Is solar PV's success solely due to its mass production capabilities?

[essenmein]

[Moderator Note: This subtopic split off from https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/renewable-energy-meets-power-grid-operations-comments.970843/]

But at some point, whether policy makers choose to deal with it or not, that tilted playing field will start affecting solar. At that point, someone will build a new solar plant that causes other solar plants to have to curtail production on their best days. That's when solar implementation hits the ceiling.

This is more so a problem for solar PV. Some of the recent solar thermal + molten salt storage systems would not suffer from this problem.

eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar_Thermosolar_Plant
(While I don't think solar PV is a good idea for large scale energy production for a few reasons, I have quite the opposite opinion on solar thermal+storage!)

 

[russ_watters]

This is more so a problem for solar PV. Some of the recent solar thermal + molten salt storage systems would not suffer from this problem.

eg:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemasolar_Thermosolar_Plant
(While I don't think solar PV is a good idea for large scale energy production for a few reasons, I have quite the opposite opinion on solar thermal+storage!)

...sorry to hear that. Solar thermal has not shown it is viable, which is why implementation has basically halted.

 

[essenmein]

...sorry to hear that. Solar thermal has not shown it is viable, which is why implementation has basically halted.

The linked wiki has a different opinion on that?
"After the second year of operation the plant has exceeded projected expectations. In the summer of 2013, the plant has achieved continuous production, operating 24 hours per day for 36 consecutive days, a result which no other solar plant has attained so far. "

Those are not the type of words you'd use if its not viable...

The big problem I see, esp with renewables, is tribalism, people have their personal favorite, be it wind, solar PV etc, and then they back their team. So its hard to determine if the reported lack of viability is an honest engineering evaluation or a tribal opinion based on how it fits with their own favored ideas.

Mind you I'm not involved with any of them so my opinion is based on what I read and knowing how things work.

Whats interesting is that the specs for the thermal storage capacity on that plant is 300MWh(e), imagine the size of a Li ion battery to store 300MWhr?

 

[essenmein]

Interesting, seems the solar thermal with no storage is not so good, but the thermal+storage is still interesting, and if the few articles I just read are true then on an uptick.

Article also touches on grid issues in calif with large amounts of renewables, and the key differentiation with the CSP + storage is the storage.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/...4-hour-renewable-energy-crescent-dunes-nevada

 

[PeterDonis]

my understanding is that the motivation is the CO2

I think it depends on who you talk to.

 

[russ_watters]

The linked wiki has a different opinion on that?
"After the second year of operation the plant has exceeded projected expectations. In the summer of 2013, the plant has achieved continuous production, operating 24 hours per day for 36 consecutive days, a result which no other solar plant has attained so far. "

Those are not the type of words you'd use if its not viable...

That's a fact, not an opinion, but a very specific and limited fact about a specific and very small project. It does not suggest viability to me without broader context.

Here's how solar thermal has done in the USA, vs. solar PV, over the past 10 years:
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.php?t=epmt_1_01_a
Graphed:

So to summarize, in 2011 solar PV and solar thermal were roughly equal in the USA, but today solar PV produces 25x as much electricity as solar thermal. The plant you linked produces 110 GWH per year, which would be way too small to show on the graph; it's 1/800th what solar PV produces in the USA.

Perhaps things will change as storage becomes more of a problem (or perhaps people will move away from solar altogether when storage becomes a problem...), but for now solar thermal is a total nothingburger. I can't say I know the details of why it's failed - I'm more concerned with "what" than "why" - but here's an article discussing it:
https://principia-scientific.org/the-failure-of-solar-tower-thermal-energy-storage/

 

[OCR]

solar thermal is a total nothingburger.

I'm not sure that statement is completely accurate ?

With the proper (?) incentives (?) . . . ?Could not the "streamers" be classified, and then consumed, as total. . . birdburgers?

It does not suggest viability to me without broader context.

Would my above, renewable and recycling scenario, satisfy your requirement for

broader context ?Oh, and for even broader context that suggests viability. . . the product is precooked. .
Carry on. .

.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not sure that statement is completely accurate ?

With the proper (?) incentives (?) . . . ?

I mean it is a nothing burger *today*. You can make anything significant if you give it enough incentives. I don't know, though, to what extent it has been incentivized already. I don't know, for example, if the incentives for solar PV apply to solar thermal, but I would guess yes.

 

[essenmein]

That's a fact, not an opinion, but a very specific and limited fact about a specific and very small project. It does not suggest viability to me without broader context.

Well what it shows is that the concept does work. Whats not clear to me is the overnight capital cost per MW, this is important, you make a lot of things work with large sums of money, but that doesn't mean they are viable.

The only reason PV is viable is because its a thing that is easily broken down into a manageable size chunk that can be then heavily mass produced.

So where solar PV gets its benefit is not that its somehow a better process of making electricity, its not, its just cheap to make the panels in a large factory.

If you had to make single large solar panels as a custom part every time solar PV would not even be discussed as a solution.

What this means is the key to success is less about the underlying technology, but can it be shrunk into small enough repeatable chunks that you can run down a factory and make millions of the same thing rather than one really complicated large thing. This is where the cost reductions come from.

IMO it'd be cool if we took the solar power thing to its natural conclusion and put both the nuclear powered photon source and the PV panels into one plant that can run in the dark 24hrs a day.