gizmag
When most of us think of sunlight being used to generate power, we likely picture photovoltaic cells. Concentrated solar power plants however, use lenses or mirrors to heat fluid – such as synthetic oil – which in turn is used to generate high-pressure steam to drive a conventional turbine. A new experimental solar steam generation power plant that opened last week in southern Spain is aiming to improve on the efficiency of existing systems by using water as the direct working fluid and incorporating novel methods for storing the energy, so it can be dispensed even on cloudy days or at night.
I pass by a small commercial Concentrated Solar Power plant everyday on the way to work.
“In the summer of 2009, eSolar unveiled the 5 MW Sierra SunTower plant, a commercial facility in Lancaster, California that demonstrates the company’s technology. Sierra SunTower is interconnected to the Southern California Edison (SCE) grid and, as of spring 2010, is the only commercial CSP tower facility in North America.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESolar
Spain is the country that Pres Obama touted as a model for creating green jobs. However, it has been discovered that in fact jobs were lost because of their green policies. Pretty obvious that taking away jobs in one part of an industry with higher energy prices is not going to increase employment, even if you create some jobs elsewhere.
Nice looking full sized coal fired boiler back behind the toy collector.
Cool! Well, hot, actually. But it makes so much sense to do it this way rather than using some other fluid. Lots of sun in Spain, of course, which helps.
Anything can look anyway you spin it.like the buggy whip manufacturers, or typwriter makers, all other forms of energy will look silly after solarsteam is applied to it’s industry
I thought a lot of big solar plants worked like this?
Photovoltaic cells are inefficient, it makes more sense to concentrate solar energy with mirrors to boil some fluid and spin a turbine. That’s how the solar projects in Barstow, CA work.
Here’s a project under construction in the States for 3 units with a combined output of nearly 400 MWe:
http://brightsourceenergy.com/projects/ivanpah
One of the biggest issues facing either solar or wind generation are the environmentalist and the NIMBY’s. The “Not In My Back Yard” types don’t want to see or hear these generators around were the live and the environmentalists don’t want them in the undeveloped areas. Catch 22.
Since the events in Japan, the anti-nuclear folks are beating the drums again.
@#5 greg: this situation is not equivalent to horse-and-buggy transition to gasoline powered cars. It bears much more resemblance to horse-and-buggy to electric cars. Those have emerged very early on and there are some obvious technological advantages… Yet, here we are 100+ years later and electric cars still fight uphill battle.
Same situation with “renewables” including Solar. There are much cheaper ways to get much more energy in a much more convenient way. If market is left alone and ideologies (for me all ideologies are despicable) kicked out of any consideration, best energy resources will emerge naturally and change over time, naturally.
Second point is in time scales. Even very small country with very small population and enormous, easy to harness renewable resources like Iceland face long time periods before transition from conventional energy sources. Iceland people are willing, their Govt. is willing and resources are there… Engineers estimate 50+ years before they can switch off the conventional sources… Just imagine how much more is required in large countries/populations that do not have hot spring every few feet around… “GreenNazis” fail to grasp this. We will need oil and coal at least for another century. A lot of it. We better start digging and drilling or will be buried under needles energy expense.
#3 and #7
Please show me how the new facility is or is not reducing the need for the smokestack behind it.
So when there’s a coal plant next to a hydroelectric or a nuclear plant, that renders them useless?
Alt energies may be nascent, but you’d be foolish to deny their increasing importance. Glad to see someone trying at least.
MIkeN said “Spain is the country that Pres Obama touted as a model for creating green jobs. However, it has been discovered that in fact jobs were lost because of their green policies.”
Link?
http://aei.org/outlook/101026
But the story of Spain’s green-job leadership took a series of hits shortly after the president’s speech. In March 2009, researchers Gabriel Calzada Alvarez and colleagues at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos released a study examining the economic and employment effects of Spain’s aggressive push into renewables. What they found confounds the usual green-job rhetoric:[5]
Since 2000, Spain spent 571,138 euros on each green job, including subsidies of more than 1 million euros per job in the wind industry.
The programs creating those jobs destroyed nearly 110,500 jobs elsewhere in the economy (2.2 jobs destroyed for every green job created).
The high cost of electricity mainly affects production costs and levels of employment in metallurgy, nonmetallic mining and food processing, and beverage and tobacco industries.
Each “green” megawatt installed destroys 5.28 jobs elsewhere in the economy on average.
These costs do not reflect Spain’s particular approach but rather the nature of schemes to promote renewable energy sources.
#11
The solar site shown would have difficulty powering one house.
#15 – Who said that it could? Its experimental.
#10–dismal==you say: “for me all ideologies are despicable” ///
Care to throw in an adjective anywhere?
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Aren’t coal/nuke plants at the head of regional power distribution points? If you are building a regional power distribution power generator, where better to put it?
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I’ve heard green energy having a negative effect on employment in Spain but not in Germany. Gee, I wonder if such a comnplicated issue can be boiled down, using solar or coal, to one variable?
Surely we all are smarter than the pop culture journalists that feed the Talking Point Spam-Bots and can appreciate the interaction of more than one variable?
I’ve been an engineer in the Power business over 30 years and I’m impressed with several of the insightful comments above.
The politicians would have you believe that the silver bullet is green and it’s not.
Renewables are just part of the solution, you need coal, nuclear, gas and oil too. As suggested by several above renewables are less reliable than fossil and nukes- the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine all the time and since we still haven’t developed good batteries to store the power we need spinning reserve i.e. a fossil or nuke plant online and ready to take over in the event of a plant- renewable or otherwise going offline. Pumped storage works for storing copious amounts of energy but you have to have the right topography for that too.
My brother, also an engineer, recently attended a party where his State Senator was present, he engaged him in a conversation and mentioned he was quite eloquent, then my brother brought the conversation around to energy and he told me “It was clear to me that this Senator couldn’t start a lawn mower”! And these are the guys deciding what we should be doing in energy? NOT!
#18–speculum#8==”Renewables are just part of the solution, you need coal, nuclear, gas and oil too.” ///
Care to throw in an adjective anywhere?
The Problem: use of sequestered carbon based fuels is poisoning the earth.
The Solution: green energy sources.
The Interim pragmatic process of change: using oil and gas.
Pure short sighted hubris: nuke power.
Surely as an engineer you could design a machine to handle more than one variable at a time?
Will this technology still work once they’ve built the giant reflector to block out the sun?
Pedro- Thanks for the acknowledgement! I’m very confident about my position. If the answer was as easy as 18 implies someone would have made billions on it by commercializing it. bobbo is simply an “expert” in everything and a master debater and a bit childish in the renaming bit I think.
I’m sure that name calling must be part of the solution.
I’ve been name calling for over 30 years, and know what I’m talking about.
Ha, ha. I crack myself up.
…..and by the way, if I had been name calling I would have said: speculum #20.
Again, examples where alternative and green energy sources augment the existing dirty fossil fuels.
Kudos to Spain and the progressive thinkers to ween the world from the middle east oil tit.
I feel confident that us forward thinkers will slap down the bellyaching, no-can-do attitudes of the Teabagger/GOP/Taliban loons.
#25–PedoBear==trying to tie down another partner? Ha, ha. With 30 years experience, I don’t think an engineer will fall for a simple honey trap. No, that will take something more subtle. Course, with nothing but an uncomprehending response, you may have found a soft target.
Let’s see:
Speculum#8–try to focus. What is the limitation on green/renewable energy that will require civilization to remain on oil, coal, and nuke? We’ll wait for your expert information and even a link or two if you have them.
Teadud–being the master of school yard taunts yourself, maybe you can help me out? I remember the punchline but not the set up. Can you fill it in:
“yea, but he’s using MY hand!”
Go!
Bobbo, up to his usual insightful respectful rhetoric again.
Speculum, just ignore the peanut gallery. He and Dallas are not worth your time.
Let’s start by agreeing that any subsidies/mandates for renewable energy shouldn’t be so high that it is economical to shine lamps onto your solar collectors.
>The Problem: use of sequestered carbon based fuels is poisoning the earth.
Pure short sighted hubris: nuke power.
So apparently poisoning the earth isn’t a problem for you, or at least a serious one.
Mike–I don’t get your point. I’m against nukes because they poison the planet. I’m against burning sequestered carbon because its poisoning the planet. Of the two, burning carbon can be corrected less painfully than a China Syndrome into a major aquifer.
Was I not clear enough, or what is your complaint?
@2 MikeN including 12 Foobar.
Mike- thanks for the link but it’s hard to swallow knowing the makeup of AEI:
“More than twenty AEI scholars and fellows served either in a Bush administration policy post or on one of the government’s many panels and commissions. Among the prominent former government officials now affiliated with AEI are former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, now an AEI senior fellow; former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Lynne Cheney, a longtime AEI senior fellow; former House Speaker Newt Gingrich,” etc. http://bit.ly/gOk0Hf
I’m not saying their assertions are incorrect (I don’t know) just dubious.
In my child hood I lived the life the greens advocate. We used only a little fuel in the car and we ran a frig, cooking range, and a radio with at least four lights in the house though it was rare for more than two to be on.
I can promise you guys you do not want to carry your water water from the spring in a bucket, grow and process virtually all your own food and store it by canning, raise and slaughter your own hogs and salt cure the meat rendering out the lard to cook with, get milk from you own cows nor eggs from your own hens, heat your home with firewood cut by human muscle power and use an outhouse with corn cobs for toilet tissue. I have serious reservations about how much fun you would have growing crops using a team of mules/horses.
People who live like that tend to age fast and die young.
Most modern homes are not habitable with the limits on energy the greens are pushing for. Take a look at what the EU countries are getting out of their wind turbines as compared to what they were supposed to get.