SOLAR AFTER SUNDOWN FOR LAS VEGAS

A Tower of Molten Salt Will Deliver Solar Power After Sunset; For the first time, solar thermal can compete with natural gas during nighttime peak demand

Peter Fairley, 21 October 2015 (IEEE)

“Solar power projects intended to turn solar heat into steam to generate electricity have struggled to compete amid tumbling prices for solar energy from solid-state photovoltaic (PV) panels. But the first commercial-scale implementation of an innovative solar thermal design could turn the tide. Engineered from the ground up to store some of its solar energy, [SolarReserve’s 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes plant] is nearing completion…It aims to simultaneously produce the cheapest solar thermal power and to dispatch that power for up to 10 hours after the setting sun has idled photovoltaics…[Due] on line by the end of this year, [it] uses over 17,000 mirrors to focus sunlight on a heat receiver atop a 165-meter-high tower…[to heat] a molten mixture of nitrate salts that can be stored in insulated tanks and withdrawn on demand to run the plant’s steam generators and turbine when electricity is most valuable…Crescent Dunes promises to be the first of many big molten salt towers…[They presently make] the most sense in markets where, unlike the United States, natural gas is pricey enough to make gas-fired plants less attractive…” click here for more

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