Ivanpah, will cost about $19/W of average power delivered (data from their presentation below)
http://www.ecc-conference.org/past-conferences/2012/BrightSource_ECC_Presentation_combined.pdf.
Nameplate capacity = 370 MW.
Expected average energy generation per year = 1,000,000 MWh.
This means average power output is 114 MW (about 1/10th of a new nuclear plant).
Capacity factor is 31%.
Cost = US $2.2 billion = $19/Watt average power delivered.
This is around 3x the cost of some recent nuclear power plant builds that most environmentalists have accused of being prohibitively expensive.
The heliostats used in the project weigh in at 30,000 tonnes. That’s 262 tons of heliostats per MW electric average. That’s just for the heliostats, not even the foundations, not to mention the tower and power block.
The power plant area that had to be bulldozed over is 20x larger than a nuclear reactor of equivalent average (real) capacity.
Lastly, nuclear is safer than any other electricity generation technology, including wind and solar:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/06/deaths-by-energy-source-in-forbes.html
That’s a huge waste of money. All that money we are wasting damages our economy, people’s standard of living and people’s wellbeing.
