alt.energy.renewable

"Mauried" wrote in message
news:47be4a7f.398375@news.tpg.com.au...
> On Thu, 21 Feb 2008 13:54:48 -0800, "Rob Dekker"
> wrote:
>
>>
>>"BobG" wrote in message
>>news:4c507099-b117-4e8c-8127-e605468d05fa@v3g2000hsc.googlegroups.com...
>>> Heard this on Paul Harvey driving to work today....
>>> http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/77596.php
>>
>>$1 billion solar-thermal plant near Gila Bend ....
>>....At 280 megawatts, enough to power at least 70,000 households......
>>
>>That's about $3.60 / Watt installed.
>>How does that compare to PV ?
>>
>>Rob
>>
>>
>
> Its slightly better than PV, but not much.
> Which begs the question why isnt it many times better.
> Mirrors are more than 90% efficient at reflecting sunlight,
> so why is the plants cost in terms of dollars per watt so poor.
>
> The plant is going to cover 3 sq miles which equals 7.74 million sq
> meters.
> At 1000 watts per square meter the plant should make 7.7 GW if it
> was 100% efficient, but its only going to make 280 MW which makes it
> only 3% efficient.
> Where is all the energy lost.
>
>

Its not all that bad, remember it is designed to store a lot of the heat for
power generation after dark (can't do that with PV...)

--
Qolin

Email: my qname at domain dot com
Domain: qomputing
>