First Hyrbid Solar Thermal Power Plant In Florida!!

[Decus]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

 

[HenryBHough]

Solar energy is a nice hobby for those who can afford it.

Windmill energy can be fun if the person building it puts on a big enough plot so flying blades don't endanger the innocent.

Birds? Bats?

Hell, if they're stupid enough to trespass on a righteous windmill owner's site then let 'em die. Now that would call into question the R.W.O.'s convictions if they were also against capital punishment for criminals.

 

[Silhouette]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

Once again you're trying to pretend one type of solar thermal plant is like another.

Here are the two types you are talking about. The first is the retarded type at Ivanpah:

That type above, likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding as "solar thermal" uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat. The tank suspended WAY up in the air, again, hundreds of feet, is so far away from the reflective surfaces that when you consider all the atmospheric dust and just diffusion since no mirror can perfectly project flat reflected light that distance...it's all a joke. It was engineered ON PURPOSE to fail.

Here's the type that is at Martin Solar in Florida. It is completely different. It uses concave mirrors that actually concentrate the solar rays that are directed with deadly heat straight onto an oil-filled tube just mere feet away from the concentrators:

You might as well be comparing solar thermal for cost with solar photovoltaics as the two types of solar thermal.

Seriously, I didn't even pass physics all that well and even I can see that those huge/distant circular flat mirror arrays were engineered to fail.

Not the other kind though, they are far cheaper, take up less real estate and the temperatures they reach far exceed the built to fail type. I think those circular jokes only get that tank way way way at the top of the tower to reach like 80 degrees fahrenheit or something..lol..

Not so with linear parabolic solar thermal. It heats the oil in the tube very quickly to 300 degrees celsius, which is many times hotter than boiling water.

 

[flacaltenn]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

Once again you're trying to pretend one type of solar thermal plant is like another.

Here are the two types you are talking about. The first is the retarded type at Ivanpah:

That type above, likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding as "solar thermal" uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat. The tank suspended WAY up in the air, again, hundreds of feet, is so far away from the reflective surfaces that when you consider all the atmospheric dust and just diffusion since no mirror can perfectly project flat reflected light that distance...it's all a joke. It was engineered ON PURPOSE to fail.

Here's the type that is at Martin Solar in Florida. It is completely different. It uses concave mirrors that actually concentrate the solar rays that are directed with deadly heat straight onto an oil-filled tube just mere feet away from the concentrators:

You might as well be comparing solar thermal for cost with solar photovoltaics as the two types of solar thermal.

Seriously, I didn't even pass physics all that well and even I can see that those huge/distant circular flat mirror arrays were engineered to fail.

Not the other kind though, they are far cheaper, take up less real estate and the temperatures they reach far exceed the built to fail type. I think those circular jokes only get that tank way way way at the top of the tower to reach like 80 degrees fahrenheit or something..lol..

Not so with linear parabolic solar thermal. It heats the oil in the tube very quickly to 300 degrees celsius, which is many times hotter than boiling water.

Hey. Its all interesting from a science / engineering standpoint. But it aint an ALTERNATIVE. its an expensive daytime supplement.. if you look at Cali statistics, user load at 10PM is 80% of daytime peak in the summer. That means that daytime peaking with more than 10 or 15% solar is way too much.

I agree that at 1st glance, trying to focus into a single beam LOOKS like overdesign. But the prob with MARTIN type of thermal solar is the miles of plumbing that is exposed so thatthermodynamically, its LOSING a whole crapload of heat as it winds thru the mirror field.
My bet is that the Tower concept is 2 or 3 times more efficient per acre of mirrors.. Especially on those cold frosty days.. Maybe the ONLY place you get away with that much exposed plumbing would be Florida.

 

[Silhouette]

Hey. Its all interesting from a science / engineering standpoint. But it aint an ALTERNATIVE. its an expensive daytime supplement.. if you look at Cali statistics, user load at 10PM is 80% of daytime peak in the summer. That means that daytime peaking with more than 10 or 15% solar is way too much.

I agree that at 1st glance, trying to focus into a single beam LOOKS like overdesign. But the prob with MARTIN type of thermal solar is the miles of plumbing that is exposed so thatthermodynamically, its LOSING a whole crapload of heat as it winds thru the mirror field.
My bet is that the Tower concept is 2 or 3 times more efficient per acre of mirrors.. Especially on those cold frosty days.. Maybe the ONLY place you get away with that much exposed plumbing would be Florida.

The Tower concept is a pile of crap and you know it. Now you're just flat out lying.

The oil in the pipe will lose some heat from the 300 degrees celsius it reaches on its way to the heat exchangers/turbines? Good. Wouldn't want to stress the welds too much before that searing hot oil reaches the heat exchangers.

"plumbing that is exposed..." Ever hear of insulation?...lol Nice try... Next?

 

[Decus]

Hey. Its all interesting from a science / engineering standpoint. But it aint an ALTERNATIVE. its an expensive daytime supplement.. if you look at Cali statistics, user load at 10PM is 80% of daytime peak in the summer. That means that daytime peaking with more than 10 or 15% solar is way too much.

I agree that at 1st glance, trying to focus into a single beam LOOKS like overdesign. But the prob with MARTIN type of thermal solar is the miles of plumbing that is exposed so thatthermodynamically, its LOSING a whole crapload of heat as it winds thru the mirror field.
My bet is that the Tower concept is 2 or 3 times more efficient per acre of mirrors.. Especially on those cold frosty days.. Maybe the ONLY place you get away with that much exposed plumbing would be Florida.

The Tower concept is a pile of crap and you know it. Now you're just flat out lying.

The oil in the pipe will lose some heat from the 300 degrees celsius it reaches on its way to the heat exchangers/turbines? Good. Wouldn't want to stress the welds too much before that searing hot oil reaches the heat exchangers.

"plumbing that is exposed..." Ever hear of insulation?...lol Nice try... Next?

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

 

[Spiderman]

Hey. Its all interesting from a science / engineering standpoint. But it aint an ALTERNATIVE. its an expensive daytime supplement.. if you look at Cali statistics, user load at 10PM is 80% of daytime peak in the summer. That means that daytime peaking with more than 10 or 15% solar is way too much.

I agree that at 1st glance, trying to focus into a single beam LOOKS like overdesign. But the prob with MARTIN type of thermal solar is the miles of plumbing that is exposed so thatthermodynamically, its LOSING a whole crapload of heat as it winds thru the mirror field.
My bet is that the Tower concept is 2 or 3 times more efficient per acre of mirrors.. Especially on those cold frosty days.. Maybe the ONLY place you get away with that much exposed plumbing would be Florida.

The Tower concept is a pile of crap and you know it. Now you're just flat out lying.

The oil in the pipe will lose some heat from the 300 degrees celsius it reaches on its way to the heat exchangers/turbines? Good. Wouldn't want to stress the welds too much before that searing hot oil reaches the heat exchangers.

"plumbing that is exposed..." Ever hear of insulation?...lol Nice try... Next?

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

To power the 9 million housing units in Florida during the day only you would need over 400000 acres of solar mirrors. that's just under one third of the total acreage of the everglades.

So go ahead and propose filling in 400000 acres of everglades national park to build a solar farm and see how you do with that. Maybe if she uses the same logic she does with deserts she can convince them that it will actually be good for the ecosystem.

 

[Silhouette]

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

The Martin plant had that capacity when it was just natural gas too. What's your point? That natural gas cannot be relied on to power more than 11,000 homes?
...lol..

Next?

 

[Spiderman]

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

The Martin plant had that capacity when it was just natural gas too. What's your point? That natural gas cannot be relied on to power more than 11,000 homes?
...lol..

Next?

You don't need 500 acres to power homes with natural gas AND natural gas works at night.

 

[Decus]

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

The Martin plant had that capacity when it was just natural gas too. What's your point? That natural gas cannot be relied on to power more than 11,000 homes?
...lol..

Next?

Just for fun - how viable do you think this technology would be in the Northern states?

 

[HenryBHough]

Let these loons experiment!

So long as they use only their own money and property to play.

 

[Silhouette]

The Martin plant despite its size is only capable of powering 11,000 homes. Can you tell how many like plants you would need to power the state of Florida? If efficiency and money are no object, you have a real winner with this design.

.

The Martin plant had that capacity when it was just natural gas too. What's your point? That natural gas cannot be relied on to power more than 11,000 homes?
...lol..

Next?

You don't need 500 acres to power homes with natural gas AND natural gas works at night.

You don't need 500 acres for those solar arrays either. The picture below and the scale with the roads for comparison show the array field is no more than 80 acres, maybe. The rest of the 500 acres is natural gas facilities, the transformer arrays that any plant would have, not just solar thermal to transmit the power out of the plant to the community. The rest? Wetland mitigation from the levees and water all around the rest of what looks like the total 500 acres. The natural gas facility ate up all that real estate before they installed the solar thermal arrays. So your point is a strawman. Small price to pay to have an 80 acre tract near an 11,000 home community to supply their power during the day for 300 days a year without burning a gram of carbon fuel and only using sunshine.

I haven't even gotten into the topic of the saline heat storage tanks for continuous power generation through the nite from stored solar heat captured in the day. I was satisifed to let the carbon industry at least keep a little toe hold in the industry. But if you want to talk about those nite-generators from solar thermal...we can go there?

 

[Andylusion]

Dude, I don't give a crap if you spend more time outdoors. Are you outside RIGHT NOW?!? No, you are in a building. Are you using power the requires a power plant? YES. Are you using a computer that has been manufactured somewhere in a big manufacturing plant? YES.

And yes, as a matter of hypocrisy, you can most certainly demand that 'unspoiled places' remain unspoiled denying other people housing and places of employment that you enjoy. Screw everyone else, I have my stuff, and no one else can have stuff of their own.

See years ago, where you have you house, was prior an unspoiled place. It was because other people came to that area, and "spoiled" it, that YOU HAVE A PLACE TO LIVE. It was because other people came and spoiled that area with a power plant, THAT YOU HAVE POWER TO USE.

If some other person years before, had come around and demanded that where you are was "unspoiled", you would be homeless without a place to live right now.

What you are in fact doing, is demanding that future generations not have the home, utilities, and employment that you enjoy today, in the name of leaving it "unspoiled".

I am not denying anyone anything.

I am proposing more efficient power than wasting 22 acres of land to power one home for part of the day

And since no one is talking about developing the desert or our national parks for housing I fail to see what the fuck your panties are in a bunch over.

And to think that one must live outside in order to protect wilderness without being a hypocrite is beyond stupid to the point of mental retardation.

OK. I haven't seen you yet post a plan for that. Perhaps you would like to sign onto using all the waste roof space in our commercial building in the cities for PV Solar? That would create a big boost of power exactly during the time of highest usage.

The amount of power created by a PV panel, is a fraction of the power required to make the panel. If you want to reduce the amount of electricity used by society, you should be against making PV panels.

 

[Andylusion]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

Once again you're trying to pretend one type of solar thermal plant is like another.

Here are the two types you are talking about. The first is the retarded type at Ivanpah:

That type above, likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding as "solar thermal" uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat. The tank suspended WAY up in the air, again, hundreds of feet, is so far away from the reflective surfaces that when you consider all the atmospheric dust and just diffusion since no mirror can perfectly project flat reflected light that distance...it's all a joke. It was engineered ON PURPOSE to fail.

Here's the type that is at Martin Solar in Florida. It is completely different. It uses concave mirrors that actually concentrate the solar rays that are directed with deadly heat straight onto an oil-filled tube just mere feet away from the concentrators:

You might as well be comparing solar thermal for cost with solar photovoltaics as the two types of solar thermal.

Seriously, I didn't even pass physics all that well and even I can see that those huge/distant circular flat mirror arrays were engineered to fail.

Not the other kind though, they are far cheaper, take up less real estate and the temperatures they reach far exceed the built to fail type. I think those circular jokes only get that tank way way way at the top of the tower to reach like 80 degrees fahrenheit or something..lol..

Not so with linear parabolic solar thermal. It heats the oil in the tube very quickly to 300 degrees celsius, which is many times hotter than boiling water.

Isn't it amazing how before a project turns out to have negative effects, it's sticking it to "big oil" and such... and then magically, when it's killing birds, or bald eagles, its suddenly "likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding". You people are a joke.

Nevertheless, that technology appears to be a joke as well. The power plant using the hybrid system, is only 75 MegaWatts which cost $400 Million to build. We have coal fired plants that cost half that much and produce 2 GigaWatts of power.

Worse yet, the solar part of the power plant (which also runs on gas), has only produced about 25% of it's capacity. So it's not even making the 75 MegaWatts it was designed for.

http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...y-dud-20120310_1_solar-plants-fpl-power-plant

Company officials said the lagging performance was caused by the disastrous spill of an industrial fluid used to conduct heat, outages at an interconnected power plant, and ongoing difficulties in responding to swings in production between sunny and cloudy skies.​

Really? So pumping extremely hot 740º industrial fluids through 500 acres of pressurized pipes, can cause a spill, and massive clean up, while shutting the plant down? Now who woulda thunk it....?

And having solar power something, in any place other than a desert, is a waste. "oh sorry, it was cloudy today. Power is out until tomorrow."... another $400 Million dollar waste of money, paid for by the tax payers, and promoted by the looney left.

 

[HenryBHough]

Think of all the minimum wage jobs for illegals in keeping those mirrors at least minimally functional. I mean simply cleaning them.

Now I have never tried making electricity with mirrors - or even with smoke and mirrors - but I have worked a lot with mountain-top solar panels. The only option up there 'cause they ain't no powerlines and the life expectancy of windmill blades is 30 days or one ice storm whichever comes soonest. The second most expensive part of maintaining the installations is replacing the batteries every couple of years. The MOST expensive part is the helicopter trip three times each year to clean the glass. Especially after the migratory bird season. For that trip we have to wear filter masks 'cause bird shit carries some of the damndest diseases!

 

[asterism]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

Once again you're trying to pretend one type of solar thermal plant is like another.

Here are the two types you are talking about. The first is the retarded type at Ivanpah:

That type above, likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding as "solar thermal" uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat. The tank suspended WAY up in the air, again, hundreds of feet, is so far away from the reflective surfaces that when you consider all the atmospheric dust and just diffusion since no mirror can perfectly project flat reflected light that distance...it's all a joke. It was engineered ON PURPOSE to fail.

Here's the type that is at Martin Solar in Florida. It is completely different. It uses concave mirrors that actually concentrate the solar rays that are directed with deadly heat straight onto an oil-filled tube just mere feet away from the concentrators:

You might as well be comparing solar thermal for cost with solar photovoltaics as the two types of solar thermal.

Seriously, I didn't even pass physics all that well and even I can see that those huge/distant circular flat mirror arrays were engineered to fail.

Not the other kind though, they are far cheaper, take up less real estate and the temperatures they reach far exceed the built to fail type. I think those circular jokes only get that tank way way way at the top of the tower to reach like 80 degrees fahrenheit or something..lol..

Not so with linear parabolic solar thermal. It heats the oil in the tube very quickly to 300 degrees celsius, which is many times hotter than boiling water.

I already compared the cost of parabolic vs. photovoltaic.

Mirrors:

"Typically what we're seeing is $2.50 to $4 a watt (for) capital cost," Weihl said. "So a 250 megawatt installation would be $600 million to a $1 billion. It's a lot of money."

link

Photovoltaic:

The cost of installing photovoltaic solar arrays has dropped to $3 per watt of electricity they produce - about the same as coal-powered plants cost to build - creating a watershed moment in the development of clean energy, experts say.

link

It doesn't appear to be any cheaper, but I could be wrong.

 

[asterism]

The Martin plant had that capacity when it was just natural gas too. What's your point? That natural gas cannot be relied on to power more than 11,000 homes?
...lol..

Next?

You don't need 500 acres to power homes with natural gas AND natural gas works at night.

You don't need 500 acres for those solar arrays either. The picture below and the scale with the roads for comparison show the array field is no more than 80 acres, maybe. The rest of the 500 acres is natural gas facilities, the transformer arrays that any plant would have, not just solar thermal to transmit the power out of the plant to the community. The rest? Wetland mitigation from the levees and water all around the rest of what looks like the total 500 acres. The natural gas facility ate up all that real estate before they installed the solar thermal arrays. So your point is a strawman. Small price to pay to have an 80 acre tract near an 11,000 home community to supply their power during the day for 300 days a year without burning a gram of carbon fuel and only using sunshine.

I haven't even gotten into the topic of the saline heat storage tanks for continuous power generation through the nite from stored solar heat captured in the day. I was satisifed to let the carbon industry at least keep a little toe hold in the industry. But if you want to talk about those nite-generators from solar thermal...we can go there?

That's not true. The solar array is about 359 acres.

Here's a google link to the FPL Plant: http://goo.gl/maps/fVLz5 zoom in or out until the scale at the lower left shows 1000 ft and 500 m

Then look at this:

I love solar, it's just too expensive right now. It WILL be cost-effective one day, but it's not ready for federal subsidies at this point.

 

[jon_berzerk]

And because cost effectiveness of solar has been discussed here:

"Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require."

"That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers."

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
.

Once again you're trying to pretend one type of solar thermal plant is like another.

Here are the two types you are talking about. The first is the retarded type at Ivanpah:

That type above, likely engineered by BigOil itself and sold to the government for funding as "solar thermal" uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat. The tank suspended WAY up in the air, again, hundreds of feet, is so far away from the reflective surfaces that when you consider all the atmospheric dust and just diffusion since no mirror can perfectly project flat reflected light that distance...it's all a joke. It was engineered ON PURPOSE to fail.

Here's the type that is at Martin Solar in Florida. It is completely different. It uses concave mirrors that actually concentrate the solar rays that are directed with deadly heat straight onto an oil-filled tube just mere feet away from the concentrators:

You might as well be comparing solar thermal for cost with solar photovoltaics as the two types of solar thermal.

Seriously, I didn't even pass physics all that well and even I can see that those huge/distant circular flat mirror arrays were engineered to fail.

Not the other kind though, they are far cheaper, take up less real estate and the temperatures they reach far exceed the built to fail type. I think those circular jokes only get that tank way way way at the top of the tower to reach like 80 degrees fahrenheit or something..lol..

Not so with linear parabolic solar thermal. It heats the oil in the tube very quickly to 300 degrees celsius, which is many times hotter than boiling water.

uses FLAT mirrors set hundreds if not thousands of feet away from the source of fluid they are intended to heat.

actually it is a solid that they heat until it is molten

the molten material heats water

and then works like any other steam turbine

they use the molten material since it stay hot for very long periods of time

in order to keep the turbines spinning at night and extended periods of

heavy cloud cover

 

[asterism]

An epic project, the 75 megawatt facility is spread over 500 acres of FPL-owned land, and powers 11,000 Florida homes. It has also created over 1,000 jobs and, according to the plant’s own press release, will reduce fossil fuel consumption by approximately 41 billion cubic feet of natural gas and more than 600,000 barrels of oil. This will cut more than 2.75 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and save FPL customers approximately $178 million in fuel costs over the facility’s estimated 30-year lifetime.

The Martin Energy Center is the world’s first plant to combine solar energy with natural gas. Other plants often use dual energy sources, but this is normally done by burning oil at times of low sunlight.


Read more: Florida Launches the World's First Hybrid Solar Energy Plant | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building... Florida Launches the World's First Hybrid Solar Energy Plant | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

You know, I've been blogging about this for years and they FINALLY DID IT!! [I'm so excited that I misspelled "Hybrid" in the title!!]

Whoot Whoot! There may be hope after all. The stupid..the stupid is wearing off...our nation maybe, just maybe, has a fighting chance.

It is precisely the perfect combination to ease out of our manic addiction to fossil fuels.

Well done gentlemen...well done...

Now get to work on about 1,000 more of those and we'll be back in the saddle again. Just do me a favor though, name just one of them the "Silhouette" power plant!...lol.. Reallly, gawd, it took like 5 years of blogging and exposing this technology for a power company to finally say, "hey, we'd like to charge the same amount to our customers but only have to pay for carbon for 30 days out of each year."

Duh! DO THE MATH $$$$ These guys are going to cleeeeeaaaan up at the bank.

For those who won't visit the link, the plant I've been urging for at least 5 years is one of parabolic mirrors that track the sun and focus it on a central elevated tube of thermal oil that gets up to 300 degrees celsius. That's way way hotter than boiling water. Then they use heat exchangers to boil water that runs turbines just like at every other conventional power plant. They don't have the salt tanks for night storage, but because for financial reasons the petroleum industry needs to be slowly weaned, they've opted to run the turbines at night with natural gas. The option to store heat in molten salt tanks still exists though and to run lower heat refrigerant boilers at night.

But this is an excellent start.





...

You've been blogging about this for years and just this month you noticed this facility?

Martin Next Generation Clean Energy Center

At this first-of-its-kind “hybrid” solar facility in the world, we’ve teamed up Florida’s sunshine with affordable, American-produced natural gas to deliver reliable electricity to you around the clock. When the sun is shining, we use more than 190,000 mirrors over roughly 500 acres to harness Florida’s sunshine. The sun’s rays heat fluid-filled tubes, producing steam, which generates electricity for your home or business. At night or when it’s cloudy, U.S. natural gas steps in to continue producing clean electricity for you as featured in this video from America's Natural Gas Alliance. The facility opened in 2010 and can produce enough electricity to power about 11,000 homes. It also prevents greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere every year – the equivalent of removing nearly 13,000 cars from the road.

FPL | Solar Projects

It seems you aren't following this technology much. The article you linked is almost three years old.

 

[Silhouette]

An epic project, the 75 megawatt facility is spread over 500 acres of FPL-owned land, and powers 11,000 Florida homes. It has also created over 1,000 jobs and, according to the plant’s own press release, will reduce fossil fuel consumption by approximately 41 billion cubic feet of natural gas and more than 600,000 barrels of oil. This will cut more than 2.75 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions and save FPL customers approximately $178 million in fuel costs over the facility’s estimated 30-year lifetime.

The Martin Energy Center is the world’s first plant to combine solar energy with natural gas. Other plants often use dual energy sources, but this is normally done by burning oil at times of low sunlight.


Read more: Florida Launches the World's First Hybrid Solar Energy Plant | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building... Florida Launches the World's First Hybrid Solar Energy Plant | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building

You know, I've been blogging about this for years and they FINALLY DID IT!! [I'm so excited that I misspelled "Hybrid" in the title!!]

Whoot Whoot! There may be hope after all. The stupid..the stupid is wearing off...our nation maybe, just maybe, has a fighting chance.

It is precisely the perfect combination to ease out of our manic addiction to fossil fuels.

Well done gentlemen...well done...

Now get to work on about 1,000 more of those and we'll be back in the saddle again. Just do me a favor though, name just one of them the "Silhouette" power plant!...lol.. Reallly, gawd, it took like 5 years of blogging and exposing this technology for a power company to finally say, "hey, we'd like to charge the same amount to our customers but only have to pay for carbon for 30 days out of each year."

Duh! DO THE MATH $$$$ These guys are going to cleeeeeaaaan up at the bank.

For those who won't visit the link, the plant I've been urging for at least 5 years is one of parabolic mirrors that track the sun and focus it on a central elevated tube of thermal oil that gets up to 300 degrees celsius. That's way way hotter than boiling water. Then they use heat exchangers to boil water that runs turbines just like at every other conventional power plant. They don't have the salt tanks for night storage, but because for financial reasons the petroleum industry needs to be slowly weaned, they've opted to run the turbines at night with natural gas. The option to store heat in molten salt tanks still exists though and to run lower heat refrigerant boilers at night.

But this is an excellent start.





...

You've been blogging about this for years and just this month you noticed this facility?

Martin Next Generation Clean Energy Center

At this first-of-its-kind “hybrid” solar facility in the world, we’ve teamed up Florida’s sunshine with affordable, American-produced natural gas to deliver reliable electricity to you around the clock. When the sun is shining, we use more than 190,000 mirrors over roughly 500 acres to harness Florida’s sunshine. The sun’s rays heat fluid-filled tubes, producing steam, which generates electricity for your home or business. At night or when it’s cloudy, U.S. natural gas steps in to continue producing clean electricity for you as featured in this video from America's Natural Gas Alliance. The facility opened in 2010 and can produce enough electricity to power about 11,000 homes. It also prevents greenhouse gases from entering the atmosphere every year – the equivalent of removing nearly 13,000 cars from the road.

FPL | Solar Projects

It seems you aren't following this technology much. The article you linked is almost three years old.

I've been blogging about it since jeeze...2005 or 2006, around there. I hadn't been keeping up on what was going on because frankly, I thought that the carbon moguls would beat it back as usual with their typical "fright-campaigns" and "designed to fail" foils. You see it here in this thread talking about all manner of "scary" things associated with concave mirrors concentrating the sun. My favorite is how many acres it takes up, when you have to wonder how many acres a year are fouled or stip mined in the pursuit of mining coal, oil and natural gas..lol..

I just have to pinch myself to not laugh about that one. Oh, and my second favorite, how more shade in the desert [where you find the most life concentrated naturally there] will somehow result in a decline of species there.