Comment on How solar panels generate electricity
Gladaed@feddit.org 1 day ago
(these are solar thermic power plants, their panels are black and usually assisted by mirrors leading to a similar look)
Comment on How solar panels generate electricity
Gladaed@feddit.org 1 day ago
(these are solar thermic power plants, their panels are black and usually assisted by mirrors leading to a similar look)
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Image
Solar thermal concentrators, they get so hot they have to use liquid metal.
Gladaed@feddit.org 1 day ago
Parabolic plants also exist w/o a tower of sauron.
ICastFist@programming.dev 1 day ago
But half the fun is having a gleaming tower of doom!
bizzle@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Why would anyone want that when the alternative is a tower of sauron
psoul@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
All I want for Christmas is new petty gods with towers to worship.
a_non_monotonic_function@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
They also function as adequate bird-zappers from what I’ve heard.
nevemsenki@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Didn’t this exact plant go bankrupt due to solar panels being so much more efficient?
tryitout@infosec.pub 1 day ago
If you mean the Vegas one, then yes it’s closing, don’t know if it’s gone bankrupt exactly.
en.wikipedia.org/…/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
I think that’s what they called a First Generation generator.
The ones in use now will actually use sunlight to melt salt (than then is used to generate steam) rather than directly generating the steam which has way more capacity to store heat, so they have a solar conversion efficiency of between 38% and 44%, plus the molten salt can keep on being used to generate steam during the night until it cools down enough.
EmpathicVagrant@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Well that makes no sense, I need it shut down to get Euclid’s C-Finder to work.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 1 day ago
It would make sense.
Thermal concentrator cost is basically fixed: mirrors of a specific quality, tracking mounts, an eye of sauron cooling loop. That tech doesn’t change.
But the bulk of photovoltaic installation cost is the panels. And those get exponentially cheaper.
BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org 1 day ago
They’ve gotten cheap, in fact, that the panels are sometimes less expensive than the labor and mounting hardware.
Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
Actually it does change, from what I read mainly in terms of what substance is used to capture the heat of the sunlight, which in turn has other implications downstream (for example, if you melt salt and the molten salt is used to generate steam, rather than directly generating the steam, not only does the efficieny go up but you can keep on generating power during the night as long as there’s enough heat left in the salt).
Here is paper I found about it.
Gladaed@feddit.org 1 day ago
No. The issue is solar panels getting much cheaper. The advantage of solar thermic plants are low cost of panels in exchange for more difficulty to maintain. This stops making sense when solar panels become dirt cheap and they cannot shift their power generation outside of peak solar(easily possible with molten salt tanks for the night, but not free)
SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
There are hundreds of these.