What is Sup Forums's opinion on the development and employment of concentrated solar power towers for meeting the electricity needs of sunny countries?
In Australia, it seems every week there's a new article about a new tower project getting proposed, shortlisted, or selected by a state government for a big contract. Just recently, a company from America won a contract to build such a solar plant to supply South Australia's grid.
So, are these things what they claim to be, or is it overblown?
>Sup Forums's opinion
who cares?
just check the facts
Seems like the best and cheapest way to produce solar power, steam turbines nowadays are incredibly efficient.
...
>lotsa power during the day
>no power during peak hours at night
>storage (batteries) isn't feasible
Meme
>Thermal storage to store the heat in molten salt containers to continue producing electricity while the sun is not shining
They’re alright
On a grid-wide level, pumped storage is very (up to around 90%) efficient, but you need large reservoirs at different heights to make it work.
Renewable energies are problematic.
You think a first world country could afford to not have power at night?
Water and wind are slightly more reliable, but all renewable energies are more difficult to handle than coal or nuclear stuff.
I'm all for a green planet, but it won't happen in the next few centuries.
And to elaborate:
It's incredibly difficult/inefficient to store enough power for the night during the day. Most power consumption is during the morning and evening time when people shower, eat their toasts and what not. You would need a shitload of storage capacities to come even close to the amount of power needed.
>it won't happen in the next few centuries.
More like decades (look how far we've come over the last 100 years; 200 years ago and we didn't have electricity, so talking about multiple centuries is kind of crazy), but I agree with the rest of your post.
It's just not worth the trouble when nuclear fission is safe enough, just as clean, and can supply baseload without massive storage infrastructure.
Also considering we are headed to irreversible and catastrophic climate change this isn't the time to be fiddling around with currently impractical solutions to clean energy.
have it in space far away enough that it always get sun and run a long cable
>You think a first world country could afford to not have power at night?
nigga do you even understand how solar power works!?!?!
Do you?
yes, extensively
>More like decades (look how far we've come over the last 100 years; 200 years ago and we didn't have electricity, so talking about multiple centuries is kind of crazy),
Yeah because technological progress is linear
It's exponential (though likely with a limit). We're still in the relatively early years of energy storage technology, and we already have energy storage approaching 90% - see ).
I mean surely during the day power generation exceeds power consumption so why not produce hydrogen for energy storage? Its somewhat inneficient but still its better than nothing
>eady have energy storage approaching 90%
You do realize it's not efficiency but scalability that's the main issue, right?
On pumped storage, sure. But repurposing old quarries - which most flat places have a number of would seem to be feasible.
You would need storage that's many orders of magnitude larger than a few old quarries.
Also why would quarries be good for pumped storage?
Brainlet, please.
Look up how a solar tower works. They store the heat in molten salt and the energy output goes all damn day. They're crazy effective.
>They're crazy effective.
Right now it costs about half a billion to build a 140 MW nameplate capacity/ .40 capacity factor solar thermal with molten salt storage. Price would have to drop steeply to compete with nuclear, where you can build AP 1000 for $8 billion and get 1100 MW nameplate at .90 capacity factor.
Not really viable given that the sun will die one day, better to go with something like nuclear.
REDOX FLOW BATTERY IM CALLING IT NOW YALL CAN THANK ME LATER
Because at the cost of hydrogen storage, oxygen storage and fuel cells then you are better off buying batteries.
Gravity battery is used often. Whether it is pumping water up and using it when needed or rocks or some other gravity based shits.
Energy can also be stored in some giant spinning discs, also known as flywheel battery.
Neither of those two wear out like the consumer grade lead/lion/etc Flywheels are fairly good too as they return back about 80-90% energy.
It'll drop.
>all or nothing mentality
>could have solar energy during the day, tidal, wind, and hydroelectric collection at all times
>nuclear energy backing all of this to fill in gaps and provide the backbone
>coal/oil/whatever in absolutely necessary situations or emergencies, etc
>>could have solar energy during the day, tidal, wind, and hydroelectric collection at all times
>>nuclear energy backing all of this to fill in gaps and provide the backbone
Sadly it doesn't work that way. Tidal is a meme, hydro faces hard limits on expansion and should be used as energy storage, not baseload, and wind peak time does not usually match up with solar's dead time. Short of a massive pumped storage build up akin to having hundreds of Three Gorges Dam for a country like the US, nuclear would have to be a significant majority for a stable grid and a functioning civilization.
Also solar shortage will be so frequent that you could hardly call them emergencies.
>tidal is a meme
DELET.
What about solar pools 'n shit?
What is solar pool?
Why would you want a foreign country to build your infrastructure,no good Australian firms?
Solar Thermal will? I think not.
It's not like PV where we can come up with new chemistry and technology to make them cheaper and less toxic. Reflectors, salt, and most importantly construction costs really don't have that room for innovation.
It'll probably get worse as suitable locations for solar thermal becomes rarer and forces companies to build in far off deserts.
That's one of the other issues with solar thermal, they tend to need water yet the best locations are ones that do not have readily available water because they are sunny, hot, and dry.
You get horrible resonance with PV as you have to pass it through an inverter. Also having a grid based solely on PV makes it much more complicated. If you have any instabilities your power angle is going to go too high so you have to have more complicated power electronics instead of just having your generators momentum stabilising the grid.
Seems like a better way of harnessing power than the fields of panels we have here in the uk.
Solar panels have only recently started producing a net energy gain over the course of their lifespans (minus the energy used to build them) and this isn't due to changes in design or new technology allowing them to last longer. The efficiency gains came almost entirely from scaling up production. The mechanical option seem to be a far more reliable/efficient solution. I've heard similar solutions for mechanical energy storage where renewable energy is used to winch lift a lead weight when possible and then the potential energy is used to power a generator when renewables cant cover the load. of course the system isn't particularly good for vehicles but it might work well as something attached to a building.
hm, forgot my picture
>You get horrible resonance with PV
>with PV
We're not talking about photovoltaic, we're talking about solar thermal.
They reflect sunlight with mirrors onto a fixed point where it boils water and runs a traditional steam turbine.
Not really viable, neutrons will decay some day. Better go with something like black holes
It's almost as if building a society on the assumption of unlimited available energy was a mistake and we should be cutting down on energy use overall
How do your purpose we do that? Human civilization needs energy to operate. As our population grows we will need more energy, almost exponentially so. Focusing on getting energy from different sources will be key to us not stagnating and dying off. Besides, it's not like not using the energy will mean it's saved for later. Everything runs down, so we might as well harness as much of it as we can
>it's not like not using the energy will mean it's saved for later. Everything runs down, so we might as well harness as much of it as we can
That's clearly unsustainable and will lead to catastrophic collapse.
Far better to wind down consumption sensibly and ensure civilization survives.
Or just get the energy from widely available sources.
...
what a fucking space inefficient design Solar """""""""""""""""""""""""""power"""""""""""""""""""""" is
these things are pretty energetically efficient, but they are also fucking exceptional at frying birds like you wouldn't believe.
perfectly "green" energy is impossible, much to leftist shits' chagrin.
Where is your evidence for that? Fossil fuel? That's why we need different sources and methods of consumption
Only way to "wind down" consumption is to wind down standards of living. And by that I mean genuine and actual lowering of standards of living. It is a fantasy that you can make a dent in energy consumption by minimal measures, such as driving a Prius instead of an SUV, or using LED bulbs, or turning out the lights when you leave a room. You'll have to
>stop taking baths/shower every day
>lower room temperature by 10 - 15 fahrenheit in winter
>no AC in summer
>consume fewer calorie
as starters. We'll be back to 19th century level when we were 5 inches shorter and 20 points of IQ lower on average.
That does suck, I wonder if there is a method for keeping birds away. Maybe some sort of noise or something to trick their navigation into going around
Not really viable, black holes lose energy due to Hawking radiation. Better go with something like stealing energy from an alternate dimension.
>radiation
>not energy that can be used
Either way that's not really reliable because we will run out of other dimensions. We should go with perfect reversal of entropy
"Insufficient data for a meaningful answer."
Like free broiled poultry isn't a benefit.
>Be powerplant operator
>It's lunch time
>Walk outside, cooked pheasant falls from the sky
>Yum.jpg
Good story
Why don't SA niggers build nuclear power plants, they have more than enough uranium.
>muh radiation
>muh nuclear weapons
>muh nuclear waste
It's pretty much just morons that hear the word nuclear and nearly have a heart attack is the reason why nobody really want to do nuclear power.
Those idiots are the ones holding back progress of achieving the ultimate in energy generation that powers the stars
I don't remember that from New Vegas at all. Hm.
The destruction of fauna and flora due to high temperature will be interesting.
Considering desert ecosystems are extremely fragile, we may be on the verge of a massive man-made extinction event.
You're not wrong but the ways we fuck up desert environment already is considerable .
Same with wind turbines killing birds. We don't want it to happen but the shit we already do goes far and beyond what pittance would be added.
Huge meme.
Kills animals.
Harmful to the environment to produce.
Storage of excess energy is always an issue.
Cannot ramp up production to deal with peaks thus you either have to build such plants with excess in mind.
Considering people bitch about how dangerous nuclear power is and yet the newest ones were built on the 70s with shit tech and regulations.
Its a good thing other sources of power don't kill animals in droves and don't waste excess energy.
What animals does nuclear kill?
Please share.
>all the dumbasses in the thread going hurr durr solar can't work at night
Concentrated solar power, the kind that OP is going on about, is capable of producing a base load through the night. Instead of using photovoltaics, they redirect heat energy into a working fluid which retains the heat and is then circulated through a water heating system to boil water and drive turbines in the same fashion as classic power plants. Due to the high thermal capacity of the working fluid, some of these stations are capable of producing energy throughout the entire night, and all of them are exceptionally well suited to producing power in the early evening, when photovoltaics are down and winds are often still. Some of these new solar plants in Australia are competing for contracts that are open to fossil fuel based plant proposals (such as naturalgas) and winning.
lol
Not hating on nuclear but the mining for resources isn't a destruction free event. Plus the foot print of the plant itself.
Was mostly talking about chuds with "muh coal is clean" bs
When i am talking about killing animals, I am talking about the plant actually frying birds when in operation.
If you think that's bad, don't go to a KFC
Direct killing is bad, but killing indirectly by destruction of habitat and collateral damage is okay. Gotcha
Totally and completely fucking useless.
They don't make power when people need it and storage costs massively (4 to 10 times) more than load following on demand generation (the most expensive kind of generation).
>On a grid-wide level, pumped storage is very (up to around 90%) efficient, but you need large reservoirs at different heights to make it work.
And that still costs about 20 cents per kilowatt hour at best and is massively limited.
>Look up how a solar tower works. They store the heat in molten salt and the energy output goes all damn day. They're crazy effective.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility made more electrical power with it's stand by natural gas fired turbines than it did with solar power in all but two months of it's best year.
It's shit.
>Flywheels are fairly good
Vastly more expensive than standard generation.
>could have solar energy during the day, tidal, wind, and hydroelectric collection at all times
Unless you have lots of hydro you are not making enough power.
>nuclear energy backing all of this to fill in gaps and provide the backbone
Why not just use nuclear for everything?
KFC slaughters farm animals that has no impact on the ecosystem.
These things are smack middle of an area where wild life exist. You have to be fucking delusional to think they are equivalent.
Solar kills directly and indirectly when it is produced. Fuck off retard.
What do you think used to exist before civilization got there?
Fuck off retard. Either address the point or stop posting.
Nuclear is one of the most densest forms of power generation, a 1000MW nuclear generator site is tiny compared to a 1000MW solar or wind farm.
Also if where going to be mining mine uranium you don't need too much of it compared to any other mined fuel source
But what they actually do is burn natural gas.
Elevated water storage > Batteries
If there is elevated water storage, there would be a hydrodam and any solar present would be secondary to it.
South Aussie here. Was talking with an electrical engineer who works for SA Power Networks just yesterday. His summary is renewable is too expensive and too unstable, so if you want cheap, stable electricity nuclear is the only real answer, especially for SA.
Also asked about solar concentric arrays with Stirling engines but he didn't know what they are.
Go to Prospect on any day and you'll see "nuclear-free zone" signs around the place. Irony is is that if a truck with nuclear material on it went through they wouldn't know it.
The uranium in SA is mostly sent to Indian plants, so the mines are already operating.
>solar concentric arrays with Stirling engines
Aren't those the plants where you have one tall tower in the middle and all the panels are used to focus the sunlight at the tower which heats up a fluid that drives the engine?
>we may be on the verge of a massive man-made extinction event.
Because we're not already?
I support all non-retarded alternative energy deployments (ie, not solar highways & those stupid foot power tiles). In the medium to long term, I think we'll use a mix of power sources, concentrated where they are most efficient. Hopefully we'll eventually get room temperature semiconductors or some other major power transmission breakthrough, in which case we can truly optimize the world's power production.
Nuclear and hopefully some day fusion will be a constant backbone, with solar, hydro and wind where appropriate. I suspect we'll run a variety of reactors types, with fusion someday as part of the chain, which optimize fuel efficiency and minimize waste issue. l I don't know how much easily accessible and not environmentally terrible potential there is for pumped-storage hydroelectricity, but it has a uniquely high efficiency as far as mass energy storage goes. Until we come up with a revolutionary battery technology, that'll be relevant. Finally, for solar, I suspect concentrated PV will take off and we'll be able to push it to ~60% efficiency at least, with the benefit of much lower temperature than concentrated solar (man I hate the names of these technologies).
Nuclear is the way. If humanity aren't fucking retarded, we would have better nuclear energy tech and a greener earth.
>solar power for entire countries is viable
coal is the future
Why waste all the money on storage, wind and solar when you can just build nuclear? Nuclear that can make liquid fuels that can be used in current ICE produced from off peak capacity? You get something to do with your nuclear 24/7 and get liquid fuels that uses no oil to produce.
youtube.com
youtube.com
Maintenece cost are too high. Same with wind. They can never make a profit and can only exist through government subsidies
At a larger scale, I believe so. Smaller scale is like pic related. It's more power produced per m2 than PV, but it's quite heavy so it's not really suitable for residential roofing.
No-one in Australia makes or sells them though (that I can find).
People don't realize that we need to save our nuclear materials for space propulsion in the future. We're definitely not gonna get enough energy from coal or solar in space
We have lots of fertile nuclear fission material. Thorium is about 8ppm of the whole earth and about 6ppm of soil. Uranium (all isotopes) is about 4ppm of the total of the crust.
At the most basic level, I think it's worth it for risk diversification. Pumped hydro could be useful because even with nuclear provisioned for peak, transmission lines can fail. Perhaps mining and enrichment or the ability to transfer highly radioactive material is crippled, etc. It'd be nice to not be hundreds of years behind in solar technology, too, since solar is so appropriate for relatively small ad-hoc setups where transmission lines are impractical.
If we can grow algae that produces certain proteins, can we use concentrated heat from a solar reflector to heat steam to compress and heat the algae so that it dies and produces a more fully formed biofuel?
well if you ever drive west to california from las vegas there are two fucking MASSIVE installations of concentrated solare. I am guessing they are focusing on salt heat capture which keeps enough heat to make steam through the night. Anyone else seen these?They are fucking awesome to behold. Im sure IAMVERYSMART people worked on these and the very fact of their existence negates anything you faggots on here could say against renewable energy. I think they are building two more in close proximity. Fucking radical engineering and i love seeing them on the way home from vegas.
fuck off abbott
I’m surprised we don’t see a passive solar wind turbine, sort of a big black upside down funnel with windmills inside to catch updraft.
>wanting to constantly spool up and spool down reactors to coincide with wind & sun outputs
Something tells me you have no idea how the electricity industry works.