World’s Largest Solar Thermal Plant (340MW) Planned for Arizona
The Mohave Sun Power company is planning a project in Mohave County that could begin construction in the fourth quarter of 2010.
It will use 4,000 acres of land and employ concentrating solar power. Molten salt will be the storage medium.
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Mitchell Dong, the company’s CEO explained the technology, “It’s a parabolic trough, or a ‘U’-shaped mirror that reflects or concentrates the sunlight by a factor of 100 to this thin tube of transfer fluid. In this case, it’s a synthetic oil heated to 800 degrees by the sun’s light. There are rows and rows of these collectors and this 800 degree oil is pumped to a central power block, a central location where that hot oil goes to a boiler. It makes steam and drives a single steam turbine.” Of course the whole installation would use many arrays of parabolic troughs.
Energy generated by the plant would be purchased by California, Nevada, Arizona and Colorado. If the planning and construction processes go smoothly the plant could starting producing electricity by 2013. The planning actually has been going on for some time: “We have been working on this for over a year,” said Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson. (Mohave County has already had a different 200 MW project planned for construction.) This larger one will depend upon federal stimulus money for financing.
If approved and funded, the project could generate an estimated 1,500 jobs during the construction phase, and require 100 employees when operational. Such a large plant would also generate local tax revenues. Construction cost is estimated at two billion dollars.
(A nuclear power project requiring two reactors could cost 17 billion.)
In addition to the planning and funding challenges, the project must address the need for a large amount of water used for cooling purposes. The current solar power capacity of the US is over 9,000 MW, and it is growing steadily.
Image Credit: Richard Montoya, Public Domain
A nuclear power plant could cost $17 billion — but it would also generate, what 2 GW of power? What’s the price per kilowatt of a nuclear plant vs. a solar trough farm? How many people would building a dual-core nuclear plant employee?
Please, if you’re going to compare the energy sources, try to make it an apples-to-apples comparison.
Hmmm. No mention of the the proposed solar plant capacity factor, thermodynamic efficiency or $$/kW? Since the link to the nuclear plant cost estimate was thrown in at the end of the article, let’s think about it. A typical nuclear power plant produces power 24/7 for about 18-24 months, resulting in capacity factors above 90% for most plants. If you’re going to make a comparison of cost, let’s factor in the power output of the two different plants. The solar plant may cost $2B for 340MW. A new nuclear plant may cost $17B, but has two reactors each outputting about 1200MW, for a total of 2400MW. 2400/340 is a factor of about 7. So, a solar facility that could generate the same amount of power as a nuclear plant would potentially cost about $14B. The big issue is that the solar plant only produces power when the sun is shining. It’s not an apples to apples comparison. It will be interesting in the future to see how much these plants cost as opposed to cost estimates made 3-4 years in advance.
Do you have any better idea of what to do with 4,000 acres of DESERT.
They are not comparing apples to apples either. The DOE has estimated there are millions of gallons of radioactive waste in the US. We already have too much radioactive waste to deal with. We don’t need more.
solar AND nuclear boys!
…and may the best technology be increased proportionately.
“big issue is that the solar plant only produces power when the sun is shining.”
Nope, it says:
“Molten salt will be the storage medium.”
If done correctly they can have good nighttime storage at very low additional cost.
“We already have too much radioactive waste to deal with. We don’t need more.”
Start building reprocessing plants or high energy reactors and we can reprocess most of that waste back into fuel and use it up to generate power. …only leaving a much smaller amount of shorter half-life waste.
Why not use the $$ that we could use for Solar Plants and put it towards building a Energy Tower.
http://inventorspot.com/articles/energy_tower_power_15_earths_9102
Researchers claim it can make 15-20 times the total electricity the world uses a day. And it could also be used as a desalination device and may be able to reverse the effects of global warming. This method would cost just 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is less than a third of the cost of electricity in Israel today.
Mankind is too stupid and greedy to handle nuclear power safely. The folks at 3-Mile Island were warned for 3 years that they would have a leak because they discontinued much of their maintenance to save money. It leaked not because of technology, but because people can not be trusted to do the right thing. We are now building nuclear storage facilities that will supposedly last 20,000 years, but so far mankind only has the pyramids which have lasted 5,ooo years, are not much more than a pile of rocks and we still can’t figure out how they were made. How do we know it will last 20,000 years and how will be held accountable for it working? Our arrogance and greed disqualify us from using nuclear power.
@ jake the molten salt is gonna put off some radioactivity too anyway just like coal does. radioactivity is a fact of life now its time for us to get the fusion power we’ve been promised for 50+ years
I am a neophyte in the solar thermal power technology. I am trying to do some feasibility studies for a 20 MW plant in northern Ghana (West Africa) with insolation figures of about 5.5 kWh/m2-day, how can a better choice of it’s capacity factor be figured out?
There is a potential for distilled water blowing of the end of this type of power plant. In a dry state like AZ WTF are these short sighted people thinking? Blowing all that FRESH WATER back into the air! Build a capture facility to sale fresh water too!!!!