Google Invests $168MM in World's Largest Solar Power Tower Plant

http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/ivanpah-google-solar-energy/

by shimonamit • 15 years ago

55 23 15 years ago

Original announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/investing-in-worlds-l...

ams6110• 15 years ago

A better summary, as it gives you some specifics, it's a 392MW (gross) generating plant (I found another link that also mentioned 370MW nominal). Compare to a typical coal-fired plant at 500MW, up to 1,000MW or more.

pieter2• 15 years ago

I guess that means that 370MW is the nominal optimal generating power? From what I read, thermal solar has a capacity factor of only about 20% [1], which means this solar farm will average out to about 70MW, which isn't that much.

Coal has a capacity factor of about 60% and nuclear 90% [2], so this is similar to a 120MW coal plant or a 80MW nuclear power plant. Of course, you can't really compare them only on total power provided, as solar provides most of its power during the day, which is also the time in which the energy demand is the highest.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy

[2] http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epaxlfile5_2.pd...

robin_reala• 15 years ago

How much would a typical ~500MW coal-fired plant cost to build and operate (including cost of coal over the lifespan of the plant)? No sarcasm, I’m interested :)

nickolai2• 15 years ago

Also compare it to the existing 10-20MW "solar tower"-type plants. It is a serious step forward!

Tycho2• 15 years ago

That is such a smart design (using mirrors to focus sunlight onto one point rather than using lots of solar panels spread about). How long have scientists had this idea?

jacques_chester2• 15 years ago

I remember seeing 1970s vintage books with these sorts of things in them.

The main difficulty is maintaining a high temperature system with lots of moving parts, but in that respect it's not much worse than a fossil fuel plant.

Edit: not forgetting the usual source reliability / distribution problems for renewables.

icegreentea• 15 years ago

A good while. There's actually a plant of this design (smaller though, only 20MW) outside of Seville, it's been there for a while.

Also, to the sister post, there are relatively few moving parts in the collector itself. Furthermore, these are all conditions that we've dealt with already with traditional turbine systems (they get pretty hot too), and aircraft design. The harder part is getting the sun tracking right. The Seville (and I guess this one too) plant actually has to point a bunch of mirrors off the tower (they park them into a tower of light above the tower... looks really cool) at peak, since it actually gets too hot (it would melt concrete or something ridiculous I heard...)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS20_solar_power_towers

mcdaid• 15 years ago

Seville has one

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6616651.stm

but the idea is as old, Archimedes is said to have used mirrors to set fire to a roman fleet.

shimonamit• 15 years ago

The first experimental solar power towers were built in the 1980s. The first commercial plant was constructed in Seville, Spain and became operational in 2007.

jdavid• 15 years ago

I remember them being in Sim City 2000. ;-) So, it's been a while.

I am actually disappointed in the video. There were no 3d models, and the project talked very little about the engineering effort. Instead we are given very stoic music and a bunch of PR.

parfe2• 15 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes#The_Archimedes_Heat_...

Two millennia or so. Power generation has always been applying new ways to boil water (save wind and hydro).

Tycho2• 15 years ago

Actually I misconstrued what the design was. I thought the mirrors would project a higher concentration of sunlight onto a traditional solar panel (except one designed to accept much higher input/density), thus saving the cost of making many panels and many periodic replacements. Mirrors are presumably cheaper and/or more durable than solar panels.

uvdiv3• 15 years ago

The New York Times was writing about concentrated solar power as early as 1868, in the context of the imminent exhaustion of coal.

http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40A10FB3854...

jws• 15 years ago

There are a number of solar thermal plants in development now. It is worth noting that it is possible to store the energy for use in dark times by including storage tanks in the molten salt loop, though I don't see that in this plant's description and it isn't important until there is a significant solar contribution to the total energy production.

parfe2• 15 years ago

Has anyone come across a calculation on how this affects the local climate? Won't this system be sucking 390MW of energy out of the environment to convert to mechanical energy?

The effect must be noticeable. I get the same feeling about wind. If solar ever became large scale wouldn't we be directly countering global warming? And won't solar panels/mirrors be directly competing for the solar energy that wind uses?

gregable• 15 years ago

It's quite tiny as a fraction of the total solar energy. Remember also that all energy we are collecting by burning coal, gas, and oil today was once solar energy as well.

afterburner• 15 years ago

Total energy consumption of the world: 474 exajoules. Total solar energy absorbed by earth: 3,850,000 exajoules

But your argument is even more rudimentally answered as such: energy captured by solar panels is still in the Earth's atmosphere. It'll appear later as heat anyways, once its energy is used practically. If you want to counter global warming with solar panels directly, they would have to be situated above the atmosphere, and NOT transmit any energy down to the surface.

Google Invests $168MM in World's Largest Solar Power Tower Plant

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