Schwarzenegger Throws Switch At First New CA Solar Thermal Plant In 20 Yrs - ENS

[hatrack]

BAKERSFIELD, California, October 23, 2008 (ENS) - Turning a long line of mirrors to catch the California sunshine, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger today fired up the first solar thermal power plant built in California in nearly 20 years.

The new Kimberlina concentrating solar thermal power plant in Bakersfield was built by Ausra Inc., a large-scale solar thermal energy developer and manufacturer based in Palo Alto.

"This next generation solar power plant is further evidence that reliable, renewable and pollution-free technology is here to stay, and it will lead to more California homes and businesses powered by sunshine," said Governor Schwarzenegger. "Not only will this large-scale solar facility generate power to help us meet our renewable energy goals, it will also generate new jobs as California continues to pioneer the clean-tech industry."

Two years ago California passed a requiring a rollback in greenhouse gases to the 1990 level by the year 2020, an emissions reduction of 25 percent. The governor said the Kimberlina solar thermal power plant brings the state closer to achieving this goal. The first solar plant in the country to utilize Ausra's technology, at full output, the Kimberlina solar plant will generate five megawatts of electricity, enough to power 3,500 homes in central California.

EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2008/2008-10-23-092.asp



EDIT

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2008/2008-10-23-092.asp

[silverweb]

1. That's good news.

Let's hope this facility is just the first of many. :thumbsup:

[hatrack]

2. It's a tiny plant, but I would think thermal solar isn't all that hard to scale up

At least you're not depending on indium or selenium or coststoomuchium or any of the other rare earth elements as in PV construction.

[silverweb]

3. Being tiny can be a good thing.

It makes multiple small plants near population centers more feasible. This would help decentralize the production of power and reduce dependence on long-distance transmission (and consequent loss of efficiency).

Clean, efficient, decentralized solar thermal power generation. I like it! :)

[NNadir]

4. The scale up of any system in which heat exchange is required involves the "1/r" problem.

No matter what kind of system you are dealing with - solar, nuclear, or for that matter a system heated by dangerous fossil fuels - requires heat exchange through a surface area, which is always a function of two dimensions, heating a volume, which is a function of three dimensions. (If the dimensions are all equal, as in a sphere or a cube, then the area is a function of one variable squared, say, r, the volume of a function of one variable cubed. Thus the ratio of area/volume will always be a function of 1/r.)

In chemistry this has effects on the scalability of reactions, and in power plants, this has a profound effect on cost and efficiency. For a given heat capacity of a working fluid, one needs to add lots of area to deal with a slightly larger volume.

Given that many working fluids, including water, are corrosive at high temperatures, this also has implications on the lifetimes of these systems, and their reliabilities. This is why high energy density is good, and low energy density is highly problematic. A solar plant, even the best of them, is lucky to achieve 25% capacity utilization, no matter what form they take, thermal or PV. If one adds the restriction of maintenance and reliability, it is easy to see why these systems are seldom huge economic successes.

[Fledermaus]

5. Your post implies that a given volume would be heated at one time?

Other than a batch processes, heat exchangers have a flow rate, or volume/time. I prefer mass flow rate Kg/time.

As you pointed out there are several variables that effect heat exchanger size. Temperature is certainly one of them. Temperature is limited by the source temperature. In this case the sun. The operating temperature of these heat exchangers are limited by the materials used. Liquid sodium can be used as both a heat transfer fluid and storage medium, with a maximum operating temperature of 600°C (1112°F).

The heat exchanger volume for concentrating solar is actually quite small. The heat exchanger volume in this case is thin cylinder made of pipes.


The receiver is located at the top of a 90.8 m (298 ft) high tower and produces steam at 516°C (960°F) at a maximum rate of 42 MW (142 MBtu/h).

And yes when the sun goes down there is no power, but most utilities use nuclear as a base load.

[NNadir]

6. I amused myself writing about solar heat exchangers in some remarks

on another website: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/7/31/19158/5645/355/557972">Solar Energy Researchers Propose Liquid Metal System, Cite Anonymous Reference, and Bash...

A solar thermal powerplant, of course, not only requires not only a heat exchanger, but also requires a large surface area for heat collection.

These systems can and do fail, as the less-than-famous therminol fire at Solar One demonstrated.

To be perfectly frank, I am not a fan of sodium cooled nuclear reactors, most of which have had problematic operating histories, with the obvious exception of the Kazakh BN-350 reactor.

From my perspective, lead bismuth reactors are better choices as liquid metal systems. I don't know whether this better choice of liquid metals would apply to the solar thermal case.

Solar thermal plants are OK in my view, even if the solar one fire was a toxic mess, since even when they fail, they are not as dangerous as dangerous natural gas, which is dangerous even when it operates normally. But I really think they will be of marginal utility in the current crisis, since they, like all solar plants, give very little bang for the buck.

[roody]

7. When the sun goes down, the water is still hot.

[Fledermaus]

8. Yes, its still hot, but it needs to be hot enough to make steam.

Once the steam is run through a turbine, it is cooled and the heating process starts over. To run a solar thermal plant at night, would require a larger plant with a storage system. As the previous poster pointed out, the limiting factor with solar is the available surface area.

I'm not saying its good or bad. It just is. Its a design criteria.

However, as intermittent renewables are enter the existing grid, new opportunities are becoming available.