Ashalim solar power station - photo

[mwmkravchenko]

Notice on the article in Wikipedia that they do a cost per kilowatt hour. From $0.76 a kilowatt hour. Not competitive at all in 2008. To $0.03 a kilowatt hour in 2021 new construction. At that cost you can make money. 4 hours storage. You loose morning peak but can do evening peak. Things like this have to be coupled with storage. I was reading on compressed CO2 "battery" a while back and it is being made in Spain for storage purposes for a large solar voltaic array. Like anything large and expensive. When you get the better engineers involved and there's more off the shelf parts the prices go down. Same goes for the construction crews. One of a kind is always expensive. Once there are multiples the problems get worked out. Drawings are nothing until they are made in real life. And then the real engineering takes place.

[neilbourjaily]

I was reading on compressed CO2 "battery" a while back and it is being made in Spain for storage purposes for a large solar voltaic array. Like anything large and expensive.

The issue with any kind of mechanical storage device is its capacity is measured in watts not megawatts. It will take the chemists and physicists working together to develop high density storage devices, making and breaking bonds. Unfortunately, even with our chemical devices we are still stuck in incremental improvements. We need orders of magnitude. Even one order of magnitude would be earth shattering.

[mwmkravchenko]

The issue with any kind of mechanical storage device is its capacity is measured in watts not megawatts. It will take the chemists and physicists working together to develop high density storage devices, making and breaking bonds. Unfortunately, even with our chemical devices we are still stuck in incremental improvements. We need orders of magnitude. Even one order of magnitude would be earth shattering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage

There are many existing high storage systems. I hadn't read up on this for a while.

There are some massive energy storage systems in Europe. Nothing stopping this from being done here. Just a change in thinking. The underlying problem is always the capitalist ideas of who's going to pay me? Nothing wrong with money. But what can be wrong is placing money ahead of the good for all people. In a 150 years that money concept has caused quite a serious set of problems. One that will cost more money in damages than was gleaned in the processes that caused it. Never mind loss of lives and lively hoods.

Remember among the first cars were battery electric cars. The companies were purchased, and closed down. No money to be made from them.

As in most fields of learning. Engineers are very slow to be willing to try new things. The ones that really know what they are doing are the ones that try the new ideas. Finance is the same way. Proven, must be proven.

Follow the links in the article and you will find solar stations that have 13 hours of storage capacity and have produced power continuously for 30 day periods. That is nothing to sneeze at.

So are the amortized costs per kilowatt. The one in Dubai carefully mentioning hoe the cost per kilowatt is unsubsidized.

That is a lower cost per kilowatt than a coal or gas station. The difference being is the power production density.

Yes you need a gigawatt for roughly a million people depending on A/C usage. And yes there are morning and evening residential peaks. Industry is more steady state. And it is the largest user by a wide margin.

[nova_robotics]

Notice on the article in Wikipedia that they do a cost per kilowatt hour. From $0.76 a kilowatt hour. Not competitive at all in 2008. To $0.03 a kilowatt hour in 2021 new construction. At that cost you can make money.

We'll never see another new concentrated solar-thermal plant. They made sense 15 years ago, but the price has come down on photovoltaics so much that it just doesn't make sense anymore. I think PV is at like 3x to 4x cheaper per installed watt now, and watts per unit area is much higher on PV as well. And much less maintenance on solar PV. I think they're incredibly cool, but they're a bit of a dinosaur at this point.

[mwmkravchenko]

We'll never see another new concentrated solar-thermal plant. They made sense 15 years ago, but the price has come down on photovoltaics so much that it just doesn't make sense anymore. I think PV is at like 3x to 4x cheaper per installed watt now, and watts per unit area is much higher on PV as well. And much less maintenance on solar PV. I think they're incredibly cool, but they're a bit of a dinosaur at this point.

Yep. But they do provide an interesting option for waste disposal. Total disassociation of complex toxic molecules. But again an incinerator is a cheaper alternative. But not nearly as effective due to the thermal limits of gas burners. The concentrated solar has the opposite problem.

But easier to bury it right?

[nova_robotics]

Yep. But they do provide an interesting option for waste disposal. Total disassociation of complex toxic molecules. But again an incinerator is a cheaper alternative. But not nearly as effective due to the thermal limits of gas burners. The concentrated solar has the opposite problem.

But easier to bury it right?

I don't actually believe that PV solar is going to experience a recycling problem, at least for many decades. I mean I know why we're talking about it. Lifecycle management and environmental impact is a huge talking point with all current products. But I don't think the same rules apply to PV solar.

People are looking at panels and assuming end-of-life is going to be an issue because due to their construction they're difficult to recycle. The majority of PV panels don't actually die. They just degrade over decades (most are rated at 80% output at 20 years), and are obsoleted when compared against the output of newer more efficient panels. Similar to an "aged-out" EV battery that no longer has utility in a car can be used for many other uses like a power wall, "aged-out" solar PV panels have plenty of utility, particularly with respect to electrifying the third world. Look at what's happened to e-waste and plastic. If it's economical to fill thousands of shipping containers with plastic and e-waste that essentially has zero residual value, I'm certain we're going to see an whole industry pop up around bulk recovery of solar PV. Even if they sell them for pennies on the dollar there's still money to be made (where it would otherwise cost money to dispose of these panels). And we'll help electrify impoverished nations in the process, which will be a huge net benefit.

It just comes down to dollars and cents. You have 1000 panels that are no longer cost competitive against new panels. They still work, but your solar farm is on 20 acres of land and you can double your output if you invest in new panels. You can either pay money to have them recycled/disposed, or you can make a tiny amount of your investment back sending them to Bangladesh. Easy call, even if you don't care about Bangladesh.