completion techniques are just another one of those NIMBY tactics.

Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Actually, they do exactly this, ensuring well integrity. Do you even know what it takes to claim that a well has the kind of integrity necessary to ensure these things?

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

It certainly has since the high prices of 2005. What part of reality contradicting your bad ideas don't you understand?

This is the cold-hard truth.

Hardly. You don't even know what you are talking about, instead choosing to perpetrate the tyranny of small minds, and their propaganda, on everyone else.

 

[TheJedi]

There is no point in debating with people who have given in to the neo-con propaganda. Time will prove me right. I am reserving my "I fucking told you so" place right here.

 

[flacaltenn]

There is no point in debating with people who have given in to the neo-con propaganda. Time will prove me right. I am reserving my "I fucking told you so" place right here.

That "I fucking told you so" card will make a nice souvenir, but it aint ever gonna be played.
Those "conspiracies" you tossed out are only in your head. The major car companies can't build an affordable electric car TODAY without massive subsidies to them and the customers.
So it's not bloody likely they could have done it THIRTY YEARS AGO, with 30 yr old tech. Who "killed" the electric car in the 1890's ???? You got an answer for that?

 

[elektra]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment. Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

In fact, if we closed every NG fracking site in the country and instead invested in putting Wind generators or Solar energy collectors in the same locations (depends on location), we would close to halve our demand for NG in the country and we would also see lower costs for fuel because we would be using far less.

This is the cold-hard truth. The energy industry has a monopoly on pricing a tradeable commodity and their speculators are constantly looking for reasons to bump up the price to increase profit margins. Renewable energy cannot be commoditized and even if it could, anyone can produce their own electricity which is why many cities have rules that you MUST be hooked up to their energy/water grid/sewage grid because if we all started doing this, the price of oil, coal and gas would plummet and long with it the money the energy industry uses to purchase politicians to do their bidding in Congress.

I have another thought, you think we would have plenty of energy if we quit developing Natural Gas and focused on Solar and Wind.

Really? This kind of shows how ignorant those who promote Green Energy are, we have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on Solar and Wind, we have built the largest power plants in physical size, we are covering square miles, hundreds of square miles, we are building and installing as fast as possible, and what do we get. An idiotic comment stating if only we invested in Solar and Wind.

Talk about being blind, talk about being ignorant, seriously, where have you been?

Hundred of Billions of Dollars and someone posts as if we have not spent a dime.

How many thousands of hours in free research at the best universitites are spent trying to make this work?

And you know what we are told, about solar, we are told this is just the start, after another 20 years of research they will get it right, seriously, that is what the Solar industry states.

Wake up fools, Solar and Wind energy are the cause of high prices and no jobs, and soon much higher taxes to pay for what will be a $trillion$ dollar price tag.

 

[elektra]

CSP, Concentrating Solar Power, like Ivanpah, that is actually a Natural Gas plant, Natural Gas Boiler as its core, complete failure as far as solar goes, but the Natural Gas portion is surprisingly efficient.

The development of Green/Renewable Energy shows how gullible humans are to things said on television or the in the media in general.

Morons!

The problem with NG is fracking. It kills the environment. Not that it has to be but because the industry does not want to spend what it needs to spend to insure integrity of the wells and, as such, they crack and leak highly toxic chemicals into the groundwater.

Also, harvesting NG is highly inefficient. It takes ten times more energy to get it out, transport it, refine it and transport it again to sellers. Not to mention the energy used to transport the chemicals so really, it does nothing to offset the cost and bring it down in price.

In fact, if we closed every NG fracking site in the country and instead invested in putting Wind generators or Solar energy collectors in the same locations (depends on location), we would close to halve our demand for NG in the country and we would also see lower costs for fuel because we would be using far less.

This is the cold-hard truth. The energy industry has a monopoly on pricing a tradeable commodity and their speculators are constantly looking for reasons to bump up the price to increase profit margins. Renewable energy cannot be commoditized and even if it could, anyone can produce their own electricity which is why many cities have rules that you MUST be hooked up to their energy/water grid/sewage grid because if we all started doing this, the price of oil, coal and gas would plummet and long with it the money the energy industry uses to purchase politicians to do their bidding in Congress.

another thought, you state if we built solar and wind we would not need natural gas, we have spent over $300$ billion dollars in two years on Solar and Wind, it is impossible to spend more money, its impossible to spend money faster. You speak as if we have not done a thing, if only we spent more?

You certainly show you know nothing of what you speak. I mean that sincerely.

 

[elektra]

There is no point in debating with people who have given in to the neo-con propaganda. Time will prove me right. I am reserving my "I fucking told you so" place right here.

what debate, there was never a debate, the government started building wind turbines and solar panels with zero debate, just a massive marketing campaign filled with fear and hate, literally.

So do not speak of debate when there was never a debate.

Time is now, $300 billion in two years, that is a lot of Petroleum diverted to building Solar and Wind.

What has been the total world wide invested to include research and development, $1 trillion dollars?

Yes there is no point in debating when you know nothing of what you speak, Green Energy has been applied, and failed.

 

[whitehall]

The real question is what would 80% of solar capacity do for the power grid? Not much I'm afraid. Acres and acres and acres of solar plastic strewn over otherwise valuable real estate accounts for a laughable fraction of fossil fuel energy output but at least it doesn't beat magnificent birds to death. It just fries minor species.

 

[Zander]

Unicorn farts and rainbows will power the future!!

 

[RGR]

There is no point in debating with people who have given in to the neo-con propaganda.

I'll stick to the physics involved in the reservoir dynamics and whatnot, call me crazy, but morons who confuse political proclivities with their expertise in this field is pretty common.

I can assure you, Darcy's law doesn't much care for your confusion.

I'll bet you don't even know WHY it is so easy to tell that the Gasland demo's are so full of crap, do you?

Time will prove me right. I am reserving my "I fucking told you so" place right here.

Time? People in my profession have been doing hydraulic fracturing completions for longer than you have been alive..and Gasland can't even find an example of one showing up in someone's house with the resulting wild video that would have entailed....nope....60+ years and 1.2 million of these things and bubcuss......

Sure...reserve your comment for the 22nd century, maybe by the time 3 million of the things have been done one...somewhere...might show up the way the reservoir ignorant continue to hope and pray for....

 

[warf]

Living in the largest off-grid community in Northern California It's clear to me that most of the anti-solar rhetoric is based on fantasy.

It's not the ultimate solution. But it then there never was a one-way-does-it-all energy source.

In my neighborhood a couple thousand watts of PV and a decent battery bank give you all the electricity you need. Most of us have installed much less.

The more solar and wind power, the less fossil fuel we need to burn. Good for most. Bad for those who make their money drilling and fracking.

It's interesting the Germany has been able to shut down their nukes by shifting to solar and wind. Are they smarter than us?

 

[Old Rocks]

U.S. Residential Solar PV Installations Exceeded Commercial Installations for the First Time in Q1 2014 | SEIA

BOSTON, MA AND WASHINGTON, D.C. – Driven by strong year-over-year growth in the utility and residential markets, the United States installed 1,330 megawatts of solar photovoltaics (PV) in the first quarter of 2014. According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s (SEIA) Q1 2014 U.S. Solar Market Insight Report, the U.S. installed 232 megawatts of residential PV, exceeding the non-residential (commercial) market’s 225 megawatts for the first time in the history of the report.
Ongoing strength in the residential sector and volatility in the non-residential market spurred this historic milestone. Despite the dip in non-residential installations, GTM Research and SEIA expect the market to rebound and exceed the residential market in 2014 annual PV installations.
In another significant development, Q1 2014 was the largest quarter ever for concentrating solar power (CSP) due to the completion of the 392 megawatt (AC) Ivanpah project and the Genesis Solar project’s second 125 megawatt (AC) phase. With a total of 857 megawatts expected to be completed by year’s end, 2014 is on pace to be the largest year for CSP in history.

Seems there are a bunch of people out there that think that solar, both PV and CSP are good investments.