Apologies, I missed that point of yours!
The picture I posted was the Ivanpah plant. It uses the concentrated solar rays to heat steam and then the steam is pumped directly to the turbine. There’s no molten salt storage. There was a similar project north of Las Vegas called Crescent Dunes which does use that storage technology. It’s a very cool concept which allows solar power almost 24 hrs a day. The biggest drawback is the cost. The plant using the molten salt technology is 110 MW and cost about $1B to build compared to the other project without storage that is almost 4 times the size but only about double the cost. Crescent Dunes has a contract to sell power to Nevada Power which has higher electric demand late into the night due to the Las Vegas market so the storage technology works perfectly for them. Next time you are visiting sin city and you look up at all those bright flashing lights at midnight remember that at least some of the electricity powering them was “generated” by the sun much earlier in the day.
Hybrid photovoltaic/thermal solar systems do exist, it's just that they're not currently commercially viable in most cases. One day perhaps the costs will be overcome.
Yeah, considering all the water in the sinkholes underneath, seems a no-brainer to do geothermal heat pumps.
I'm not familiar with the water in the sinkholes underneath you're talking about. Would you explain?
Each car in the Tomorrowland speedway produces more green house gasses and consumes more fuel in an hour than the entire Disney bus fleet does in a day /s
I copied this over from the gondola thread since it’s more relevant here:
I was being facetious, but I suspect you knew that. Anyways, good info.
Add in the CO2 generated in the solar cell and collector manufacturing processes...
That counts as Chinese pollution
I knew you were kidding but thought it was a relevant discussion in this thread. I still don’t know why Disney isn’t more interested in building solar over existing parking lots or even on rooftops. It avoids the loss of trees and in the case of parking lots could create an upcharge premium parking experience with shaded parking spots. I guess it’s cheaper to build on unused land, but even WDW has a finite amount of open space.
Where I live, Bergen County NJ, solar panels over parking areas are sprouting up like mad. You're right, I don't get why Disney isn't doing that rather then clearing land for them. Seems like a win win win situation. Do they not know about these things in Florida?
It is the for same reasons you build a parking lot vs a garage. If you have the land available for a parking lot, you can build it at a fraction of the cost per space when compared to a garage. If you don't have the land available you have to flip the bill for the more expensive garage.
Hold my beer.
Yeah, this is covered in the technical analysis of "Energy Returned on Energy Invested" or EROEI:That counts as Chinese pollution
It’s a valid point. There’s the CO2 produced when mining the raw materials, the CO2 released from the manufacturing process and for a lot of panels here transport from China to the US. Even the installers have to use trucks, cranes or other equipment that all adds to CO2 emissions. I think I read somewhere it takes about 5 years for the average solar project to break even on CO2 but most projects are expected to last between 25 and 30 years so you still get quite a lot of benefit overall.
