China constructs world's first dual-tower solar thermal plant — and it will help generate nearly 2 billion kWh annually
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17 replies
California has one of these solar thermal towers. Quite a spectacle as you drive by on the way back from Vegas.
Interestingly this one does not store energy for 24/7 operations like the one in China. As they are both smolten salt based, not sure why
https://www.theneweconomy.com/energy/the-unexpected-environmental-drawbacks-of-concentrated-solar-power-plants
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Oeh, thanks for posting, I know this from Fallout:New Vegas but never looked up the facillity it was based on.
I thought the facility was fake. XD
The one in CA doesn't have any salt storage, I think it was built before that tech had been flushed out
Geez, maybe develop some kind of screen or something
Damn, I saw a video on why they use molten salt years ago, something about the balance of cost, thermal mass, and the fact that it won't boil off like conventional liquids.
Two billion thousand. If only we'd come up with a better way to say that. Like some kind of system of metrics. Lmk if we come up with something
Don't even get me started on how Wh is energy divided by time multiplied by time.
Roughly 250,000 houses of power.
Oh. You're talking about kilowatts. They use kilowatts because they're trying to make it relatable to individual household usage.
Sometimes I wonder how often there are translation issues between languages, and this was a false positive in my brain, so I'll leave the original (edited) comment here:
In different language systems, "billion" means 1,000,000,000,000. What we call a billion, some call a thousand million. Each "billion" meaning a group of six zeros. Now Americans and other English speakers use"short" scale. French still uses "long" scale, as do other languages. So when they say "thousand billion," they probably are talking about what we English speakers call a quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000. (Checked a source, this is not a recent development)
Irritatingly, that's a quadrillion, not a quintillion.
Holy fuck, that is irritating. I was still in bed. Leaving it for posterity. Thanks for pointing it out. Even more irritating, I said each "billion" is a group of six zeros. Technical definitions aside, should have been "million".
Ever since I watched this Numberphile video, I've been disappointed at how widespread the "short" scale is.
Since the standard unit of electricity delivery is kWh, this notation makes way more sense to the average person than 2 TWh
Was wondering why multiple towers:
That reminds me, I need to pick up some power converters on my next trip to Tosche Station.
just thinking: why stop at 2? I suppose a grid of heat towers with mirrors beneath would provide maximum utilization of the solar radiation
Cost, probably. If you only have 200 million, you can't build 500 million worth of towers.
Could be transmission line limits too. Improving those can be its own project.