"If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert...

[MaNuMaNiAc]

How efficient is it?

I don't know much about molten salts, but solar power is already rather inefficient. When you start adding storage systems that will have losses, what does that do to the bottom line?

pfff...

now Cobra wants to have a go, this should be fun

[MannyIsGod]

Its my understanding that Solar on homes here would be feasible but CPS wants you to carry outrageous insurance if you have a set up at home that connects to their grid. I know that when I was in NM this past fall a large percentage of the homes I visited had large solar panels on their roofs. Now, I'm sure NM sees a larger amount of sunshine than San Antonio but I'm quite certain San Antonio also receives a serviceable amount. There needs to be a way to drive down those insurance costs so that people can actually begin to do this. Once you achieve a large enough amount of subscribers who are using this technology on their homes the cost of insurance will of course come down a large amount and either CPS can manage it or there can be some other form of risk management.

[RandomGuy]

Its my understanding that Solar on homes here would be feasible but CPS wants you to carry outrageous insurance if you have a set up at home that connects to their grid. I know that when I was in NM this past fall a large percentage of the homes I visited had large solar panels on their roofs. Now, I'm sure NM sees a larger amount of sunshine than San Antonio but I'm quite certain San Antonio also receives a serviceable amount. There needs to be a way to drive down those insurance costs so that people can actually begin to do this. Once you achieve a large enough amount of subscribers who are using this technology on their homes the cost of insurance will of course come down a large amount and either CPS can manage it or there can be some other form of risk management.

Hmm. You are correct that a larger policyholder base means lower overall costs per policyholdier.

I would also be willing to bet that because of a lack of overall experience with this kind of risk, the insurance companies are tending to ask for a bit higher premium than is really necessary to cover larger reserves for losses.

Insurance companies (real ones not hedge funds like the financial arm of AIG), tend to be conservative and conservatism, when it comes to risks, means setting aside more money as reserves than is probably warranted, leading to higher premiums.

Over time and with more data to help measure actual risk, premiums will probably come down for the insurance, if that is a barrier.

The best way to drive down the costs for this is through (gasp) some kind of subsidy (tax breaks, rebates etc) that can be phased out as costs fall.

[coyotes_geek]

Its my understanding that Solar on homes here would be feasible but CPS wants you to carry outrageous insurance if you have a set up at home that connects to their grid. I know that when I was in NM this past fall a large percentage of the homes I visited had large solar panels on their roofs. Now, I'm sure NM sees a larger amount of sunshine than San Antonio but I'm quite certain San Antonio also receives a serviceable amount. There needs to be a way to drive down those insurance costs so that people can actually begin to do this. Once you achieve a large enough amount of subscribers who are using this technology on their homes the cost of insurance will of course come down a large amount and either CPS can manage it or there can be some other form of risk management.

Interesting bit about the insurance. I'm in Austin and was about to put a 3kw solar array on my roof, but held off once the economy went to . Anyways, Austin energy didn't require any special insurance, at least not that I was aware of. AE does offer up a significant rebate though and the terms of being eligible for that rebate involves getting an inspection by AE and using one of their certified installers. Seems like something CPS could do easy enough though.

[RandomGuy]

Some of you have already seen this bit before, but it should be repeated here:

*Energy is going to get more expensive.
This will happen with or without any government intervention.

*Mankind uses energies from a variety of sources.
The exact % of any given source of energy depends on a lot of factors, and the marginal cost (the cost of the last/next) unit of energy is a large part of that. The RELATIVE costs of each source when compared to alternatives matters a great deal.

*Our current energy mix uses a LOT of energy from oil.
Note that when I say "energy" I mean it in the sense of physics, not "electricity". Work energy to move a car is essentially the same as electricity in this sense.

*Oil will get more expensive in rather short order.
This will make energy OVERALL more expensive, as demand starts shifting to alternatives. The cost of energy is a weighted average, and as one of the primary components moves up, so will the weighted average.

*Once oil becomes RELATIVELY more expensive, that means that other forms of energy, including nuclear, coal, solar, natural gas, and wind, etc, will become RELATIVELY cheaper.

*As demand for oil energy shifts to alternatives, other fuel costs WILL rise

*Resource extraction is energy intensive.
Think about coal mining. You dig up tons and tons and tons of rocks, transport those rocks to where they are used, and spend a lot of energy cleaning up the pollution in one way or another. Those billion-dollar oil platforms don't get built without using, you guessed it, large amounts of energy.

*If your sources of energy don't require fuel, like renewables, as fuel costs increase, your source of energy becomes RELATIVELY even cheaper.

All of this will happen through simple market mechanisms.

Knowing this WILL happen gives any country that can antipate this, and act on this information, an advantage over those who don't do anything.

*Not only will this be an advantage, it will be a LONG lasting advantage.If you are a country that, say, is locking yourself into coal now by building 1 or 2 new coal plants per week, you are committing yourself for 20-30 years to getting energy from those coal plants as they work their way through their useful lives.

Lastly:

*Energy jobs can't really be outsourced unless you have a massive global power grid.
Think about THAT for a second.

We have an opportunity to get out in FRONT of what the market will do anyway, and by that action, secure our long-term economic success, while at the SAME time reducing our security vulnerability to disruptions of all sorts from the foreign sources of energy.

[DarrinS]

Is our power grid vulnerable to a space storm?


Scary .


http://www.newscientist.com/article/...html?full=true

[RandomGuy]

Is our power grid vulnerable to a space storm?


Scary .


http://www.newscientist.com/article/...html?full=true

Yes. Solar flares are a huge worry for power grids.

Yet another advantage for distributed power generation schemes.

[Wild Cobra]

Yes. Solar flares are a huge worry for power grids.

Yet another advantage for distributed power generation schemes.

I'm all for distributed systems. Count me in. If California doesn't want to build power plants in their back yard, then I say them!

[Don Quixote]

Green on green violence brewing in California.

I would pay cash money to see that. It's only a matter of time anyway.

[Ignignokt]

I don't sneer at someone who disagrees with me. I sneer at someone who plays the "expert" card, like you did with ballijuana. "Oh I know more about this than you do, let me throw around some technical jargon." You can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, so you baffle 'em with bull . And you thought it would shut everybody up. Oh, how smug you were.

So it turns out there is somebody who actually knows what he is talking about, who could call you out on it, and now that the shoe is on the other foot, you don't like it so much.

You got exposed as a fraud.

And it's so typically Republican too. You don't actually know jack about anything, but you figure you can throw out enough smart-sounding BS to trick the average layman. They do it with economics, foreign relations, social issues, what have you.

And you won't quit either. Just like Republicans won't stop with their vapid talking points, you'll go on making it sound like a relatively common industrial process being applied in a new way is 'Mount Everest.' Except, unlike Republicans, you're not lying as a means to an end. You're lying simply because you're too narcissistic to back down.

ON point.

Let me also add that i knew about a straned polar bear starving while arguing against tax cuts for the rich, while bloggin about No war for oil on Israeltargetscivilians.com, under the screen name Republican_Dereg_did_it!!, All while she the polar bear had to result in eating her own cub yelling at the world "It's my body, It's my Choice", Nuance burger!

[LockBeard]

Extra Stout LOL

What a ing joke homeboy. It is almost every liberal idea that throws around bull yet has no common sense as foundation.

I hope the Polar Bears outlast Liberals on the endangered species list.

[Ignignokt]

I once caught myself arguing with a fellow about how the basic philosophy behind the cons uion being that the Government is seen as more as a negative force rather than a positive force, and that's why the cons uion is more about what the congress can't do rather than what it should do. Yet, while i was going further into this subject i remembered what the great Extra Stout said, and i stopped myself.

I just didn't want to use technical jargon while proseltyzing with right wing talking points. Golly cons ution! You should have been more *gasp* Nuanced!

[RandomGuy]

This is not a trait that is exclusive to Republicans ES and you know it.

If I had a dime for everytime some Republican has told me that I don't know anything about economics...

Exclusive no?

Highly prevalent? , yes.

[RandomGuy]

Extra Stout LOL

What a ing joke homeboy. It is almost every liberal idea that throws around bull yet has no common sense as foundation.

I hope the Polar Bears outlast Liberals on the endangered species list.

You might be more believable when talking about "liberal ideas" if you could tell the difference between a "liberal" idea and a "conservative" idea, or for that matter had any ideas at all.

I've seen little from you other than poop-flinging posts like this.

Fling some poop, and run away. Fling some poop, and run away.

That seems to pass for genius level thinking in the "right-wing" these days.

It is why you lost the last couple of elections, and don't look on track to do much better in the next one either.

[RandomGuy]

What is molten salt?
Molten salt, which is used as a heat storage medium in the SolarReserve power plant, is an entirely and environmentally friendly mixture of sodium and potassium nitrate. If fact, in solid form, it is traditionally used as garden fertilizer.

http://www.solar-reserve.com/FAQS.html

FWIW

Basically, they use everyday fertilizer as a heat storage medium.

Also, their analysis of the future of energy mirrors (HA!) mine:

Does electricity from SolarReserve cost more than electricity from traditional sources such as natural gas and coal?

At full scale, we anticipate our power prices to be compe ive with modern fossil fuel-based generation facilities. And as the costs of fossil fuels rise, as most forecasts predict, electricity from these sources will rise accordingly.

SolarReserve, which fuels its plant from free sunlight, will not be affected by fossil fuel prices, and therefore will produce comparatively cheaper electricity in the future.

I would start looking for ways to invest in this company, currently financed primarily by a specialized venture capital fund that invests in renewables.

[Indazone]

2 square miles of solar concentrators is ridiculous. Have you even thought about how big that would be? If you walked around the perimeter it would be a total of 8 miles. That's frigging huge!! There are better alternatives to that. It has always been the desire of utilities to meter and sell electricity. You can't do that if everyone has a panel on their house.

[Wild Cobra]

I would start looking for ways to invest in this company, currently financed primarily by a specialized venture capital fund that invests in renewables.

Maybe. Consider this statement:

At full scale, we anticipate our power prices to be compe ive with modern fossil fuel-based generation facilities. And as the costs of fossil fuels rise, as most forecasts predict, electricity from these sources will rise accordingly.

OK, now my question is, when is this statement valid? Would it only be valid when oil prices were above $200 per barrel?

As I look more at the salt idea, I like it, but I have the above concern, plus the concern that often things cost twice as much or more than we are originally told.

[boutons_]

The costs of coal-fired electricity and natural gas are badly understated, huge propaganda wins for the Big Dirty Coal and Big Fart.

Solar thermal has the huge advantage of storing energy for no-solar hours more cheaply than solar voltaic.

[RandomGuy]

2 square miles of solar concentrators is ridiculous. Have you even thought about how big that would be? If you walked around the perimeter it would be a total of 8 miles. That's frigging huge!! There are better alternatives to that. It has always been the desire of utilities to meter and sell electricity. You can't do that if everyone has a panel on their house.

1 + You = FAIL.

Square root of 2 is 1.41

1.41 + 1.41 +1.41 + 1.41 = 5.65 = perimeter of a square with an area of 2 square miles.

Distributed power is a good thing, and I am all for photovoltaic, but power plants like this benefit from economies of scale that allow for power to be produced on a cheaper, per unit cost.

Large users of electricity with a LOT of roof area would benefit most economically from photovoltaic, but distributed photovoltaic on every house is fairly impractical simply due to expense.

It may be worth the extra expense in some case to people who derive satisfaction from not buying power, and would eventually pay for itself, but even then the utility-scale power plants will ALWAYS provide cheaper power.

It's a micro-economics thing.

Besides, conventional power plants that utilize coal/etc take up a good chunk of land today. Such plants wouldn't be that much larger to my understanding.

[RandomGuy]

The costs of coal-fired electricity and natural gas are badly understated,

Yes they are.

I am a firm believer in forcing almost all costs of pollution onto the coal and gas producers and users.

As it stands today they get to pollute and keep their costs lower, while forcing the costs of that pollution on the rest of us anyways.

I would prefer not to subsidize them with our water and air.

[Indazone]

1 + You = FAIL.

Square root of 2 is 1.41

1.41 + 1.41 +1.41 + 1.41 = 5.65 = perimeter of a square with an area of 2 square miles.

Distributed power is a good thing, and I am all for photovoltaic, but power plants like this benefit from economies of scale that allow for power to be produced on a cheaper, per unit cost.

Large users of electricity with a LOT of roof area would benefit most economically from photovoltaic, but distributed photovoltaic on every house is fairly impractical simply due to expense.

It may be worth the extra expense in some case to people who derive satisfaction from not buying power, and would eventually pay for itself, but even then the utility-scale power plants will ALWAYS provide cheaper power.

It's a micro-economics thing.

Besides, conventional power plants that utilize coal/etc take up a good chunk of land today. Such plants wouldn't be that much larger to my understanding.

Depends if you're talking about miles squared or square miles. Whatever - It's still huge and that was my original point. Feinstein is right. Besides the technology you're talking about is crap. The best solar panels right now can generate 3 kw. There are better in Europe. The US is so far behind it's ridiculous.

[RandomGuy]

Depends if you're talking about miles squared or square miles. Whatever - It's still huge and that was my original point. Feinstein is right. Besides the technology you're talking about is crap. The best solar panels right now can generate 3 kw. There are better in Europe. The US is so far behind it's ridiculous.

um, you realize the topic was thermal solar, and not photovoltaic solar, right?

Even more specifically, it was about concentrating thermal solar, as opposed to trough thermal solar.

Respectfully:

You might want to read up a bit on the last few pages to catch up.

[Wild Cobra]

1 + You = FAIL.

Square root of 2 is 1.41

1.41 + 1.41 +1.41 + 1.41 = 5.65 = perimeter of a square with an area of 2 square miles.

Then if for some reason the mirrors were laid out in a circular patter, rather than square, the perimeter would be 5.01 miles.

We are talking about vast desert areas. Two square miles ain't .

[Indazone]

um, you realize the topic was thermal solar, and not photovoltaic solar, right?

Even more specifically, it was about concentrating thermal solar, as opposed to trough thermal solar.

Respectfully:

You might want to read up a bit on the last few pages to catch up.

The goal is to generate electricity 500-600 MW. The technology listed is crap.

[Wild Cobra]

Depends if you're talking about miles squared or square miles.

then before that:

2 square miles of solar concentrators is ridiculous... ...it would be a total of 8 miles

Wake up and smell the coffee...