Friday, April 07, 2023
Concentrated solar power?
This idea has always been attractive and exciting but it has been around now for long enough for us to assess its practicality. And the one certain thing about it is that is trouble-prone and often fails. You can imagine how dicey anything is going to be that relies on moving molten salt round at at 550 degrees C. The one thing it is good at is eating up goverment subsidies
The best-known such project is the Ivanpah installation in California. See below for some history of it:
http://jonjayray.com/short/ivanpah.html
Concentrated solar power (CSP) uses mirrors to focus heat from the Sun to drive a steam turbine and generate electricity.
While CSP was once the great hope for replacing coal and gas-fired generation, it's now generally considered to have been eclipsed by cheaper forms of renewable generation, like solar panels and wind turbines.
Recently, however, it's been making a quiet comeback.
The reason for this boils down to three words that describe one of the major challenges of decarbonising the grid: overnight energy storage.
The CSIRO's Renewable Energy Storage Roadmap, released last week, predicts that by 2050, CSP will be the cheapest way to store energy for 8–24 hours.
Developing this "medium-duration" storage is a necessary step to switching off coal- and gas-fired generators that produce most of the power we use at night.
For this reason, CSP projects are starting to gather momentum.
The Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) recently approved $65 million in funding for a Sydney-based company, Vast Solar, to build the country's first commercial-scale CSP plant in Port Augusta, South Australia.
So how does CSP work?
And what role will CSP play in a net-zero Australia?
A technology that once rivalled solar panels
The idea of CSP is so simple that the technology hasn't changed much in decades.
Italy built the first CSP plant in 1968, and California installed the first commercial-scale array in 1981.
At the time, solar panels were expensive and mostly used in consumer electronics, whereas CSP relied on familiar technologies, such as steam turbines.
CSP plants also looked impressive: The popular "power tower" design featured a circular field of thousands of mirrors, focusing their light on the crown of a central tower, which in some cases soared taller than 200 metres.
But then, more efficient panels and larger factories drove down the price of photovoltaics (PV), while CSP plants ran into problems with leaking fluids and dirty mirrors.
In 2019, South Australia scrapped a $650 million project to build Australia's first commercial-scale CSP after the company behind the project revealed it could not raise funding.
"It's been a bit of a tale of woe in Australia," said Keith Lovegrove, director of the Australian Solar Thermal Energy Association. "We've actually managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory a couple of times."
As of 2021, the global installed capacity of CSP was 6.8 gigawatts, which was many hundreds of times less than the figure for photovoltaics.
But CSP is not dead. Spain, Morocco, South Africa, Israel and other countries are using CSP in their grids, while China has dozens of projects underway.
"China is the most active place at this, at this very moment," Dr Lovegrove said.
CSP cannot generate daytime electricity as cheaply as solar PV, but it has one advantage: built-in storage.
The heat from the Sun is stored in a medium such as molten salt. When the Sun goes down, this stored heat can be tapped to drive the turbine and generate electricity.
This combination of generation and storage makes CSP "dispatchable", meaning the power can be sent to the grid when it's needed. "The whole point about CSP is that it's dispatchable renewable generation," Dr Lovegrove said.
"It's generation you can have when you need it at night, or peak periods. It comes at a higher price because it's got this added value and complexity."
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Germans Overwhelmingly Fed Up With Move To Green Energies As Massive Costs Loom
Most Germans used to be enthusiastic supporters of the country’s Energiewende (transition to renewable energies), especially in the early days when they were brazenly misled about the endeavor’s humungous costs and technical limitations.
Those days are gone.
As the government gears up to try to pass legislation that would force most homeowners to carry out extensive renovation to their homes and upgrades to their heating systems, the Energiewende is suddenly no longer looking like a bargain and is no longer welcome by the vast majority of Germans, according to a Forsa survey. The sun and wind don’t deliver energy for free after all.
The current Forsa survey on the subject of the transition to green energies gives the German government a catastrophic report card. Almost 90 percent of Germans no longer believe in the so-called energy transition – a historically low figure. In a similar survey in 2011, almost 40 percent still hoped for its success. Among the few who are convinced is Chancellor Scholz. ‘We can and will succeed in the energy transition,’ he recently announced in Berlin.
German industry, on the other hand, is less confident, warning of a total exodus of the manufacturing sector due to the expected electricity shortage and enormous energy prices.”
AUF 1 reports here at its website that “only ten percent still believe that Germany’s energy needs can indeed be covered by sun and wind energy”.
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Seize property to build wind and solar farms, says JP Morgan chief
The chief executive of JP Morgan has suggested that governments should seize private land to build wind and solar farms in order to meet net zero targets.
Jamie Dimon, the longstanding boss of the Wall Street titan who donates to the Democratic Party, said green energy projects must be fast-tracked as the window for averting the most costly impacts of global climate change is closing.
In his annual shareholder letter, Mr Dimon said: “Permitting reforms are desperately needed to allow investment to be done in any kind of timely way.
“We may even need to evoke eminent domain – we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.”
Eminent domain is when a government or state agency carries out a compulsory purchase of private property for public use and compensates the asset holder.
The proposal is unusual, especially coming from the longest-serving chief executive of a Wall Street bank, and could stir controversy as states in the US seek to crackdown on seizure orders.
In Iowa, state legislators on Monday passed a bill that aims to protect private property owners from eminent domain use by carbon pipeline companies.
Mr Dimon said the war in Ukraine was redefining the way countries and companies plan for energy security.
He added: “The need to provide energy affordably and reliably for today, as well as make the necessary investments to decarbonise for tomorrow, underscores the inextricable links between economic growth, energy security and climate change. We need to do more, and we need to do so immediately.
“To expedite progress, governments, businesses and non-governmental organisations need to align across a series of practical policy changes that comprehensively address fundamental issues that are holding us back.
“Massive global investment in clean energy technologies must be done and must continue to grow year-over-year.”
In the UK, reforms to Solvency 2 rules are expected to unleash a wave of investment in renewable energy projects after insurers and pension funds complained that EU-era regulations obstructed their ability to invest in infrastructure.
Mr Dimon’s comments also come as tensions between investors grow about how to tackle climate change.
In December, Vanguard, the world’s second largest asset manager, pulled out of Mark Carney’s global climate change alliance, saying the group’s full-blooded commitment to tackling climate change resulted “in confusion about the views of individual investment firms”.
Mr Dimon said: “Polarisation, paralysis and basic lack of analysis cannot keep us from addressing one of the most complex challenges of our time. Diverse stakeholders need to come together, seeking the best answers through engagement around our common interest.
“Bolstering growth must go hand in hand with both securing an energy future and meeting science-based climate targets for future generations.”
The banking chief also hit out against regulators in the wake of the banking crisis last month triggered by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).
He said the collapse of SVB and the government-engineered takeover of Credit Suisse by its biggest rival risked undermining confidence in the sector.
He added: “Ironically, banks were incented to own very safe government securities because they were considered highly liquid by regulators and carried very low capital requirements.”
Mr Dimon also warned regulators against tightening rules for lenders following the recent market turmoil.
He said: “It is extremely important that we avoid knee-jerk, whack-a-mole or politically motivated responses that often result in achieving the opposite of what people intended.
“Now is the time to deeply think through and coordinate complex regulations to accomplish the goals we want, eliminating costly inefficiencies and contradictory policies.
“Very often, rules are put in place in one part of the framework without appreciating their consequences in combination with other regulations.”
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British Consumers face huge price rises for green power
Renewable energy operators have just been awarded huge prices rises, putting further pressure on hard-pressed consumers.
Generators in the Contracts for Difference subsidy scheme get an annual increase in the guaranteed ‘strike prices’ they receive for their output.
This year, many have received price rises of more than 10%. For example, the huge Hornsea 1 offshore windfarm saw an 11% price increase, which will boost its revenue by nearly £100 million per year.(1) Hornsea 2, due to come on stream in 2024, had a price rise of 14%.
With market prices for electricity now below £100 per megawatt hour, several windfarms have strike prices worth £209. There are several tidal power stations in planning which have been promised higher prices still. The Drax biomass power station has seen a 12% increase to £142.
Commenting on the news, Net Zero Watch’s deputy director Andrew Montford said:
"For years, ministers and civil servants have been telling the public that renewables are cheap. Make no mistake, they have been engaged in a cynical deception of the British public.”
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My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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