Essay by Eric Worrall
Solar concentrators hypothetically offer the ability to coast on stored renewable energy at night, but this doesn’t seems to work well in practice.
Concentrated solar power is an old technology making a comeback. Here’s how it works
ABC Science / By technology reporter James Purtill
Posted Thu 6 Apr 2023 at 5:30amThursday 6 Apr 2023 at 5:30am, updated Thu 6 Apr 2023 at 12:41pmThere was a time, not long ago, when the future of electricity generation looked something like the opening scene of Blade Runner 2049, with endless arrays of mirrors in concentric circles
Concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to focus heat from the Sun to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity.
While CSP was once the great hope for replacing coal and gas-fired generation, it’s now generally considered to have been eclipsed by cheaper forms of renewable generation, like solar panels and wind turbines.
Recently, however, it’s been making a quiet comeback.
The reason for this boils down to three words that describe one of the major challenges of decarbonising the grid: overnight energy storage.
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2023-04-06/concentrated-solar-power-technology-comeback-electricity-mirrors/102184372
Seems reasonable, so why isn’t everyone doing it?
One of the biggest downsides of solar concentrators, apart from the cost, is their habit of igniting protected birds. The following is a 2019 CBS report about the bird kills.
The issue appears to be the dazzling light of the focus of the solar concentrator, much brighter than the sun, attracts insects, just like an outdoor light at home. The insects are vaporised by the extreme heat of the air near the concentrator focus.
Birds are attracted by the concentration of insects near the concentrator focus, and follow the insects into the kill zone. Then larger birds follow the smaller birds.
People who work at solar concentrator facilities call the dying birds “streamers”, because they leave a smoke trail when they catch fire in mid flight.
If the industrial scale destruction of birds isn’t enough of a deterrent, there also appear to be substantial technical issues with the operation of solar concentrator plants. For example it is difficult on some days to maintain the temperature of the molten salt reservoir at the heart of the solar concentrator above its minimum operating temperature, so facilities generally have gas burners on standby, to top the heat up if the weather fails to oblige.
I’m sure public money will be spent on trying to pump this useless green energy idea. A track record of failure and environmental carnage is no deterrent to funding for green ideas.
“A track record of failure and environmental carnage” seems to be a prerequisite.
How do they know it’s working if it isn’t vaporizing wide swaths of wildlife.
Indeed, if they aren’t bulldozing the wilderness or mass murdering wildlife or poisoning farmland with toxic runoff, greens just aren’t interested.
The particular Solar Concentrator in the lead in photo is Ivanpah Solar on the Cal-Nev border just west of Primm. It covers 3500 acres (5.4 square miles) and requires almost 8 hours of Gas Heat to keep the salts molten. MS Solar MUST keep the salt molten or it stops moving and hardens
Streamers
Here’s a fly over video of Ivanpah. They can also by blinding from above if you fly too close
I think Richard Attenborough should be sent in to investigate!
That would be tricky….but perhaps Sir David could have a look…
Preferably a very, very close look, that would be smokin’
https://heartland.org/opinion/environmentalism-has-lost-its-way/
The birds isnt the only problem
‘The plant burns natural gas each morning to commence the operation. The Wall Street Journal reported, “Instead of ramping up the plant each day before sunrise by burning one hour’s worth of natural gas to generate steam, Ivanpah needs more than four times that much.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
The capital cost fell between that for a coal to nuclear plant without even considering the poor capacity factor , so its really economic dead end that couldnt even work -make that never could work- even in high sunshine high power demand California.
When all you have is lies all you can do is spew lies.
Anyone pushing this nonsense should be made to work in a coal mine.
Deep, deep underground.
I thought this technology died with the USA Obama Administration.
I missed the resurrection.
https://pvtimes.com/news/tonopah-solar-energy-files-for-bankruptcy-87661/
The Tonopah site went under but the Ivanpah site in CA is still running, but the cost was mind blowing
Quite a few concentrating solar power sites are still operational
https://solarpaces.nrel.gov/by-status/operational
Blythe CA is one it uses parabolic troughs just above each mirror instead of a central tower
Parabolic trough
The parabolic trough array at Kramer Junction (west of Barstow), was recently shut down and removed.
I live north of Kramer Junction and drive up and down I-395 (Highway of Death – another sorry Kali story). So, I’ve been going by this array since it started, usually heading south in the morning, north in the evening. Mornings were interesting, as the troughs are pointed at you. There is a bit of sunlight “leakage” making it past the fluid tubes, so it was a kind of moving brilliant star in the midst of a lot of very shiny reflective objects. As an optics guy, it was hard to keep my eyes on the road.
Off further into the complex were the gas fired stations where the trough fluid, or turbine working fluid, was boosted to an efficient temperature. From the steam plumes it was obvious the working fluid was cooled in total loss cooling towers.
Commissioned in 1989 (when I moved up here). A 30 year run, with ups and downs, I doubt the solar component was worth the trouble. One thing that occurred on the edges of the arrays was destruction of the glass troughs from wind turbulence.
From the link below
“SEGS III-VII consists of five 30-megawatt (MW) (150-megawatt net total) solar and natural gas fired units. Electricity produced from the project is sold to Southern California Edison.”
SEGS III – VII – Kramer Junction | California Energy Commission
Strange, but the climate front for-the-behind–the-curtain totalitarian putsch is the only industry that doesn’t do proof of concept trials and feasibility studies at pilot scale to uncover and resolve technical issues and obtain opex and capex so we know how a concept performs and what the costs are going to be.
They jump in and and experiment at full scale. When it doesn’t work they go for retrofitted work-around patches, some of which haven’t actually been developed yet! Imagine if they approached fusion energy full scale grids the same way starting in 1950! This is no different than what they are doing with renewables right now. I shuddered when I heard the UK ‘promise’ that in 10 years fusion backup would come available!
Theres well over 100 operational plants around the world. It doesnt make sense on a cost basis but the core techology does work
https://solarpaces.nrel.gov/by-status/operational
The core technology doesn’t “work” if you can’t afford it.
Lots of technologies that work – but are either a) too environmentally hazardous to use, or b) use more resources than will ever be recovered from them. Asbestos insulation is an example of the first – grid solar and wind are examples of both.
Case in point: the French so called “far right” (*) supports the hydrogen car!
(*) Allegedly French “far right”, but a lot of their talking points look like those of the French communist party of the 80ties, before they choose immigrants over workers
Forty years ago, an experimental concentrator was built in the Mojave as an experiment. Last time I passed it by on the highway, during summer peak availability, it was not operating, but California was experiencing rolling blackouts, as they have periodically for the entire forty years.
Perhaps just build a gas-fired power plant next door, then use the concentrator heat to make syngas from waste or other cheap feed stock, in order to augment the fuel supply. It wouldn’t pay, but you’d reduce the waste stream a bit and moderate the effects of swings in the fuel cost.
The problem with solar concentrators or magnifying glasses, as children call it, is much worse. They are supposed to have a plant factor close to 100% for keeping the salt hot overnight (600 C°), but that’s only in the twisted, well-paid green designer’s mind. For example, Ivanpah in the Mohave desert (the one in the video and the world’s largest with 392 MW inst. cap.), exhibited only a poor 19% before going bankrupt. In the Nevada desert (Crescent Dunes), another 110 MW magnifying glass also went bankrupt for showing, in its best year (2016), a very poor 13%. It seems that salt, like everything else on planet Earth, also gets cold at night. Another beauty? A run of river hydro power Chilean project was killed by communists because of global warming and replaced by a white elephant (magnifying glass) that cost, taking into account their respective plant factors, 25 times more by MW of installed capacity. Far more than a year after its inauguration, it still doesn’t send current anywhere.
Ivanpah in Mojave is still running. The Tonopah NV also called Crescent Dunes is the one that went bust
Agree, but one thing is bankruptcy and another is to close operations.
‘Close’ operations means bankruptcy as the massive loans cant be repaid from selling the power.
One only has to look at Crescent Dunes and see that it didn’t live up to the hype.;)
The left wing motto:
This time it will work.
Yeah.
With ME running the Socialism, it is bound to be an epic triumph!
They are out to disprove Einstein’s observation that –
“Doing the same thing over & over and expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity”.
Let’s face it, anyone who imagines that an increase in the concentration of a trace gas, essential to all life on Earth, from 0.03% to 0.04%, is a big deal, never mind an existential threat, is likely to be a sucker for any preposterous gimmick that comes along.
it can cause insanity- witness Al Gore almost screaming that the oceans are boiling
All carnival barkers adopt that style.
Fat Albert studied that rather than atmospheric physics because carnival barking doesn’t require basic numeracy proficiency.
Sure, these concentrators may be able to run a turbine for some of the night hours, but all need gas heating to get the steam generators up to boiling again before the sun gets up. Expensive, unreliable and environmentally objectionable.
Happy Easter everyone.
Here is sunny UK we are enjoying our usual variable weather, with the past couple of days being glorious sunshine after the soaking of the past week. No one with any awareness of physics, reality and weather would ever consider building a large solar energy supply facility here in the UK at roughly 52 deg. North latitude.
That basic truth however, does not stop state agents gifting large grants to farmers to carpet over some of the finest agricultural land in the world, with solar panels. The Green Climate Alarmists will suggest/claim only low grade redundant land is being used to increase solar energy in the UK. That is flat wrong, as I am aware of several high grade farmland projects that are advancing, simply because there is more grant money available to build a solar array than there is to grow food.
When farmers in Devon, famous for its dairy industry are ceasing milk production and carpeting their fields with solar arrays, we can see we have a serious misuse of Tax Payer’s money.
As far as I know we don’t have a solar concentrator project yet, (for obvious reasons) but don’t rule such madness out.
I will keep you posted.
The Connecticut Valley in western New England is also very good farmland that once grew tobacco- now it’s popping up solar “farms” like mushrooms.
for some reason, my previous comment was moderated, then approved- just like it is- I can’t imagine what would have triggered it to be moderated
We have abundant supplies of concentrated solar. We call them coal, oil and gas.
And if thermal storage made economic sense it could be used by other power generators. They don’t for good reasons.
and wood- the wood that isn’t usable for higher value wood products- the wood that is the weeds in the managed forest that must be removed to grow high value wood products
and is exactly what happens when you apply the thermodynamics of the GHGE to something real and tangible down on the ground
(See what I did there: Put down that Donut & can of Coke and don’t ever pick them up again)
You can rely on government to back every failed idea going. After all, they don’t have to earn any money as they extort it from us in taxes.
If I could sponsor a national Australian prize for the best answer to t6his question, I would. But I no longer can. The question is,
“Regarding Prime Minister Albanese, what is the single, most influential question that you can devise to stop him his tracks, the tracks that are leading to national economic harm via higher electricity prices?”
If you seek a supplementary question, it goes like the first but relates to his heavy pushing of a nebulous “Voice” concept from some aboriginal people and their keepers.
Geoff S
Hmmm, I voted “+” on a comment, but it didn’t register. I tried it again, and was told that I had already voted on the comment. Was this voting algorithm developed by Progressives?
Clearly your degree is not in software engineering 🙂
Five years ago “The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) has released a report outlining how concentrated solar thermal (CST) technology could be a commercially viable form of dispatchable renewable energy within a decade.” https://www.energymagazine.com.au/how-viable-is-concentrated-solar-thermal-technology/?utm_source=Energy+Magazine&utm_campaign=d4b4c49864-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_09_24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d27bc5c034-d4b4c49864-93698581&mc_cid=d4b4c49864&mc_eid=0622d8b5dc
Now I suppose the new GreenLabor Albanese Fed Gov will bring these previously failed technologies and grant-seeking hucksters out of the woodwork.
I have blogged how NSW is littered with failed CST projects –
Rival thermal solar power plants proposed for Port Augusta 11June2016
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=4530
Cooma, Jemalong, Cargelligo, White Cliffs are all CST sites
and ANU has tried for years with their Solar Thermal Group STG see photos of ANU mirrow array and collector here –
50MW Solar PV planned at Forbes NSW 2May2018
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=5773
If any readers are in Canberra the ANU installations were very visible from Parkes Way.
Easy to park or drive in to ANU and get some photos for us.
French energy engineering is good. (Used to be. It was too politicized.)
France tried solar (without the silly energy storage) in the 80ties: the Thémis plant in Pyrénées-Orientales, at 1650 m: ideal conditions, the best of the best at 42° 30′ 05″ N, 1° 58′ 27″ E
All you need to know is that the experiment was stopped under a socialist government. Completely useless!
Also, Europe electric energy need is mostly in winter!