California has one of these solar thermal towers. Quite a spectacle as you drive by on the way back from Vegas.
Interestingly this one does not store energy for 24/7 operations like the one in China. As they are both smolten salt based, not sure why
China constructs world's first dual-tower solar thermal plant — and it will help generate nearly 2 billion kWh annually
Submitted 2 months ago by schizoidman@lemm.ee to energy@slrpnk.net
https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/dual-tower-solar-thermal-plant-china/
Comments
Jarvis2323@programming.dev 2 months ago
protist@mander.xyz 2 months ago
The one in CA doesn’t have any salt storage, I think it was built before that tech had been flushed out
One particularly grim side effect of the plant’s construction is that birds, attracted to the insects gathering at the top of the towers, are incinerated as they pass through the beams of concentrated sunlight. According to estimates, this results in some 6,000 deaths every year.
Geez, maybe develop some kind of screen or something
JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Damn, I saw a video on why they use molten salt years ago, something about the balance of cost, thermal mass, and the fact that it won’t boil off like conventional liquids.
pageflight@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Was wondering why multiple towers:
In the morning, most of the mirrors point at the eastern tower; in the afternoon, some switch to the western tower.
“The mirrors in the overlapping area can be utilized by either tower. This configuration is expected to enhance efficiency by 24%,”
caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
That reminds me, I need to pick up some power converters on my next trip to Tosche Station.
Antitoxic9087@slrpnk.net 2 months ago
just thinking: why stop at 2? I suppose a grid of heat towers with mirrors beneath would provide maximum utilization of the solar radiation
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Cost, probably. Could be transmission line limits.
HeckGazer@programming.dev 2 months ago
Two billion thousand. If only we’d come up with a better way to say that. Like some kind of system of metrics. Lmk if we come up with something
Windex007@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Don’t even get me started on how Wh is energy divided by time multiplied by time.
apotheotic@beehaw.org 2 months ago
Eh I can sort of understand it in this case - many people are used to thinking of things in amounts of kilowatt hours.
If your journey was 1200 kilometres people might look at you strangely for saying 1.2 megametres
HeckGazer@programming.dev 2 months ago
I’d argue that’s only because km is a very ingrained part of everyday parlance. The use of a megalitre for example would not raise an eyebrow where I live.
Similarly megawatt and gigawatt are pretty common and for things on a global scale terawatts is not unheard of, I don’t see why it would be so different for TWh to resort to an arcane way of formatting it.
Don’t get me wrong I’m not autistic enough to not see your point, it’s just tilting to me to make these extra jumps. Esp. when Wh is already a cursed unit
judooochp@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Until the 70s, “billion” meant1,000,000,000,000. What we call a billion was a thousand million. Each “billion” meaning a group of six zeros. Now we use"short" form. French still uses “long” form. So when they say “thousand billion,” they probably are talking about what we English speakers call a quintillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000
threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Irritatingly, that’s a quadrillion, not a quintillion.
protist@mander.xyz 2 months ago
Since the standard unit of electricity delivery is kWh, this notation makes way more sense to the average person than 2 TWh