The facility, though cost effective at the time it was planned (2009), is now twice as expensive to run as solar photovoltaic technology, which has decreased in price much more rapidly than was expected in the 15 years since Ivanpah’s construction began.
Thermal concentrator cost is basically fixed: mirrors of a specific quality, tracking mounts, an eye of sauron cooling loop. That tech doesn’t change much. Same with parabolic pipe plants.
But the bulk of photovoltaic installation cost is the panels. And those get exponentially cheaper.
Solar thermal concentrators, they get so hot they have to use liquid metal.
Parabolic plants also exist w/o a tower of sauron.
Why would anyone want that when the alternative is a tower of sauron
But half the fun is having a gleaming tower of doom!
Didn’t this exact plant go bankrupt due to solar panels being so much more efficient?
If you mean the Vegas one, then yes it’s closing, don’t know if it’s gone bankrupt exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Well that makes no sense, I need it to keep from being shut down to get Euclid’s C-Finder to work.
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 much. Same with parabolic pipe plants.
But the bulk of photovoltaic installation cost is the panels. And those get exponentially cheaper.
They’ve gotten cheap, in fact, that the panels are sometimes less expensive than the labor and mounting hardware.
Yeah.
At some point, mounting them statically becomes even cheaper than a tracking mount, I guess.
It’s been static for a while in the large installations I have seen.
There are hundreds of these.