ChemE Stewart <[email protected]> wrote: But it also costs approx. 1/5 capital for a gas turbine of Same MW. >
That is true! But the cost is falling rapidly, and it would fall a lot more with greater economy of scale. > We will also wait to see how long 375,000 mirrors/motors last in the > wind/dust swept desert > They have been building these things for 40 years in the U.S., Israel, Spain and elsewhere. They know how the mirrors perform in harsh environments. > You forgot the fuel cost for cleaning mirrors with farm tractors and > squeegies and pumping mirror wash water from...where? I estimate about 50 > farm tractors running all month long. > They use robots. It takes only a tiny fraction of the output power, far less than equivalent overhead at a fossil fuel or nuclear plant. It takes very little water. I did not forget this, and neither did the people who design and run these plants. I believe there are ~1.5 GW of CSP installed worldwide. That is only a small contribution to total energy production, but it means that engineers have many years of hands-on experience with large scale installations. - Jed
