We Don't Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/solar_millennium_ridgecrest/

IPhone?

Just wondering?

meanwhile, them over the hill 'mericans invent new drilling technology and the price of natural gas plunges, Europe might be able to break its dependence on Russian gas . . . sorry Mr. Gore.

"All across Europe big oil companies are scouring millions of acres of countryside and buying up rights to tap the natural gas trapped in prehistoric shale beds thousands of metres below its surface.

The shale gas rush has made its way over from the US, where breakthroughs in technology have allowed companies to extract gas from reservoirs previously seen as untouchable.

The newly accessible US shale deposits are so big that executives now believe the country has enough gas to last it for a century. This extra supply and the US’s new found self-sufficiency has created a worldwide gas glut that has driven down prices.

It is a remarkable turnround. Just three years ago, most US energy executives were working out how the US could import enough gas from places as far away as Nigeria, Russia and Qatar, while competing with the demands from China and other energy-hungry developing countries.

Now the world’s biggest, richest and most sophisticated energy companies believe that they may be able to repeat the American shale gas revolution in Europe, potentially undermining the power of Russia, the region’s biggest gas supplier."

http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/03/dash-for-unconventional-gas.html

Brightside(haha): I guess the coke-heads can use the mirrors.

I've always suspected that the cost of the land is not accounted for in the solar calculaiton as the land is given for free by the taxpayer.

Now people could claim that vast swaths of desert have very low value, which is true, but its still habitat for something. And if you put these plants truly in the middle of no where with land values near $0/acre, who is paying for the transmission system? And do the states make that land available at an auction regardless of use? if not its subsidized and that lost potential needs to be accounted for.

I definitely like solar better than wind, as mentioned, solar generation peaks at the same time as demand. Seems like these guys did it wrong though. Solar thermal would have been better I would think.

Plus with solar thermal, the tie in with other thermal, like natural gas, is easy; they can heat the same liquid and use the same generating equipment.

I like the idea. If you expect an extra 75 MW of A/C on the hottest days of the year, then this is definitely one way to get it.

"I definitely like solar better than wind, as mentioned, solar generation peaks at the same time as demand."

Well, not entirely true - another power consumption peak is in the middle of harsh winter around Christmas. No sun on the horizon, but the demand can be extremely high due to heating and all the Christmas lights.

With low natural gas prices, there's no incentive to drill. I have personal experience with this phenomenon.

So a coal fired plant is 5066.667 times more efficient per acre in producing electrical power than solar power. With all these green jobs being promised, where do we grow food?

Rooftop solar panels seem like the best option.There's no wasted land and the electricity is produced near the point of usage.

With our west coast power grid California could produce daytime power while Washington and B.C.'s Hydro dams could provide for cloudy days and the nighttime.

Environmentalists are welcome to starve while freezing in the dark right now, but nooooo, they're more interested in killing off the rest of us. Eat the eco-nuts first!

I think it is solar thermal.

http://tinyurl.com/yleerca

So all the eco-hysteria over green energy is leading to some interesting situations in Europe. Seems that to encourage citizens to install solar panels or wind turbines, the various nations offer to buy back “green power” from home owners at rates 3-5 times what they sell electricity produced by thermal electrical generation. These are called feed-in tariffs.

So it turns out citizens are installing electrical motors to turn their windmills and high intensity lights to power their solar panels. For every Euro of cost, they sell 3 – 5 Euros of electricity.

Excellent business model.

Really enterprising citizens are buying AC to DC converters and just outputting at the feed in tariff rate what they buy for as little as 20% of they can sell the electricity for.

The religion of global warming meets the reality of market economics.

"Eat the eco-nuts first!"

Nah, they'd be way too bitter-tasting.

Same old stupidity...

Centralized power, generated, shaped and manipulated for transmission over wires and unreliable exposed towers to be re-transformed down to usable levels.

All of the steps losing efficiency with nothing to recommend it except for the ability to issue a monthly bill.

Wind-gen and solar have uses on your home roof. Otherwise the centralized use of light weight tech is too stupid to believe.

Be careful when looking at solar, like wind its viability is tied to geography. For example, Florida has a far higher rating than Saskatchewan. If you google search, "Solar Insolation Map" you will get a lot of options. Here's one http://www.altestore.com/howto/Reference-Materials/Solar-Insolation-Map-World/a43/

Solar is like wind in that regard. SaskPower has updated the wind portion of their website. See the details for their wind project results, and "why not more wind" etc at: http://www.saskpower.com/aboutus/corpinfo/power_generation_facilities/wind_power_facilities/

The wind map, is at:
http://www.saskpower.com/aboutus/corpinfo/power_generation_facilities/wind_power_facilities/windmap.shtml

The extremely high cost of Photo-voltaic (PV) solar panels is agravated by the scarcety of the silicon material and the very high cost money/energy wise to manufacture. The energy involved in manufacture is never recovered by use.
PV panels are the only solar option for domestic on-site power. They are massively heavy requiring signifigant reinforcement of the roof whether new construction and especially with retrofit. Then there is the cost of wiring/inverters.
Statis symbols.......
Better to buy a BMW....it won't kill you with the first earthquake.....

I have noticed that flowery press releases about new solar and wind farms never mention the cost per kilowatt hour of the electricity generated. An example is this one from my alma mater trumpeting their new solar farm in Central Minnesota (of all places): http://www1.csbsju.edu/sustainability/energy/solar.htm I guess they have enough cash to get by without my yearly donation from now on. The hugely expensive farm cost over $2 million and provides only 4% of their power needs over the year.

Solar power maximum: 1 kilowatt per square metre of collection area.

That's what I have read, in one of the late Petr Beckmann's works I think.

I have been involved with solar energy for some time now, and there are many great points brought up by the NR article and commenters here. Yes, ground-based solar power is basically operational only 1/3 of the time. The insolation at 1AU is 1340 W per square meter (if it is high noon and you don't have an atmosphere, and neither condition occurs on earth's surface), so it takes a lot of collection area. And that collection area is usually far from the target market, so transmission to the grid and the associated losses are a problem. Furthermore, photovoltaic panels are very inefficient, maxing out at 22% for the really advanced (chaching) test concepts and around 12-14% for commercial models, tops. Photovoltaic panels also require a semiconductor plant to fabricate and the fabrication process uses lovely chemicals like Arsenic. Home-based PV systems are quite expensive and in the long run don't pay for themselves unless heavily subsidized. In off-the-grid homes, banks of batteries (chaching) are required to store the energy until it is needed.

However.

The future of solar power is based on three enabling technologies:

- efficient solar thermal power (more efficient than the two-stage system shown in the photo in the link InfinitySquared provided)

- better energy storage systems (batteries suck)

- microwave power beaming

I am currently working on a passive magnetic bearing design - theoretically frictionless except for eddy currents in the magnetic field from speeds of zero to relativistic - which will enable a much more efficient turbine/generator system for solar thermal power (i.e only one moving part) and high storage capacity vacuum-sealed flywheels. It might take me another year to finish the design and prototype and refine and test the bearing, but when it's done I'll publish it on my blog for peer-review.

The third enabling technology is the real kicker. Microwave power beaming has been demonstrated in the lab but it needs to be scaled up to practical power delivery levels.

With just the first two technologies, solar power would become practical for suburbanites (70% of America), as the cost would be an order of magnitude less.

Add in that third technology, though, and you can start building solar power satellites - gigantic sheets of aluminum foil kilometers across in perpetual full sunlight focusing on a boiler, producing solar thermal electric power and beaming it anywhere desired. On such satellite 22 miles across would produce as much power (considering all losses at every conversion stage) as all current nuclear reactors worldwide, combined.

Ed Minchau...

Etertaining, yet, forget central distribution and big arrays. As you stated yourself..

[Quote]
And that collection area is usually far from the target market, so transmission to the grid and the associated losses are a problem. Furthermore, photovoltaic panels are very inefficient, maxing out at 22% for the really advanced (chaching) test concepts and around 12-14% for commercial models, tops.
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Also.. [Quote]
Microwave power beaming has been demonstrated in the lab.
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Tesla did that but RCA said no way to effect billing and collections... so forget it.

This..[Qoute]
a much more efficient turbine/generator system for solar thermal power (i.e only one moving part) and high storage capacity vacuum-sealed flywheels.
[/Quote]

May have real promise. These vertical flywheels sit in a repellent magnetic field. The main shaft not touching for a frictionless and almost heat free bearing.

Here's great graphics and Nasa pizazz. This link has 362 characters so shortened with TinyUrl.. we have..

tinyurl.com/yd98llq

and

http://www.pentadyne.com/

Instead of battery storage, this is energy stored in motion.

All this talk for wind this, solar that so be limited to research and development funded by primarily by private private industry in my opinion. Harper has, as you are all probably well aware a end to subsidy for "new" wind energy developments as well as a elimination of funding for climate reasearch, see http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/budget-deep-freeze-will-lead-to-end-of-climate-research-lab/article1495628/