"Highest-Output, Lowest-Cost" Solar Thermal Power System Proposed For California

DIMONA, ISRAEL -- On the scorched floor of Israel's Negev Desert blooms a field of 1,640 robotic mirrors that behave like sunflowers.

Slightly larger than pingpong tables and guided by a computer, they turn imperceptibly to follow the sun and focus its rays on the pinnacle of a 200-foot tower, where a water boiler will soon start producing high-pressure steam.

This futuristic assembly is Arnold Goldman's scale model and testing ground for five larger solar fields his company plans to build in the Mojave Desert to supply up to 900 megawatts of clean energy to California in the next decade.

Watch a video from BrightSource's site describing the technology:

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[mergina]

What are they doing to insure fresh water for themselves and everyone else west of the Mississippi in the coming years?

[ElkoJohn]

`
the thin film PV of First Solar isn't as efficient as silicon PV
but it is very versitile . . .
then with PV on every house,
and plug-in electric vehicles in every garage

Mother Earth will Smile
.

[pie8ter]

This is inefficient for a large scale production. We need to come up with the technology that directly converts sunlight into electricity without boiling, baking, frying something. Current photocell technology is inadequate and that's where we need to spend money in.

[newshawk14]

I don't see any technology on the horizon for greatly increasing the efficiency of direct conversion
measures, solar thermal is highly efficient, and if you realize, that one man's waste heat is the
process heat for another, you can achieve very high yields, this strategy also reduces what
could be called thermal pollution.

[newshawk14]

I should have pointed out, that coal, nuclear, and solar thermal, all increase
their efficiency, if their waste heat is extracted for some industry, that does
not require as hight temperature a heat source.

[incontempt]

Thanks for setting the stage california...we need these everywhere. it will work...last winter I built a small double box attached to my shed and with a recycled two pane glass from a storm door, a peice of 1x6 pressure treated, some 1" blue-board insulation and some reflextix insulation and a peice of sheetmetal...all scraps....on a sunny day those boxes reached 240F degrees even as it was 7 degrees outside just on the other side of the glass (the glass itself got very hot also, a worry for small children) my air pickup/circulation temperature was at 190 degrees at the out tube but as i used 2" pvc to attempt to push/pull the air through with different types of fans, i could only drop internal temp 20 degree's so it's back to the drawing boards ....i think i'm gonna try running copper tubing with water/glycol solution this time, i already have a waterheater from dump.....very interesting stuff....if you shelter something black,red or blue behind a peice of glass in the sun it will get hot....now just find a way to use it.

[JackNasty]

There are still more refined and cost effective proven applications of solar reflector technology in the US. These include AUSRA: http://www.ausra.com/

[TXfemmom]

Solar power is going to be only part of the solution to the problem. We need a multi-prong, coordinated attack including solar, ocean, and alernative fuels to bring it together.

Ethanol production should be switched from corn to sorghum cane, grow it on marginal soil, it uses half the water and half the fetilizer, can be grown for two crops a year in TX, Florida and portions fo the south, and uses half the energy per unit of energy produced as corn.

[sheila]

this is a total greenwash, people.

there is a RIGHT way to do solar and a WRONG way. The former is sustainable and renewable - we place it only on previously disturbed lands (marginal agricultural, brownfields, homes, commercial/industrial, etc.), and focus on point-of-use applications and conservation. Stability, reliability, no new transmission required, financial rewards for people and businesses who do the right thing, increased conservation, no water waste, and the fragile desert ecosystems are protected. Win/win/win/win/win.

the latter is to bulldoze, dynamite, blade and dump pesticide all over 10,000 acres of very vibrant diverse wilderness habitat - Ivanpah is a giant, green creosote forest which will be completely destroyed, along with all the species depending on it, and will suck over 35 million gallons of clean, scarce groundwater each year to wash the mirrors (resulting in toxic sludge and salt-cake). still sound awesome?

one results in energy independence and an income stream to ratepayers who make an effort. the other further entrenches Big Energy monopolies, externalizes all the costs, kills off our wilderness and forces many of us from our homes for the thousands of miles of new transmission currently being planned (on top of the million acres + of Mojave on Death Row).

Think the desert's a wasteland? Come on out to Joshua Tree - ground zero for the Solar Greenwash and see how gorgeous it can be...

[SolarPowerGuy]

Thanks for the heads-up, Sheila. You've reminded of one thing that I dislike about solar power towers -- they are still big, centralized sources of power. And I also love the desert, have visited it many times, and can appreciate that it would be criminal to wipe out the desert's natural resources in our quest for energy.

And, I'm a residential solar energy user, myself. I'm offsetting 94% of my household's energy use, with a PV array that occupies just over 400 square feet of roof space. A smartly-designed residential building in the Sun Belt could be four stories high, and still have a net zero energy balance.

More people should do what I have already done, on land already occupied by people, before we start a massive expansion of large-scale solar.

[sheila]

Even with the "restrictions" i place on "good" solar, the deserts can EASILY be net exporters of clean energy through the existing grid (although i suggest upgrading existing lines to ratepayer-controlled "smart grids"). the only thing preventing this is crappy policy set by legislators beholden to Big Energy.

Where is our "peaker rate" feed-in tariff contract, where we get paid fair market value for all energy we produce (net metering is another giveaway to utilities)? Why don't utilities count power WE generate against their RPS instead of putting it on the books as "losses?" Why does the CA solar initiative actively restrict the size of systems we wish to install to ensure we end up net consumers, when oversizing has a lot of per-watt scaling benefits? Why do utilities get cheap or free guaranteed financing and tax breaks but we don't? Could it be because the UTILITIES run the conservation and renewable energy incentives programs instead of the government?

Getting the 75% of properties which could generate power and the 95% of properties which could conserve huge amounts of power without sacrificing comfort or lifestyle should be Job One for legislators, corporations, voters, ratepayers, utilities and environmentalists, but it is not a priority for any of them. Too many people willing to knee-jerk cheerlead at the soundbyte of "solar" and refusing to look farther. insist on policy change and we will see results.

[TonalCrow]

Interesting stuff, and something we need badly.

The article should, however, mention some of the other players in this field, e.g., the Solucar subsidiary of Abengoa (http://www.solucar.es/sites/solar/en/ ), which has operational CSP plants in Spain and other pending in, e.g., Arizona (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=51638 ); and Acciona (http://www.nevadasolarone.net/ ), which recently put a large CSP plant online in Nevada.

[SolarPowerGuy]

I am glad to see that Luz is back in business! I had high hopes for them back in the 1980's and, as the article describes, the government decided to pull the plug on them. California is making a much more serious push into solar energy this time around, so I trust that things will be better for consumers and for solar energy companies.

One serious issue with these concentrating mirror array designs is boiler explosions. As the article states, they're going to have a vessel with high-pressure steam positioned 60 meters in the air. A power-tower explosion is of course nowhere as serious as, say, a nuclear plant meltdown. But it's a scary industrial accident, and you don't want to be under the tower when it happens. Explosions also require repair work and contribute to downtime.

[RTIII]

What I'd like to see is a huge solar collector - not reflectors - draped down the face of an otherwise barren mesa or cliff. It would create a micro-climate behind it and so be good for the ecology, and it wouldn't take up as much suface area of the ground. It could also be protected from winds by some good engineering of the edges...

[SolarPowerGuy]

You would love the architectural ideas of Paolo Soleri. Look him up.

[gomonkeygo]

This is the kind of intitiative I hope to see President Obama (no doubt about putting those two words together in my mind!) take the lead on. The technology either already exists or is just at the cusp of existence. We need only real leadership and vision and, naturally, funding to make this nation - and the world - fossil fuel independent.

There is, already, an identical project working in Spain, supplying power to 6,000 homes. When the Spanish system is complete, it will power 600,000 homes! Think of the Great American Desert (as it has been called) covered with solar mirror power plants. What incredible potential!

[marymansour]

Great idea! The Negev desert is the sun's anvil. I have flown so many times cross country from east to west and back. Most of the west from East Texas to California, is desert. We could certainly utilze this for solar energy. Why so slow about it? We're in an energy crunch now. Instead of rattling swords alongside the Israelis, why don't we form a cooperative of many nations who have vast desert holdings and work on solar energy projects? Wouldn't that be a common bond instead of threatening nuclear attacks?

[KillTheMessenger]

We are not in an energy crunch. We are close to seeing peak oil production. These two things are not the same and these plants produce electricity, not oil. The demand for electricity is not going to go up much until we have a steady production of electric vehicles replacing gasoline and diesel driven cars.

[UnbiasView]

Why so slow? Maybe because solar isn't as cost effective as you think yet, once it reaches that point it will be a slam dunk but the technology/cost isn't ready.

[SolarPowerGuy]

Fossil fuels only look cheap, because many of their true costs are externalized.

Nearly all energy businesses are subsidized by governments. Apropos to this discussion, the U.S. government gives tens of billions of dollars per year in direct subsidies to oil and gas exploration. We don't pay these subsidies at the pump; we pay them through our income and payroll taxes.

We don't pay for air pollution at the pump either. We pay for it through our health insurance plans.

Then, of course, a significant fraction of the U.S. military budget exists to defend petroleum shipments from the Mideast. The $100 billion/year Iraq "supplemental budget requests" are a conservative estimate of that subsidy.

Controversy surrounds estimates of future global warming damage, but trillions of dollars are likely at stake world-wide.

Back in the 1990's -- before Gulf War II, and before global warming was widely accepted -- even a study from the super-conservative Cato Institute agreed that America's hidden subsidy to Big Oil was $50 billion/year.

[BLinCincinnati]

Because those currently in power are in the pockets of the Oil companies.