As you know PHES is geographically constrained. In any case I'm not talking about grid scale storage. I'm talking small scale (i.e. residential/commercial bldgs). I can't fathom it not becoming part of the equation in some capacity in some parts of the US.
Parking lots for Solar Energy?
- Thread starter buster
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Just noticed this yesterday on Master Card parking lot.
Walmarts have a lot of solar and passive light projects on their store roofs, which is where this stuff belongs
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Air conditioning can be passively driven directly directly by heat, if panels get hot they are a good place for passive ac loops to go underneath
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
The question is whether it's worthwhile. Batteries are short-lived, resource intensive, present a fire risk and to what end? It's really only useful (small scale) if you intentionally over-build solar, which, IMHO, doesn't make much sense and electricity costs have to be obscene, which shouldn't be the goal for any system that's trying to drive broad electrification of society. You end up saddled with a system of perpetual replacement which has considerable cost associated with it as well. Batteries for mobile applications at least are a logical choice, given your other options in that realm.
Yes, PHES is absolutely geographically constrained, but it's also the best large storage medium we have access to.
We are very good at delivering electricity where and when we need it. The push behind batteries is to accommodate sources that don't, and trying to make it so they do. Instead of trying to capitalize on the strengths of certain technologies, integrating them where they make sense, we are attempting to force technologies into roles that they may not be well suited for, and building Rube Goldberg systems around them to try and make it work. This is guaranteed to be both expensive and fragile.
PHES was originally developed to compliment nuclear capacity, where surplus baseload could be socked away overnight and then used to cover demand peaks during the day. This is a complimentary arrangement. Wind turbines tend to pair reasonably well with large reservoir hydro in somewhat the same way, as it provides the long term storage necessary to deal with the long-duration lulls inherent with wind power.
Integrating wind into a grid that doesn't have large reservoir hydro results in liberal use of fast ramp gas, which sets a floor on how far you can reduce emissions. Batteries are incapable of providing the level of storage needed and, if we are being honest, so does PHES, because the required duration is just too long.
Solar on the other hand, as long as you are shaving peaks with it, works quite well, and you only need large storage for the morning/evening ramps. If we are at all concerned with resource scarcity, this should, where able, be met with PHES, which can provide the ~8hrs of storage needed to work with this arrangement. But then of course you also need substantial clean baseload, which is either hydro and/or nuclear.
This conclusion is slowly being arrived at in many jurisdictions globally. Ontario now has two PHES projects under consideration, we are upgrading hydro dams and building new nuclear while refurbishing existing. No new investment in wind is being made, I expect we may see some more solar. Poland, Europe's king of coal, has just signed massive contracts for new nuclear reactors. The energy crisis has laid bare the vulnerability of being dependent on the weather and Russian gas.
We do have the VRE experiment happening in Australia, so it will be quite interesting to see how that plays out.
In hot and cold area the best “storage “ is the thermal requirements of the home, overheat or overcool during off peak and let the temperature bleed off during peak.
I typically don’t cool or heat until things get extremely hot or frozen but for those who do otherwise…
I typically don’t cool or heat until things get extremely hot or frozen but for those who do otherwise…
Energy density.....
Matters..... And 99 plus percent of people can't conceptualize it.
AZjeff
$50 Site Donor 2023
Must not be married...
Mostly because the environment groups don't want the desert destroyed. Also those of us that live here don't want to look at panels all day.
The big solar farm south of Vegas has been an environmental disaster. From baked birds to 1000's of tortious killed by moving them.
Well, I also want $100 billion in my bank account but just because we do or don't want something doesn't really mean diddly squat in the grand scheme of things.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
You are being far too kind. ALL of the solar thermal projects have been EPIC boondoggles. We even had one here in Canada in Alberta, it, like almost all of them, went bankrupt and was shutdown.
I've heard nuclear dubbed "a very complex way to boil water" which is arguably pretty accurate. I supposed we could dub solar thermal "the most expensive and worst possible way to boil water".
I guess we should throw some cost numbers out there. A 40 MW plant was recently built east of Calgary, Alberta. It cost just over 40 million US dollars equivalent and puts out 40 MW or a million per mega watt or a buck a watt. The solar insolence is about 1/3 that of California so the same plant should produce 3 times the power in California.
Using 6 hours per day and assuming the 40 MW nameplate meant an average that is 240 MWhrs per day. The price of power might be $100 per MWhr, resulting in $24,000 worth of power per day. That is $8.8 million worth of power per year for a 22% rate of return. However, that doesn’t include paying anything for the land, and doesn’t include interruptions, maintenance etc. In addition the panels will deteriorate over the years. I’d say 22% is the upside at current power rates. I understand some have gone bankrupt but with free land and the latest panels it might work. If I have my numbers wrong, let me know.
By the way, they graze sheep underneath as the panels are tilted and not continuous.
Using 6 hours per day and assuming the 40 MW nameplate meant an average that is 240 MWhrs per day. The price of power might be $100 per MWhr, resulting in $24,000 worth of power per day. That is $8.8 million worth of power per year for a 22% rate of return. However, that doesn’t include paying anything for the land, and doesn’t include interruptions, maintenance etc. In addition the panels will deteriorate over the years. I’d say 22% is the upside at current power rates. I understand some have gone bankrupt but with free land and the latest panels it might work. If I have my numbers wrong, let me know.
By the way, they graze sheep underneath as the panels are tilted and not continuous.
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
THERMAL solar my boy, THERMAL. That's the plant Chris was remarking on (probably Ivanpah), which looks like this:I guess we should throw some cost numbers out there. A 40 MW plant was recently built east of Calgary, Alberta. It cost just over 40 million US dollars equivalent and puts out 40 MW or a million per mega watt or a buck a watt. The solar insolence is about 1/3 that of California so the same plant should produce 3 times the power in California.
Using 6 hours per day and assuming the 40 MW nameplate meant an average that is 240 MWhrs per day. The price of power might be $100 per MWhr, resulting in $24,000 worth of power per day. That is $8.8 million worth of power per year for a 22% rate of return. However, that doesn’t include paying anything for the land, and doesn’t include interruptions, maintenance etc. In addition the panels will deteriorate over the years. I’d say 22% is the upside at current power rates. I understand some have gone bankrupt but with free land and the latest panels it might work. If I have my numbers wrong, let me know.
By the way, they graze sheep underneath as the panels are tilted and not continuous.
The one in Alberta that is no longer operational was in Medicine Hat:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/solar-thermal-power-plant-mothballed-medicine-hat-1.5137428
Nowhere near as large or expensive as Ivanpah or Crescent Dunes (it was only 1MW), but just as much of a boondoggle, only operating for 5 years.
It's 13x more expensive than the project you cited.
Yep. Thermal is a boondoggle. Enemy those rooftop hot water panels for water heating are obsolete. Replacing them with power producing panels is a better proposition.
Works especially well with a heat pump, overheat during the day when it's at it's most efficient and let it cool down at night.
There used to be a few houses in this area that had those about 30 years ago, but they are all gone now, probably having been removed when the roof got replaced.
Regarding post #86, I purposely overheat the walkout basement level to 75 F with an airtight stove in the morning them let it contribute to heating the upstairs during the afternoon.
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That's a nice theory, but the increases in so called "renewables" has not demonstrably reduced the use of fossil fuel power production. It has not even kept up with the growth in demand.
The main effect of this law will be a severe lack of parking lots.
This thing never did hit capacity and burned some ridiculous amount of nat gas....THERMAL solar my boy, THERMAL. That's the plant Chris was remarking on (probably Ivanpah), which looks like this:
View attachment 130157
The one in Alberta that is no longer operational was in Medicine Hat:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/solar-thermal-power-plant-mothballed-medicine-hat-1.5137428
Nowhere near as large or expensive as Ivanpah or Crescent Dunes (it was only 1MW), but just as much of a boondoggle, only operating for 5 years.
It's 13x more expensive than the project you cited.
A panel farm would have worked better.
If I recall it has yet to hit its numbers.
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