The climate change consensus extends beyond climate scientists

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by freebeard

Suppose you want to melt salt. What's the best way to do that?

'best' is kind of subjective,but I'll take a stab at this and suggest that, concentrated-solar would have the least potential for harm.
Once the facility has broken even,the fuel source is virtually free.Stored molten salt allows power production after sunset.An entire facility could be dedicated exclusively for 100% stored-energy,night time power production.
As only part of a market basket of providers,should it 'cloud over',other contributing power providers would take up the slack.
You'd just engineer for it,as those off the grid must currently do.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Way too diffuse by the time it gets here. Takes a desert full of mirrors to do anything. And totally useless 3 months a year where I live.

Consider a grid intertie,from Terra del Fuego,to the Arctic Circle,and contiguous,East-to-West,globally.
Kilowatts without borders.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

How much area? How much annual production? What annual capacity factor?

What numbers did you come up with?

[redpoint5]

I'm in favor of more robust grid intertie, so long as the economic and security benefits pencil out. If it's a bridge to nowhere, then I'm out.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

So Right now the USA is using 27,175 TeraWatt hours per year of total primary energy. Your favorite reference (Solution Project) states that if we could electrify everything in the best way possible we would need only half. And you want to supply half of that from Nevada with solar. How much land area to average 7,000 TWh per year. 800 GigaWatts continuous average?
.
5,333 of the 500 MW nameplate SolarStar state of the art solar PV farms. Which has crystalline panels on trackers and an automated wash system for a capacity factor of 31% on 5 square miles in a 3,000 foot tropical desert.
.
26,666 square miles.
.
Nevada = 110,567 square miles. So more like 25% of the land area will need to be covered with panels.
.
The current installed price for grid scale pv in the USA is about $3/ Watt.
.
$2.4 Trillion. For half of the USA demand if we could spend trillions more to retrofit everything.
.
Which makes 3X too much power at noon on a perfect day. And nothing all night every night.

Why don't we start out by limiting the discussion to only US electric power consumption.
The other industrial energy consumption can be handled in a separate discussion.
Renewables can carry the entire load.And they will over time.And we've been given 30-years to get the job done.
At $2.4-trillion,that would be 68-cents per day,per capita,to pay for it,in 2019 dollars.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

As long as were on the subject of wind intermittency and capacity factor: Here is a post from the thread at endless-sphere from the guy that has been telling us about the troubles with the South Australia grid since they prematurely shut down most of their coal plants in favor of wind and solar.
.
note... the little, jagged, orange and blue noise signal at the very bottom is the charge and discharge of the BigF'nBattery.
.
Another day,..another month,..
......and another classic example why wind & solar force UP the cost of electricity supply..
Courtesy of south Australia with their “surplus” , 2+ GW, of wind and solar generation capacity...
. Note the legend..RED is GAS,...purple is IMPORTS !

That's nothing compared to their coal troubles!
And you may just want to burn all your cost data.That's all calculated by unicorns.'voodoo economics.'

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by aerohead

Consider a grid intertie,from Terra del Fuego,to the Arctic Circle,and contiguous,East-to-West,globally.

www.geni.org:GENI-us Letter 2015-08
The Global Power Grid Solutionl

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by sendler

Ivanpah concentrated solar farm cost $2.18 Billion for a nameplate of 392 MW = $5.56/ Watt. Nameplate.
.
The capacity factor is running at 21%. So the actual pricing is more like $25/ Watt.
.
But it does supply electricity for a few hours after dark due to the thermal storage.
.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpa...Power_Facility
.
Everybody::: Please speak in truths. Fact check your information. Wishful thinking that is not based on actual data and science is spinning us astray.

That's a tall order when all the books are cooked.And it's why we're in the trouble we're in.Reality hasn't been represented in the ledger sheets for all of my lifetime.

[aerohead]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

I'm in favor of more robust grid intertie, so long as the economic and security benefits pencil out. If it's a bridge to nowhere, then I'm out.

The Pentagon says we don't have any security without them.

[RedDevil]

Originally Posted by aerohead

That's a tall order when all the books are cooked.And it's why we're in the trouble we're in.Reality hasn't been represented in the ledger sheets for all of my lifetime.

FWIW, 2018 was a record year for Ivanpah with almost 800 GWh produced.
Not what they would have gotten if they had spent 2 billion on PV panels, but at least it is progressing.