Arizona solar plant

[jcoady]

http://phys.org/news/2013-10-arizona-so ... s-sun.html

[mvanwink5]

The three -square-mile facility near Gila Bend uses concentrated solar power (CSP) technology to collect the sun's heat.

Three square miles of facilities for 280 MW for 16(?) hours of power. I wonder what the maintenance and capital cost is? Don't you just love these geniuses?

[Stubby]

3 square miles of fertile land capable of producing thousands of pounds of wheat and/or beef?
Will it ever have a radiation leak?

Gila Bend has an arid desert climate, characterized by extremely hot summers and warm winters. The average annual rainfall is approximately 7 inches

[mvanwink5]

Evidently the 3 square mile solar plant builders are insensitive to the special environment that is being destroyed just so someone can wear a green ribbon on their chest. And it is especially precious because those brutal wheat and cattle ranchers would have left that land alone leaving the wild life free to roam. But that is normal for insensitive people to view habitats that are called barren as being unimportant.

[D Tibbets]

I'm not sure if sarcasm is at play here, but simply put ~ 3 square miles for a power plant that produces perhaps 200 MW on average is not astounding. Many coal fired power plants might have a land impoundment of over 10 square miles. This does not mean every square foot is occupied by structures and the same would apply to this plant. And there is no acid rain or smoke associated with this plant. There is no carbon emissions to speak of, if that is your primary priority. There is no remote coal mining operation needed to feed the plant. Even under the reflectors there might be grazing land (provided you irrigate this arid site). So any blanket statement about land use per KWh, etc is completely worthless without much more information and comparison.

And, of course, the real question remains the cost competitiveness. Even that is not a simple issue as government substantives for solar, coal, oil, etc. and their appropriate use enters the argument. And, also, decommissioning and waste disposal is also a significant issue, especially for Fission nuclear.

And then, there is the sustainment issue...

Dan Tibbets

[mvanwink5]

Dan,

Many coal fired power plants might have a land impoundment of over 10 square miles.

How many MW for such a plant? Where is it located? Also, a gas turbine peaking unit can be installed in a ship, if you want to talk about size. Moreover, the coal and nuclear plants are for economics, which clearly the solar plant was not. So, you are making a false comparison.

Even under the reflectors there might be grazing land

Honestly!

acid rain or smoke associated with this plant

Honestly!
Furthermore, you still need the fossil plants, ask the Europeans. And economics is not some throw away issue. This is not the universe of fantasy.

My comments weren't sarcastic, by the way. I consider it hypocritical and tragic that bird mulchers are used and pushed as environmentally friendly, and I consider wilderness to be precious.

Best regards

PS I appreciate and respect your other posts where you are in your element.

[Teahive]

Moreover, the coal and nuclear plants are for economics, which clearly the solar plant was not.

Clearly? Do you have additional information on the plant's costs?

[paperburn1]

I feel that there is a potential that can be exploited with these plants. The problem with solar and most other renewable resources is not that they can produce power but their power production does not fit into our current energy usage / management plans. Our power is literally generated on demand with our current system. You turn on a light and somewhere a gen-set turns a little faster to make up the difference. Most "Green" sources make power when its available not when you need it. This is the flaw in the system and adding storage to compensate makes the cost / benefit trend toward unreasonable.
There are solutions in the works that make economic and environmental sense. The first and most interesting is the use of environmental dead zones to place these plants. ( super-fund sites and the like) There are currently studies underway to identify these areas that could be made productive again. http://dailyfusion.net/2013/08/epa-scre ... ent-16576/ I admit grazing under a site sound good, the reality is a herd of Holsteins can pretty much wreck havoc on any structure. The best possible use would be managed park lands IMHO.
The reality of the situation is we will never get rid of large scale power plants and the oil/ carbon fuel cycle will be with us until something cheaper comes along. Citys are very power usage dense to get along without the large industrial power plants. But until something better comes along any help is a good thing. Not to mention that we can at least learn from these power plants and maybe figure out a way to do things better.

As for solar not being viable I say your wrong. I live the life style and have removed about 50 percent of my energy load from the system to date with no changes in my lifestyle! I have engaged projects that have a ROI (Return On Investment) of less than 5 years. Why am I doing this? It saves money, that's all it just a cheaper way to lives so I have more money to spend on other things I enjoy. There is a group of us out there that are approaching this from an engineering standpoint not a "Green" thing. There is a web site out there called Builditsolar.com that is run by a retired Boeing engineer. Many good ideas to help save money. We test ideas with real world data and instrumentation to prove what ideas and devices will work in your own personal situation.(That is the second problem with solar, not one system will fit all ,it is custom work by region) I do not think solar will ever replace grid power but it can be used to reduce your dependence on it. My goal is to become 75 percent free of grid power.

[mvanwink5]

Whatever.

[choff]

A lot also depends on proximity to the customer base. I've heard one arguement that wind and solar are perfectly viable for cities if placed on the rooftops, even on road surfaces.

[D Tibbets]

I did not provide specifics, but tried to stress that without specifics, generalizations are very vunerable to agendas. And, yes, you could have grass under the reflectors, provided the pedistals were high enough. Do you think it is pitch black behind the reflectors? The light level would be similar to that below a shade tree. You might wish to use a grass that likes the shade, but still...

As for coal plants near me in Kansas, one probably has ~ 2 GW thermal and about 700-800 MW electricity capacity and the other is probably ~ 500 MW electricical. The first has ~ 50 -100 square miles while the second has perhaps 100-200-300 square miles (used to mine coal at the second site and there are many square miles of strip mine recovered pasturage which looks good from a distance, but not so much up close. A nearby nuclear plant has perhaps 100 or more square miles impounded which includes a nice lake for a thermal sink, etc. Conversely, there is an old coal plant that only occupies several square miles and perhaps has a capacity of 100-200 MW electrical. But it is old and uses a river to help cooling. It probably could not be built with as small of a foot print today.

Again, I stress that even these numbers are not necessarily representative. You can talk about the actual land under coal piles, cooling towers, plumbing, generator buildings, railway yards,incinerators, limestone piles, smoke stacks, ash piles, oil tanks, transformer yards, windmills, photovoltaics, reflectors,etc, etc. You can also assign secondary use values, like pasturage under reflectors or photovaic panels, certainly underneath wind mills. The land under buildings or coal piles though are pretty much useless for any other use..

And, since this is the Talk Polywell forum, I point out that if the Polywell works, and direct conversion is used, the energy production per acre of land use could be much larger than any plant dependent on thermal steam plants, local stocks of bulk fuel, or modest solar energy collection per unit of area,etc. The three candidates that I know of is the Polywell, DPF and possibly several incarnations of the FRC. Fission Nuclear does not require much bulk fuel, but the fuel cost and waste management and (hopefully) aggressive safety measures compromises the initial small bulk of fuel involved. There have been small fission reactors proposed for burial in back yards, but I suspect that is pipe dreams. Tokamaks suffer from huge size, and an unavoidable dependance on steam plant conversion, not to mention what would probably be a huge infrastructure to handle the lithium / tritium issues.

From a small footprint standpoint fission nuclear can be small, the Navy demonstrates that, but they have an ocean for cooling purposes. Jet engines (like in US frigates and destroyers) or diesel engines powering a generator can also be quite small. Many small towns use diesels for power and they get away with this economy because they are hooked to the grid and can supplement or replace local generation if needed. In many ways Solar/ wind fits this picture, so long as there is grid backup, they can operate on smaller energy scales and perhaps be competitive in cost, land use, or what ever criteria you wish to compare.

Dan Tibbets

[paperburn1]

this site list all the power plants and their types. (but no nuc plants? )
My bust did not turn them on in legend

[paperburn1]

this site list all the power plants and their types. (but no nuc plants? )
http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=NC

[palladin9479]

A lot also depends on proximity to the customer base. I've heard one arguement that wind and solar are perfectly viable for cities if placed on the rooftops, even on road surfaces.

It's about opportunity cost. Rooftops and other such unused locations are perfect for solar because there is little to no opportunity cost involved. As long as the panels last long enough to repay their original unsubsidized cost then it's a net gain and economically viable.

You guys should know better, power plants are more then their plate capacity. The problem with solar / wind is that their capacity factor is stupidly low, so low that they need 3~4x the plate capacity to equal what a Coal or Nuke plant could do. Coal / Nuke / Gas all generate power as long as you have fuel and only need to stop generating power for annual maintenance or refueling. Solar / Wind / Geo / Hydro all generate power when the environmental conditions are right.

In the USA
http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/archive/03482009.pdf

The Wiki article has a ton of links to other sources about averaged CF.

Photovoltic in Arizona = 19% CF
Photovoltic in Massachusetts = 13%
CSP Solar in California = 33%
Wind = 20~40%
Nuclear in USA = 91.2%
Coal = 63.8%

So to replace the total actual power generation of a single 1GW fission plant you'd have to build a 3GW CSP plant or 5GW Photovoltic. Geothermal and Hydro are the only realistic *renewable* power sources for economical power generation. Solar / Wind are only for when there is no opportunity cost involved, aka roof tops / ect.

Suddenly those space vs cost vs plate comparisons don't look so good.

[Teahive]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor

CSP Solar in California = 33%

That's for Ivanpah, which according to this has no thermal storage capacity.

The same Wikipedia page mentions 75% CF for CSP solar with storage in Spain (15h storage capacity).

This plant in Arizona (6h storage capacity) is probably somewhere in between.