Guest skewering by David Middleton
From Inside Climate News…
24-Hour Solar Energy: Molten Salt Makes It Possible, and Prices Are Falling Fast
Molten salt storage in concentrated solar power plants could meet the electricity-on-demand role of coal and gas, allowing more old, fossil fuel plants to retire.
JAN 16, 2018
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The first thing you see of the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility, and you can be miles away, is a light so bright you can’t look directly at it. This sits atop a 640-foot cement tower, rising from the flat, empty Nevada desert around the halfway point on the highway from Reno to Las Vegas. The tower’s surrounded by a nearly two-mile-wide field of mirrors that send shimmering beams of light into the sky.
[…]
What people are actually seeing is a 110-megawatt concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, built and operated by SolarReserve of Santa Monica, California. It’s not from outer space, but there’s not yet anything quite like it of this size anywhere else on the planet.
SolarReserve is trying to prove that the technology that drives Crescent Dunes can make solar power an affordable, carbon-free, day-and-night energy source, dispatched on the electric grid like any fossil fuel plant. Here, concentrated sunlight heats molten salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit in that shimmering tower; then the salt gets stored in a giant insulated tank and can be tapped to make steam to run a turbine.
[…]
If this plant and several similar facilities under construction, or soon to be, prove reliable, the technology is poised to take off. Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels can displace fossil fuels during the day, and wind turbines can do the same as long as it’s windy. But molten salt towers may be able to meet the challenge of electricity on demand, and push more older, dirtier fossil-fuel plants into retirement.
[…]
If molten salt was making 24-hour solar energy possible… It would be making it happen at least once-in-a-while. If the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Facility is supposed to be an example of 24-hour molten salt solar power, it’s not a very good one.
The best month in Crescent Dunes short history was September 2016, when it averaged 9.2 hours of electricity per day.
| Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration | |||
| Series ID: ELEC.PLANT.GEN.57275-SUN-ALL.M megawatthours | |||
| Month | MWh | Capacity Factor | Hrs/d of Electricity |
| Oct-15 | 1,703 | 2% | 0.5 |
| Nov-15 | 1,831 | 2% | 0.6 |
| Dec-15 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Jan-16 | 1,508 | 2% | 0.4 |
| Feb-16 | 9,121 | 12% | 2.9 |
| Mar-16 | 7,099 | 9% | 2.1 |
| Apr-16 | 2,158 | 3% | 0.7 |
| May-16 | 11,485 | 14% | 3.4 |
| Jun-16 | 6,216 | 8% | 1.9 |
| Jul-16 | 25,560 | 31% | 7.5 |
| Aug-16 | 28,267 | 35% | 8.3 |
| Sep-16 | 30,514 | 39% | 9.2 |
| Oct-16 | 5,410 | 7% | 1.6 |
| Nov-16 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Dec-16 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Jan-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Feb-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Mar-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Apr-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| May-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Jun-17 | – | 0% | 0.0 |
| Jul-17 | 9,420 | 12% | 2.8 |
| Aug-17 | 9,192 | 11% | 2.7 |
| Sep-17 | 13,666 | 17% | 4.1 |
| Oct-17 | 9,263 | 11% | 2.7 |
Dandy Don Meredith had “canard” for this as well…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CtGxusvUT3k
From October 2015 through October 2017, Crescent Dunes generated 172,413 MWh of electricity. $737,000,000 divided by 172,413 MWh equals $4,274 per MWh… $4.27/kWh.
“Crescent Dunes is expected to generate 482,000 megawatt-hours of clean energy per year“… 100% output of 110 MW is 966,240 MWh/yr. They only expected a 50% capacity factor with the fracking molten salt storage.
Inside Climate News needs to edit their headline…
24-Hour 12-Hour Solar Energy: Molten Salt Makes It Possible
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I don’t know about the characteristics of molten salt => solid (if it freezes solid like ice or goes through a molasses like stage) but if you get a plug of sorts anywhere in the circulatory loop you’ve got a major issue. Block/restrict the flow and there will be overheating at the heat source. Possible that a tank would experience pressure build-up/over pressurization due to flow restriction at/approaching pump intake. Any engineer/designer not considering issues at low pressure side of pump is an idiot! A bigger idiot if not considering entire loop. Someone please tell me this has not happened on a billion $$ project.
$737 million for 110 MW CSP plant = $6.70/watt capacity
Solar PV is $1 to $2/watt
If you want expensive power and you hate birds, CSP is the answer
Conspiracy theorists say CSP was invented by bird haters because wind turbines aren’t killing enough birds
David said total cost is $975 million. That’s $8.86/watt capacity. You must really hate birds to pay that price
In my opinion, CSP is a Ponzi scheme built to fleece the ignorant sheep that don’t understand one iota of economics and fall for every wolf wrapped in solar panels and/or smoke and mirrors.
Don’t underestimate the greed of the globalists envirofascists. There’s a sheep born every minute to be fleeced by them.
It all boils down (no pun intended) to another failed attempt to replace fossil fuel with so called “renewable” energy. The people are being lied to, plain and simple. It’s not that nobody wants renewable energy. … fossil fuels are renewable by definition. ….. it is obvious to anyone that technology isn’t capable of providing a suitable fossil fuel replacement without utilizing nuclear power today. The alternative to do without is not acceptable.
Why do they lie? If it was a 110mw plant, it would produce 2640 mwhr per day but it does not. So many scientists here cannot simply say that it does not work.
Nobody in Vegas cares about the thermal efficiency of salt, they just want their air conditioning to work.
No, you’ve got that wrong, Grey – but in a “friendly sort of way”.
All power plants have “capacity factors”. For instance, its very commonly above 95% for most nuclear power plants in America. Meaning that a plant with a “nameplate power intensity” of 1,000 MW will produce that or close to it 24 hours a day, 95% of the year. This is – now explained in this way – probably obvious.
A PV operation, having no other means ot produce electricity (say) is 100% dependent on the Sun. The Sun in turn is variable every day, rising at a low angle in the East and setting in a low angle in the West. Further as the seasons go, the Sun’s relative position in the sky may range in a huge 15+ hour a day arc in the Summer, and a shallow 9 hour arc in the Winter. This again, explained this way, I’m certain is obvious.
What’s not so obvious is that the “capacity factor” of sunlight, averaged out over the year, and taking into account the “interference of the atmosphere itself” limits the yearly capacity factor of a solar photovoltaic plant to about 25% to 27% in the central stripe of North America. (Say latitude 32 to latitude 40).
The nameplate energy intensity of a PV or concentrated-solar-power (mirror) power plant may be STATED as “110 megawatts”. But realistically, the total power generated per average solar day, over the year is 25% to 27% of 24 hours times 110 megawatts. Kind of sad, isn’t it? But given the definition of capacity factor, it is entirely consistent-in-use with how its used on nuclear, coal, gas, geothermal and oil fueld power sources.
See? It should be clearer.
GoatGuy
The point I was making that all plants are rated in hourly capacity. a 100mw plant produces that and for 24 hours. Yes annual capacity is lower due to maintenance etc.
Calling it a 110 mw plant is thus a fraud from the outset.
Nonsense. A 1200 Mwatt power plant is out for maintenance every 1-1/2 to two years for a single planned outage of 30-45 days for refueling. 60 days if you’re going to replace the entire generator core and rotor – a twelve year to 24 year need, if at all. A smaller 275 to 650 Mwatt GT power plant is down for rotating outages (hot gas inspection of 18-24 days or major inspection of 24-30 days) every 24 months. Those are planned – the rest of the time the plant is available for 100% power every day.
Solar can deliver rated power for no more than 6 hours a day year-long average, wind turbines historically have a 17-22 percent load availability.
Grey, it may well be ‘fraud Lite’ to call a 110 MW nameplate factor solar plant 110 MW, but unfortunately it is the industry standard to which all plants so far built – whether WIND derived, SOLAR, geothermal, nuclear, natural gas, bunker oil or coal fired … have adhered to. One doesn’t get to pick the naming standard just because the Capacity Factor is fraudulently low for anything solar. It doesn’t work that way.
For the longest time, I actually railed against just such misleading naming. However, as I’ve “smarted up” in the last 25 years, I’ve found it better to have the misleading nameplate specific power rating, then also know the idiosyncrasies of the solar diurnal (daily) and seasonal (earth tilt) cycles. And use the 0.25 to 0.27 factor in keeping with solar’s actual, on the ground cap factor. You just need to “remember the cap factor” to get the right output results.
So … peace brother.
We agree.
But I’ve moved on.
GoatGuy
GoatGuy you keep making reference to PV plants, which this plant is not. This plant turns solar energy into heat in the salt and then turns heat in the salt into electricity, but not immediately. The nameplate capacity is the steam plant that generates electricity using the heat in the salt. This capacity does not have a fixed relationship to the rate at which the sun can heat the salt. So one could have a small steam plant that runs 24 hours a day or a large one that runs intermittently, the total amount of energy captured from the sun has to equal the electricity plus losses but it is entirely up to the designer what size steam plant he installs, and hence the capacity factor.
Since demand is variable we do not want 100% capacity 24 hours a day, one of the problems with nuclear plants is that they are difficult to throttle back. Note that many hydro plants average a quarter of their nameplate capacity because that is wanted to match supply and demand. In this case the designers have opted for 50% average capacity, i.e. the heat in a typical day is enough to run the steam plant at full power for half the time, or part power for longer.
The key thing about this design is that it produces dispatchable power, it is 110 MW when it is wanted not when the sun is shining.
Granted this plant is not working as it is meant to but that is another issue.
It takes too long to build a solar thermal plant.
Sorry that is one of the BS arguments anti-nukes use.
Over the years I have read a lot of interesting papers on solar thermal plants. There are some interesting challenges that us steam plant engineers have yet to solve.
What is important is not how long it takes to build but how long it last and how well it runs. In other words how much power is produced after the money to build it is spent.
Starting a new nuke up required lots of problem solving, it was rewarding work. Ultimately it is about succeeding not the number of failures.
South Korea has gotten very good at building nukes. They built a 1000+ MWe nuke in about the same time as this 110 MWe solar plant. After testing and commissioning, the plant ran to the first fuel cycle without shutting down.
Goat, Dont you think that there is a little bit of difference between 95% over a year and 30% over a day. Therein lies the fraud.
South Australia will see your 110MW solar system and raise you a 150MW system, also built by Solar Reserve. See:
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/business/solarreserves-650m-port-augusta-solar-plant-receives-development-approval/news-story/843d4965373e1067d47eb154b8496222
Of course, our politicians are bragging about having the ‘World’s largest’ without explaining the detail described in this blog entry.
We now have ‘the world’s largest battery’, will soon have ‘the world’s largest molten salt solar tower’ but hear nothing from the same pollies about the world’s highest electricity costs. They are keen to tell us that all of these disparate, intermittent sources will have a downward effect on power prices.
We even have several diesel-powered generators standing by for our illustrious ‘energy’ minister to turn on when he feels we may be short of power.
The fool that calls them a drongo is no idiot.
Just when has any of these fancy projects worked? NEVER is the answer.
And by ‘worked’ I mean supplied a substantial amount of benefit to the population at a price that is no more expensive than is currently charged. Progress is all about getting more bang for your buck, all else is BS.
Science may say it’ll work but real world engineering say it BS.
It’s about time people got wise, don’t ask a scientists about practical matters, ask the engineers before wasting other peoples money.
While were at it don’t ask scientists about politics, or social policy, monetary policy, art, engineering, or anything else that your money is riding on; ask scientists for their ADVICE about science matters, that is their specialty.
What did they expect with post-modern scientific method? Nobody thought of the cooling salt, did they. Let me rephrase that: Someone probably DID, but they were shouted down for being a denier, and for not giving a flawed “opinion” a “chance”. How else could they have overlooked that little detail?
So, its really a 35 MW plant that cost one billion dollars. A gas plant would cost 30 million, be built in a fraction of the time, requiring a fraction of the space, operate 24/7, little maintenance.
Who is kidding who?
Projects like this can fail. It’s innovative, but maybe it didn’t work. Why is there so much venom towards alt-energy in the skeptical community? I really don’t get it. As an AGW skeptic, I LOVE science. I love that humans try to do things like this. And they fail, and fail again. But eventually, something great happens.
Sad from the hating – color me an ashamed skeptic.
It’s called “economics,” not “venom.”
Because not only did it (this particular scheme of renewable energy) not work, but no other renewable energy have succeeded in doing ANYTHING except paying off the donors to politicians who forced the taxpayers to sponsor and subsidize these renewable energy schemes. A near-continuous waste of taxpayer resources of cash, land, energy, and effort: All going to the men and woman who donate to the politicians, and the groups who have accepted the CAGW religion of “faith” that these schemes can actually “power the world” . But the energy and enthusiasm in the academic community and news media abounds! Yet the lies and the real world problems behind the enthusiasm are deliberately ignored, until like Solyndra and Tesla and these massive desert-destroying monstrosities they fail in rusted piles of metal and glass that realists have to spend more money on removing and cleaning up.
Putting it simply, it does not work, billion dollars down the drain.