Gigawatt base-load solar?

[depakid]

KERRY O'BRIEN: And tonight we bring you a story that promises to strengthen the claims by supporters of solar power - that with proper backing, it can become a viable alternative to coal-fired power; with news from the United States that two of America's biggest power utilities have unveiled plans for a multi-billion dollar expansion of solar power supply.

The company at the heart of their strategy is the one started by Australian solar expert Davíd Mills - the former Sydney University professor - who left this country for California earlier this year to pursue the further development of his ground-breaking work.

What makes the announcement more significant is that the utilities are confidently predicting that their solar power will soon be providing base-load electricity - that is, day and night - at prices competitive with coal.

Those associated with the project believe it could signal a paradigm shift in electricity generation.

---------------

Sunlight, on a clear day like this, strikes those mirrors and is gathered up onto the tower, and there's an absorber underneath that tower.

MATT PEACOCK: Out comes steam, ready to drive a conventional power turbine. This is on a small scale. Mills's and Khosla's new US company, Ausra, are now planning plants far bigger.

DAVID MILLS: Our first plant size, which is still small for us, but we have to start somewhere, is about a square mile in US terms, or more than two square kilometres in the terms used in Australia, and that would generate 175 megawatts. But really we want to aim for gigawatts style plants, and they're much bigger than that.

More: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2007/s2047734.htm

[greenman3610]

1. This is huge news

I know we read about solar "breakthroughs" every week,
but those usually deal with some new flavor of glamorous
photovoltaic material.
This is a way of using fairly straightforward engineering
principles, with the addition of a technique for
storing heat over many hours, to keep a solar
plant generating electricity through the 24 hour day.
If the 175 mw per square mile figure is correct, this
model could be a big player anywhere in the sunbelt,
out west, and maybe in some of the sunnier midwestern states.
The VC backers of this technology are experienced,
technically savvy people with track records, so
there is some credibility here.

Coupled with increase evidence that wind will
not be limited by the variability problem,
and we can begin to be more confident that
renewables can indeed handle the industrial
strength base load tasks of running the grid.

I recommend this video to everyone.

[haktar]

6. sorry, this is not "huge" news .-)

I did a rough calculation. Solar energy radiates about 1 gigawatt per square kilometer on average (Sorry, i'm european:-) ). With theoretical possible efficiency and sun elevation crossection you would get about 212 megawatt per square mile.
Without extensive calculations i would say 175 megawatts is a little bit high, but without any further calculation i would say a competitive solar power plant with an continuous output of 150 megawatt per square mile is definitely possible. (Ok this is a gut feeling, but like Scotty in Star Trek said - a good engineer is always a little bit conservative .-) )

But to disappoint you , this is not huge news, power plants like this could have been build in the 1980's in your southern states. While we here in Germany don't have the optimal environment to build plants like this, Africa does not have the infrastructure (power lines) to distribute the generated electricity, i've never understood why you in America abandoned the plans to build such plants after the Carter presidency.

[gtar100]

7. The Reagan conservatives abandonded it

Cut nearly all funding for alternative energies and hyped oil. Truly a sad part of our history. Selfishness and greed won the day. Lamentations for the stupid, stupid people who are permitted to rule us.

[greenman3610]

9. if they actually start building gigawatt

plants, with storage, and producing baseload
power, then it is indeed a watershed.
This plus compressed air storage at
wind sites to extend wind to 24/7 dispatchable
power will be a sea change in the way
people think about renewables.
The article says that major utilities have
been doing due diligence on this, one would
guess PG&E and perhaps Florida Light and Power, 2 of the
most active cutting edge utilities.

If they are not on the level, we'll know within
a few months as their projections fall flat,
but I think since the plans don't seem to require
any big breakthrough, that there is good promise here.

[diane in sf]

2. Really great video! Thank you!

[gateley]

3. This is exciting! I hope additional large power companies will pay attention

and hurry the process along. Thank you so much for posting this. Recommend!

[Canuckistanian]

4. About time they started thinking on a realistic scale

Even if this is an experimental endeavor, it should be used as an example for ALL the world.

A 1:1 replacement of coal with solar is a lofty goal, but one worth pursuing.

[NNadir]

5. Actually, if we could only capture the wind generated by hopeful solar announcements

of "just around the corner," we would really, really, really, really, really have something.

Abraham Lincoln one remarked that of all God's creatures, the hen is the wisest. She only cackles after she laid an egg.

Fifty years of this crap has not produced one exajoule. Not ONE.

[jpak]

12. Last year renewables produced 1.2 ex-o-jewels of energy...

and conservatively so...

74 GWe of wind turbine capacity = 0.70 EJ/y
8.9 GWe of geothermal capacity = 0.21 EJ/y
8.2 GWe of photovoltaics capacity = 003 EJ/y
2.2 GWe of solar thermal electric = 0.01 EJ/y
100+ GWt solar thermal capacity = 0.23 EJ/y

= 1.2 EJ/y

...and that does not include biomass/biogas heat and power

...and every single one of those categories is growing exponentially by serious double digits per year...

...and additions of new renewable energy capacity are beating the pants off of new nucular capacity...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.ph...

[roguevalley]

8. I want me some. :)

[razzleberry]

10. why does the US have to do everything?

while I'm not exactly sure what VITAL(lol) thing is being
discussed here, it is painfully obvious
that lazy ass Europeans are doing what they usually do, nothing.

[coyote]

11. Huh? Are you drunk?

What the hell does the article have anything to do with the Europeans? Solar power generation in the US = "lazy ass Europeans"....help me with your logic.

[Name removed]

13. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[haktar]

15. What are you doing personally ?

Although i can't read reply 13 because its already deleted, i assume it's from you, razzleberry.
Also i assume the lazy ass European you were talking about is me.

So let's make this clear.
Ok, our government is nearly as bad as yours (emphasis at nearly)
And - I personally am not innocent. i personally developed software and hardware for high frequency inverters for Siemens, modulation and magnetic bearing for Seiko Seiki and Leybold vacuum. (Does a Centrifuge cascade to enrich Uranium ring a bell ?)

Nevertheless, your phony number 1 finger is a thing of the past. Nowadays you have neither moral nor
technological superiority !

When i recognized my devices were used in India additional to Intel's and AMD's waver production (Never Sold, but spare parts ordering from an American company with delivery address in India) i quit !
And nowadays, self employed, While i still do Software development for as an example for gkn (http://www.gkn.de - nuclear power plants) at market prices, i do the software development for example for http://www.solutronik.de/index.php at a third of the usual rate and below my own expenses.

So, if you call me a lazy ass European, kraut, hun or nazi, i don't care, i still have a better understanding of the environmental challenges that lay ahead of us.

on edit - typo

[phantom power]

14. What's going to store all that heat energy?

Or is that one of those "confident predictions?"

[depakid]

16. Dr. Mills is a pretty serious guy

as Haktar alludes to above, he's been working on solar thermal solutions for 30+ years- the goal being to eliminate coal use in Australia.

Here's a short technical paper that discusses key concepts and applications:

http://www.ausra.com/pdfs/T_1_1_David_Mills_2049.pdf

Here's his curricula vitae:

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~mills/cv.pdf

Let the engineers have at it!

[phantom power]

17. Thanks, I'll keep that. A couple observations...

I see that this guy also seems to adhere to the Zen "baseload demand is an illusion" philosophy, which still seems like rhetorical tap-dancing to me.

Although it is often said that “solar cannot produce base
load electricity”, it should now be recognized that base load
is what coal and nuclear technologies produce, not what is
required by society.

It's refreshing to hear a renewables advocate admit that intermittancy doesn't disappear by vigorous hand-waving about "storage:" I assume the pain of admitting that was lessened by his use of four weasel-phrases in a single sentence ("possible" "rare" "could" "very occasionally")

It is possible that a rare long-lasting cloud event could cause
a state-wide shut down of generation very occasionally. A
nationwide HVDC grid system would alleviate the impact
of such regional difficulties. Prices could also be determined
to rise during extreme cloud events to discourage demand.
However, once one realizes that fossil fuel usage must be
restricted to very low levels by 2050, it may also be possible
to allocate any vestigial fossil fuel “budget” to the very
infrequent emergency heating of STE storage systems, using
the existing gas grid or oil storage tanks. If fossil fuels
become totally banned, biogas or biodiesel could be
stockpiled for this purpose.

I tried to drill down on his reference about what they're actually intending for "storage." The closest I got was this site:

http://www.ausra.com/

It's something to do with water. Not exactly brimming with detail. And as of this year, he's still talking about "expected to be commercialized within two years" So we are still in the realm of confident predictions about how well it will work in the future. At the risk of seeming like a dick, I will once again point out that I've been reading confident predictions like this I was a wee lad in the 1970s.

But anyway, they can prove me wrong by making it work, as ever.

[Nihil]

18. Yeah ...

> I see that this guy also seems to adhere to the Zen "baseload demand is an
> illusion" philosophy, which still seems like rhetorical tap-dancing to me.
>
>> Although it is often said that “solar cannot produce base
>> load electricity”, it should now be recognized that base load
>> is what coal and nuclear technologies produce, not what is
>> required by society.

It's about at this point where the temptation to snark becomes too great
isn't it?

As you say, JFDI ... specifically at real-world scale not small hamlet-sized
overpriced "proof of concept" sites ...