That part surprises me too. Molten salt has hella heat capacity and insulation is cheap as can be. I don’t understand all the engineering ins and outs, so I may be off base. I can see the need to pre-heat the conduits that are needed for heat transfer, but the bulk of the thermal mass could molten for a long time.
Comment on California Shuts Down Its Solar Thermal Plant 13 Years Early
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 2 days agoThank you. I don’t really understand why the gas component is necessary in the first place but I guess there must be some reason.
Regardless, it does seem like this plant has much lower emissions than the gas plants likely to replace it in the near term. Therefore this seems like bad for CA’s energy transition.
But maybe the economics of it were just unworkable, I don’t know.
porksnort@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
As far as I know, it needed to burn gas to get it up to operating temperature each day.