Ivanpah Solar Plant Already Irrelevent - Business Insider
If solar thermal sounds unnecessarily complicated, you're right. Solar photovoltaic has seen explosive growth in the past few years thanks to plummeting material costs, state incentives, and eco-conscious homebuyers putting up panels on their roofs. But solar thermal growth has stalled, and is expected to continue to do so. Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion. Warren Buffett paid the same amount for the world's largest photovoltaic plant just up the road outside Bakersfield. That plant will generate 1.5-times as much power as Ivanpah.
As the New York Times' Diane Cardwell and Matt Wald wrote Friday, Ivanpah probably represents an end, not a beginning.
"When BrightSource and other companies asked [investor] NRG to invest in a second thermal project, said David Crane, NRGs chief, he responded: 'Weve got $300 million invested in Ivanpah let me see that work for a few months and then well decide whether we want to be involved in more.' "
And here's what Lux Energy analyst Matthew Feinstein told them:
I dont think that were going to see large-scale solar thermal plants popping up, five at a time, every year in the U.S. in the long-term its just not the way its going to work... Companies that are supplying these systems have questionable futures. Theres other prospects for renewables and for solar that look a lot better than this particular solution.
It's not that Ivanpah itself won't be cost-effective. BrightSource locked in a 20-year power purchase agreement with local utilities that includes fixed pricing, and
the vast majority of costs were borne up front, according to Shayle Kann, director of GTM Research.
That means the Energy Department, which lent the project $1.6 billion, and Google, which put up $168 million, will likely see a decent return.
"So it's not so much an issue for Ivanpah as it is for any future solar thermal project," he told us in an email.
But it's a sign of how fast renewable energy technology is moving these days.
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Ivanpah will continue to generate electricity using a tiny fraction of the natural gas that a fully gas-fired plant of the same capacity would produce. Given the 20 year pricing arrangement, it will not lose any money for its investors and there will be no cost surprises for its customers. But, as this article and many others note, PV has surpassed solar thermal in cost/kwh and, for the moment, is the future. We're going to see more and more and more rooftop PV installations. The world is moving towards renewable, non-polluting, zero carbon footprint, alternative energy solutions. The era of the unfettered growth of fossil fuel consumption is at an end.
How well Ivanpah or photovoltaics or any other energy supply works is completely immaterial to the truth of the assertion that human GHG emissions and deforestation are the primary cause of the warming the planet has experienced over the last 150 years. That warming presents a complex set of threats to human infrastructure, drinking water supplies and crop productivity. We need to act dramatically to reduce those emission and we need to act now.
Only if you read JUST the OP's link. Try reading some of the links that Elektra and polarbear provided. I understand that facts make your brain hurt but if you actually want to know what's happening you must read alternate sources.
