I have started this post in the hope readers can dig up more information about the history, projected cost vs final cost – claimed performance at announcement vs actual performance (if you can ever find out) – for various solar electricity generating projects. Overseas examples are welcome too.
I was prompted by Canberra GreenLabor Govt announcements in last few days of two projects that will consume $Bn’s of poor old taxpayer $’s, one at Moree in NSW and the other at Chinchilla in Queensland.
Then there is Mildura – which has been planned for some years – is it coming closer ? The owners – Silex do not seem to be enjoying a rush of investors.
This Wikipedia page has a summary of Australian solar electricity projects – planned and completed – so there are some starting points for investigators.
Remember too the White Cliffs project – closed now I assume – but what did that cost over the years – for how much useful electricity ?
I expect – that like windmills – these solar schemes will all be shamelessly hyped to sell them to Govts – I expect cost over-runs and that later performance reality will not be as it was hyped – but as usual with any of these subsidised boondoggles – it will not be easy to discover hard facts.
TonyfromOz on the Chinchilla solar plant
papundits.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/solar-power-australia/
early paras
upshot
There are three quite obvious questions that stand out to me with respect to this announcement, and I’m surprised no one bothered to ask them.
1. If this plant can only produce 250MW of power in total, and here, let’s actually quote that higher figure of that 250MW, why did no one put two and two together and correlate it back to large scale coal fired plants, say like Bayswater which can actually deliver its power for the full 24/7/365, and then add up two and two with respect to the cost of 11 equivalent plants just to replace that one coal fired plant. Hint as to the answer. $13.2 Billion.
2. If the only way this plant can go ahead is for Governments to kick in nearly half the up front cost, doesn’t this amount to subsidies, and how does that equate to Bob Brown’s ‘heavily’ subsidised coal fired power, as he refers to it.
3. This one question I would have thought was the most obvious question of all. If this plant is a hybrid of Solar and Natural Gas Fired Power, and if Natural Gas fired power produces CO2 emissions, then this plant also becomes subject to any ‘Price on Carbon’ or CO2 Tax, or an ETS.
So, when you see the Prime Minister announce on virtually every newscast on TV and radio that this is the way forward for Australia, all is not as it seems on the surface.
UPDATE.
Sometimes, the actual power delivered when compared to the maximum power that can actually be generated is a difficult concept to grasp, and because of that, it’s also a difficult thing to try and explain
In the comment below, the commenter received an Email from the proposers of this plant detailing the amounts of power that will probably be delivered from this plant. That total power was between 500 and 600 GigaWattHours (GWH).
From that total we can now work out the Capacity Factor (CF) for this plant. The CF is comparison of power actually delivered to the theoretical maximum power that could be delivered if the plant were to produce its maximum power all the time.
There is a standard calculation for the maximum power, and from that, we can work out the CF.
That formula is NP X 24 X 365.25 X 1000 where NP is the Nameplate Capacity, 24 hours in a day, 365.25 days in a year (leap year included) and 1000 to convert from MW to KWH.
So for this plant, that theoretical maximum power comes in at 2.1915 Billion KWH or 2,191 GWH.
So, if the plant will be delivering between 500 and 600 GWH a year, then that CF is 23 to 27%.
That CF can now be equated to actual time the plant delivers its full power, and that equates to between 5.5 and 6.5 hours a day.
Again, that may also be a difficult thing to understand.
The plant will be delivering differing amounts of power throughout the day for small amounts at a time after Sunrise to small amounts close to Sunset, with maximum amounts close to midday, so here, those amounts of power are ‘levelled out’ to a period of actual time of total power delivery, that 5.5 to 6.5 hours.
UPDATE 2
For the sake of comparison, Bayswater actually delivers 17,500 GWH of power compared to (an average) 550 GWH from this plant.
Now, why I mention this is again for the sake of comparison.
While this Solar Plant has a Nameplate Capacity of 250 MW, Bayswater has a Nameplate Capacity of 2640 MW, which is almost 11 times larger.
However, when you compare the actual power delivered, Bayswater delivers almost 32 times the power to consumers.
See the difference.
So, extrapolating that out, you would need 33 of these solar plants to replace the total power delivered from the ONE Bayswater large scale coal fired plant, and at $1.2 Billion each for that solar plant, that total comes in at just on $40 Billion.
Again, this is just for the sake of comparison, because while Bayswater can supply that power on a 24/7/365 basis, the Solar plants can only deliver that power for around 6 hours a day on average.
then there’s Peter Lang
co2insanity.com/2010/05/08/solar-power-realities/
and Terence Cardwell
co2insanity.com/2010/05/08/the-madness-of-king-rudd/
and I know Terence has a more recent post but can’t find it
and does anyone know how to get in touch with Peter Lang; I have a contact who would like to contact him
A few years ago I looked at the feasibility of installing a solar cell system on my house without any battery storage system – the excess would go to the grid.
My finding was that the initial materials costs would equal 125 times my annual electricity bill. Installation and maintainence costs would make the project even less desirable. Plus, I believe that the solar cells have to be replaced every 30 years or so, so it would never make economic sense.
Just after I did this cost analysis, a newspaper article about a solar installation at a library in Ohio also came up with a cost equal to 125 years of the electrical utility bills.
Warwick,
when it comes to Solar Plants, be they Solar PV or any of the versions of Concentrating Solar, (Solar Thermal) the ‘blurb’ at the release says so much for those who want to think that these plants have a lot to offer, but offers so little for those chasing up the ‘real information’.
That real information is ‘hidden’ in plain sight, so that plant ‘looks’ great, but the average person has no understanding of how to translate that into the actual performance you talk of.
Let’s look at an example, and this has become indicative of all renewable plants, be they Wind or Solar.
The example I will use here is the Abengoa Solana Concentrating Solar Plant at Gila Bend, near Phoenix in Arizona.
Note how the plant says it will supply clean power to 70,000 homes. Therein lies the ‘up front’ power delivery claim.
Needless to say the plant, (as with every renewable plant claim) is not connected directly to those 70,000 homes as the plant supplies power to the grid for that area.
However that 70,000 homes provides the big clue as to power delivery.
When we look at this table from the EIA for residential power consumption in US States, scroll down the list and you’ll see for Arizona, the consumption is 1095KWH per Month, hence 13,140KWH per year.
Multiply that by those 70,000 homes and the total power supplied by this plant comes to 920 Million KWH.
Using the formula for the theoretical maximum power that the plant would deliver at the full 24 hour operation, shown in Val’s comment above, we find that total theoretical power from the 250MW net plant comes to 2.19 Billion KWH.
So now we can work out the CF which comes to 42%, and from that CF, the time this plant actually can deliver its power, and that comes to around 10 hours a day.
You can use this same method of calculation for all those renewable power plants, Wind or Solar.
The average punter sees those 70,000 homes and says Wow!
When I see them now, it just enables me to work out the real power that does get delivered from plants like this.
When those average punters find out later that the plant can only deliver on that basis, the affronted comments will be “hey! you didn’t tell us this at the start.”
The answer will be “Oh! Yes we did.”
It’s just that no one knows what the ‘greenspeak’ really translates to.
Warwick, sorry to take so much space here with this comment.
Tony.
Another day another poll
www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/national/xenophon-moves-on-governments-carbon-tax-ad-campaigns/story-e6frea8c-1226079484868
do you want a referendum on the ‘carbon tax’
QUITE OBVIOUSLY THE ANSWER IS “YES” !!!!!
Peer review is a wondrous thing
It seems that there has been an advance in (concentrating heat) solar technology in the last year. When I looked at this last year the Load (or Capacity) Factor seemed to be between 15 and 19%, but that was for plants in SW Spain and the US. Higher figures could result in Australia because any plants would be closer to the equator, but I doubt that 24% figure.
The record for energy conversion is just above 32%, but that was for a short term with ambient temp. minus 8C on (air cooled) stirling motors. Much better that the 12 – 15% of photovoltaic cells. Most CS plants would be lucky to get 24%, but given a building cost approx. 2.85 times that of a coal fired station and 12 hours collection it works out at 24 times more expensive than a coal station. In the real world TonyfromOz’s figures look accurate, or even conservative.
The use of a combined solar/natural gas plant is to use the boiler for both. It wouldn’t matter much if the steam was raised by the gas turbine exhaust or hot circulating molten salts, except that the former would be more reliable (and cheaper) and the combination a maintenance nightmare.
I would dispute the value of relying on “thousands of homes supplied” – these aren’t standardized units and quite often work on about 1 kWh per household per day. Given the daily consumption of 35 kWh by the Arizonans the figures might well be inflated with “hot air”.
I note Douglas Hoyt’s comment above (and strangely I’ve just finished reading a wonderful book authored by a Douglas V. Hoyt) and I calculated last year that (heavily subsidized) solar would take 27 years to pay for itself. I checked the actual figures of a neighbour’s installation and they were getting a return of 13%, on the subsidized price with a feed in tariff double the maximum. In the real world an actual return on investment of 0.9%. That’s probably higher than most of our current Government’s projects get.
Graeme,
the data I use is from the U.S. Government’s site Energy Information Administration (EIA) which publishes actual consumed power data almost in real time, with only a 3 month lead time, the only Country to do so. For Australian figures, that data is almost 2 years in the publishing from the Australian Government.
From that EIA site, we can effectively work out the CF for all Solar power.
This is the the most recent page of data for all Renewables.
There is currently an Installed Nameplate Capacity for ALL solar power in the U.S. of 910MW.
Actual Power supplied to consumers for the whole of year 2010 is that quoted figure there of 1299GWH.
This gives all Solar Power a CF of 16.3%, and this is the World leader for CF from Solar Power on large scale.
That figure is lower because large scale Solar PV drags it down because PV barely manages 8 to 10% year round, and again, I stress the figures I use here are conservative in nature.
With respect to Concentrating Solar, plants that use solely Solar Methods to produce maximum power can actually get almost 50%, and the average is closer 25%. A plant of 250MW Nameplate Capacity can mange 150MW for around 12 hours, but few are managing this.
For plants that divert the molten salts compound so that the plant can produce at least some power for as long as possible, that CF raises to 75%. However, the trade off here is that for a plant of 250MW Nameplate Capacity, if they divert the salts to stay as molten as possible for as long as possible, that lowers generated power to only 50MW, and there are very few of these types of plant.
So far, that 250MW total is the highest amount of power that can be generated from this form of solar power generation.
Tony.
Also, with respect of combined Concentrating Solar and Natural Gas fired backup, that Natural gas process ‘kicks’ in as soon as the molten salts cannot make steam enough to drive the turbine. So, it’s either one or the other and not both processes running at the same time.
With respect to some plants in the U.S. that duality of process is a condition of ‘getting’ the Government subsidies in full, that the plant is actually able to supply power for a full 24 hour period, hence the NG backup, as is the case with the proposed plant in Arizona, Abengoa’s Solana Plant.
Tony.
Sorry that it seems like I’m hogging the comments here, but back to what Warwick said at the original Post about projected cost to actual cost.
Having been contributing at the site that I do Post at for more than 3 years now, I’ve watched that Abengoa Plant in Arizona go through 3 price changes.
It started out at $900 Million, and then went to $1.2 Billion, and is now at $1.45 Billion, and still not finished construction, and will still not be delivering power until mid/late 2013, almost 6/7 years since first announced.
Tony.
What is the operating life of solar panels? Have any energy audits been done on their manufacture, their expected maintenance costs and the expected cost of replacing them at the end of their operating life or when they are destroyed by hail?
Unless these figures are available then any talk of green energy is nonsense.
John
John,
their expected life is around 20 to 25 years, provided they are kept pristine, and here I mean not just hosed down every so often, but up on the roof once a week to polish them.
Any smear of dust etc, and they lose up to one third of generating capacity.
I know it’s one of my own Posts I’m linking to, but read this.
Household Solar Power – Don’t believe The Hype
Tony.
TonyfromOz – I think we are talking at cross purposes.
1. I agree that it is either gas or solar heat at any time. The use of gas as backup avoids the horrendous cost of molten salts used as heat
storage, and would reduce the cost of generation.
2. My comment on the “thousands of houses who will get power etc.” is because practically every “green” project comes with such a statement, but when you check it turns out that the actual amount they supply is as little as 1kWh per day per house, ranging upwards. If the Abengoa Solana plant is going to supply the full and actual amount of 35 kWh/day used by those Arizonans it would constitute a world first. I have no doubt that your CONSUMPTION figures are correct, but can you prove the GENERATION figures? My calculations last year showed a capacity factor of 15 – 19% for concentrated solar.
3. My comment on molten salts is because that is the way the circulating solar tower and the fresnel mirror schemes get the 550 C necessary to give reasonable efficiency; that temp. is the steam temp. in coal (or oil) fired stations and gives a CONVERSION efficiency of 40% max. I doubt that they could ever get 50% conversion. The stirling engine approach works because it heats the target to nearly 750C. To get to 50% implies a concentration that heats the focus to 1000C, and one that can be simultaneously stable at that temperature while still being an efficient heat conductor to the working fluid.
4. We are in accord that solar isn’t economic. I would dispute your claim of 20-25 years life for PV. The older crystalline units from Germany could get to 23-25 years (with the well known 2% drop-off in efficiency after 10 years), but the new thin film units have an unknown life. That doesn’t stop some installers claiming a life over 33 years, and others supplying cheap Chinese panels which fail within a year. (Let me point out the some Chinese panels are quite as good as the best; but caveat emptor).
5.I used a building cost of 2.85 times that of coal for the same actual output. Your figure is 2.9. That puts the cost of solar heat at $A122 per MWh versus coal SELLING at $42. That is competitive with wind turbines. Adding molten salt heat storage pushes the cost up to $A210 per MWh. Even so the Spanish were paying $300 for the output from the first & second Abengoa plants. I believe the Spanish Govt. tried to/reduced that by 30%.
However all these figures are a bit suspect in Australia, as so many of our politicians have another idea about where the sun shines from.
Graeme,
what is heartening here for me is talking with someone who has some comprehension of what I’m talking about.
Where I used that 70,000 homes is the way that the proposers ‘hide’ the amount of actual power that they deliver, not in actual houses provided with electricity. It’s a trick.
Instead of saying that their plant will be delivering an estimated 13GWH per year, they disguise this figure by equating it to maximum consumption per house divided into that 13GWH giving them that 70,000 homes.
Every proposal for every renewable uses this same trick, both wind and solar. I stumbled across it when I was doing a calculation for a wind plant that actually did quote how much they ‘might’ be delivering over a full year, and when I visited other proposals for other sites, the math worked out almost perfectly.
For Abengoa, that woks out to a CF of just on 40%, and again, I take that delivered power with a grain of salt, because for wind, all quoted CF are worked out to 38%, while the current World average is barely 20%, and US average is 25%, so no one has been able to achieve that 38% CF.
As for Generation, the only data I have to go on is this at Wikipedia, and I know that’s not much of a reference, but they try to make these renewables sound as good as possible, and they quote a that 910 MW I use for all my calculations.
Where possible I always ‘their’ own figures, because that of itself makes an argument against these forms of renewable power, an argument those ‘green’ supporters don’t even understand.
What I have found is that none of any renewable power plant can reach what is sanguinely quoted at the proposal stage.
Using that actual power delivery and the generation total I have, that gives all Solar in the US a CF of that 16.3% I use.
Tony.
My apologies here for a misleading figure in that above comment.
Where I have 13GWH, that should read 920GWH, which is the total power consumed by those imaginary 70,000 homes.
Tony.
What I found interesting about the US solar production figures from 2010 (link from TonyfromOz,s 11:18 am post) was the discrepancy between June’s 196 gigawatt.hours and December’s 38 gigawatt.hours. Probably all those snow covered PV systems saving the planet.
What I can’t understand about the Chinchilla plant is why the supplementary gas power is only 15 percent of output. I would have though unit production costs would be lower if the generators operated over the entire peak load period, not possible if gas is only to be used on cloudy days.
Tony, we agree that they are being deceitful about what is delivered, but I still think that the usual “thousands of homes..” grossly over exaggerates what is delivered in practice. I agree that 920GWH would be needed to supply 70,000 Arizonan homes for a year.
But that raises a question or two.
1. solar energy at night? (I know they managed it in Spain because the feed-in tariff made it economic to run diesel generators). So they can’t supply except with (very) expensive heat storage, unless the Greens suddenly approve of hydroelectricity.
2. If this 250MW plant operated 24 hours a day it would (theoretically) generate 2191 GWh. If it operated with a CF of 41% then there would be just enough electricity to supply those 70,000 Arizonan houses. But my claim is that no solar heat plant gets anywhere near that CF. From what I could calculate most were in the high teens – hence also the comment that the record (short term, special conditions) was 32%.
3. I grant you that a 250MW plant is larger than those in Spain, so it could have a higher CF but I cannot see much, if any, higher than 21%. That is 5 hours full power generation a day. Or in house terms only 35,000. Even so that result is far closer to what is claimed than the usual misleading claim.
4. If you adopt the common amount meant (although never, ever stated) then you could make the “thousands of houses ..” almost any number you like. How does “1 million homes will get power from green generator” sound?
5. This failure to quantify their units and define their terms is standard Green practice. Hence Global Warming, meaning AGW, because they could say “the Earth’s temperature has gone up 0.7C in the past 100 years. In the fine print you could, if you bothered, work out that the MAXIMUM AGW was 0.2C, and probably a good deal less. They followed that with Climate Change (caused by AGW) so any change in climate was “proof” of their case. Now they apparently want to use Climate Disruption. As in Lewis Carroll “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean.” And the meaning can change anytime to suit them, so don’t believe what they say.
6. It is the apparent inability of the politicians (and some of the public) to understand that theoretical CAPACITY isn’t the same as actual GENERATION that I don’t understand. They seem to think that all the Capacity promised in press releases is the same as the actual Capacity of a coal (or gas) plant. The ordinary public can see this “the wind doesn’t blow all the time, nor the sun shine at night” but politicians keep putting up the same old waffle. The pollies either think that everybody speaks the truth all the time or they think that they will be gone by the time the problems become apparent. Those who think that “renewables” can replace coal or gas have to be plain gullible.
Graeme,
I mention that this is a ‘trick’ that they use to disguise actual figures. It’s a difficult thing to try and explain, and people still think ‘conspiracy theory’, especially those ‘green’ urgers who just will not comprehend the real truth that plants of these renewable nature, wind and solar, just cannot deliver power that is required.
As I mentioned, at no time will this plant ever supply those 70,000 homes.
As you mentioned, the theoretical total power for a plant of 250MW is that 2191GWH.
At their ‘claimed’ 40% factor that gives us close to 920GWH.
Here’s where the ‘trick’ comes in. Knowing the average consumption for a residential use in Arizona, they divide that figure into their claimed 920GWH, and that gives them a figure which they then ’round up’ to the next thousand, hence 70,000 homes, if you can see that point.
As I mentioned it’s difficult to explain correctly, and, having checked, I’ve found that all these renewables use this same trick to disguise the actual power they deliver to the grid for consumption by all users, which in the developed World is close to these figures Residential 38%, Commerce 37% and Industry 24%. So, supplying those imaginary 70,000 homes is misleading in every respect.
For just one further example of the same trick, only this time for Wind Power, I’ll link in to another of my own Posts, at this link, and this is for the proposed Coopers Gap Wind Farm near Toowoomba, and I apologise again for linking into my own Post.
As to the differentiation between Nameplate Capacity and actual power delivered, that’s again something few people understand. They think that a 264 MW Nameplate Capacity coal fired plant can be replaced by a 2640 MW nameplate capacity wind farm, and people think that’s an exact replacement, and those ‘green’ followers will believe it because it’s an exact replacement, but what they won’t believe is that while the same Capacity, those Wind plants only deliver one quarter to one third (at the very best) of the power to consumers, and as soon as you even attempt to explain it, they scoff at you, claiming you’re making it up.
The number of people who actually believe that just because it’s a solar thermal plant, it can deliver power 24/7/365, which is patently false, as I explained in the link, again another of my own Posts, so sorry again, but the chart used here explains how by diverting the molten salt compound to supply power for longer periods, the trade off is this.
The plant can supply a theoretical total of 250MW. If they divert those salts to stay molten, again as you also say, at immense cost, then the plant can only supply a theoretical maximum of 50MW, and still only achieve this for 18 hours at the best.
But people will still believe the false promise that by diverting the compound to stay in that molten state to boil water to steam to drive the turbine/generator complex, it actually can deliver the full 250MW for the full 24 hours, which is patently false.
Again, I have gone on at length, but there are concepts here that are difficult to explain, hence just as difficult to understand.
Tony.
TonyfromOz – there is no difficulty at all – they’re lying their heads off so much that it would make the late Alphonse Capone blush!
I agree that the current CF is unlikely to be more than 25%, in fact somewhat less in Australia because we are much closer to the equator than 98% of Europe. Macquarrie Island is closer to the equator than Copenhagen, and since wind speeds & regularity pick up the closer to the pole …
The highest CF for any wind turbine is 57%, for a lone machine at North Cape in Norway. The installation at Albany claimed (and still claims on a brass plate there) a CF of nearly 41% (calculated from what they claimed would be their output). See Warwick’s article in the renewable energy folder where it turns out to be 32%. This is still impressive, but that is probably the best site in Australia for wind. Have you seen it?
Large scale installation of wind turbines will all be on much less favorable sites. The average CF in the UK (on-shore) used to be 26% but that slipped as more turbines were installed. It is now 20-21% but there is an additional factor that those freezing winters have very little wind. Besides the Insurance Companies won’t let them run due to the danger from icing up. This is why the average CF in Denmark has dropped from 23 to 20%.
Where we differ is that I go straight to a likely CF and don’t bother to much with their claims as I know they’re almost certainly false. In this case they have used a believable supply figure for each house, something of a rarity.
If I might correct you on one thing in your link, just because a wind turbine blades are moving doesn’t mean it is generating electricity. Under certain circumstances (low speed, variable winds etc.) it can actually be a net user of power. This is because the yaw motors are “hunting” for the best position. This affected the early Danish off shore Horns Rev 1 farm about 4% of the time. There was (and is) also a problem there in that the oblong array has the towers too close together; the last 2 towers generate very little power, so little that it has been claimed that removing the second last row would actually increase the amount generated!
The average is for the turbine to be idle for 30% of the time. The wind speed has to reach a level such that the machine can generate about 1% of its nominal capacity. Of the 70% it is operating at less than 10% for more than half the time. It produces appreciable power only around 25% of the time, and is at full capacity for 1% of time. And more at night when demand is low.
I don’t think enthusiasm for wind turbines would survive if people were told that they would only get full power on 3 days a year, and would have to do without any for 110 days a year, with up to 11 days electricity free. All that for 400% price hike.
Solar plants with heat storage could supply power 24 hours a day (except when there was a cloudy day or three) but the existing plants are limited to 5 or 7 hours storage, which helps with the evening peak. That increases the cost by 75% ($120 to $210 per MWh). Holding enough heat overnight to deal with the morning peak would be much more expensive. To cover for 3 cloudy days in a row even more so again.
does anyone know how the Windorah solar farm is going – that is has it lived up to its predictions?
www.dme.qld.gov.au/media_centre.cfm?item=701.0
and what’s the latest on Cloncurry; Roger Pielke had a post about it in Dec
rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/09/about-that-cloncurry-solar-thermal.html
val majkus – the latest information I can find (April 4, 2011) is that Lake Cargelligo plant is still in trial mode. Since Cloncurry is based on the same technology it would seem that it too isn’t likely to be going anytime “real some now”. Original forecast was for Cargelligo to be running at the end of 2009, and Cloncurry Sept./Oct. 2010.
I notice that the expected output has been reduced from 3MW to 2.2MW.
I was under the impression that the heated block would be graphite & epoxy, so I lost all interest in these projects as epoxy couldn’t stand up to 800C. However they now talk graphite only.
I’m just going over the Moree Solar PV Plant for a new Post.
Wow, talk about quoting best case scenarios.
They say that the plant will be providing 404GWH a year from a 150MW Nameplate Capacity, giving it a Capacity Factor of 31%, from a Solar Panel plant no less.
The Current World’s best is only producing 23% and the World’s current average is closer to 15.5%.
It will cost $923 Million, and not be delivering Power until 2016. still 5 years away, and that’s only stage 1 of 4 stages.
Even if by the wildest dream they actually achieve that 31%, it’s still only supplying power for just more than 7 hours a day on average.
They’re using Crystalline Silicon, with 645,000 modules, 10 panels per module, 72 cells per panel, and 260 Large Inverters to convert the DC to AC and 128 Transformers.
Incidentally, Bayswater delivers that same 404GWH every eight and a half days.
These people are who believe this is the way of the future are off with the fairies.
Tony.
Tony, I think you mentioned White Cliffs -Wiki post en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Cliffs_Solar_Power_Station
I visited the station a little (a few weeks) before it was closed and the town connected to the grid. I talked to the superintendent who was managing the operation and who was at the time of the visit polishing the dishes (which he had to due thoroughly once every week, and sometimes more often). The diesel backup was working and the underground motel up the hill also had their diesel generator working to supply power for their electricity needs. I recall the superintendent saying the operating cost of power station, just for maintenance, was more than twice the cost of power produced at Broken Hill. I think he said that there were 6 employees including a trained diesel mechanic and an electrician. One of the big problems was corrosion and leakage of thermal fluid at both the dishes and the heat exchanger which generated the steam used in the engines. I think he said that the battery backup was unreliable and had been replaced several times. That is why the motel and some other places in the town had their own diesel generators.
I recall someone from Western Power on a later visit to Broken Hill saying that the capital of the power line from Broken Hill was repaid in under 2 years. I do not think the true story of the problems with this solar station will ever be told.
TonyfromOz – re Moree Solar PV Plant – If there nameplate capacity is 150MW then their maximum DELIVERY is 657GWh because they can only develop power for an average 12 hours a day per year. In practice it would be less because of clouds, early and late low elevation etc. but on a 12 hour basis they must be running at 61% conversion efficiency. A World breakthrough!
If there are 645,000 X 10 panels then the panels can’t cost $143 each, because they’ve still got to pay for the inverters and transformers. Seems very cheap.
On the other hand, for 6,450,000 panels @ 0.1 kV per panel (X 4383 hours) you might get a theoretical 2827 GWh annually, for a conversion efficiency of 14.3%. Obviously, with all the restrictions on output from solar, their claim of 7 hours a day is possible if they track the sun, but that implies solar cells running at 24.5% conversion efficiency. SO ALL YOU HAVE TO DO is find the maker of the World’s most efficient solar cells who is selling them at a great discount. Don’t look too hard.
Re the Cargelligo & Cloncurry plants above: the target is claimed to be graphite with an emissivity of 0.2. I cannot find any information that shows such a low figure for graphite. I know it varies due to purity and method of manufacture but the figure I would use is 0.6 minimum at 800C. Then there is the problem of oxidation; graphite is resistant to (roughly) 500C in air, even 750C for short periods, but after that I would expect oxidation to become a real problem in the long term.
Can you think how my figures are wrong? We wouldn’t want the Greenies to think that the plant was giving off CO2, would we?
Graeme,
that formula for maximum power is the same for any type of plant.
NP X 24 x 365.25 (and then by 1000 to convert to KWH)where NP is Nameplate Capacity (in MW), 24 hours in a day, and 365.25 days in a year (leap year added with the 0.25)
Hence for this plant it’s 150 X 24 X 365.25 which is 1314900 MWH which is 1315GWH.
If they say they can deliver 404 GWH then the CF is a tick under that 31%, and that 31% equates to just over 7 hours a day, averaged over the whole year.
Yes they are all on solar trackers.
Tony.
I am horrified at how Govts (not just ours but the EU as well and California) are wasting money without telling the citizens the truth about the capacity of solar power (leaving wind power out of it for the moment)
Is it just that politicians are self serving, is it that Govt’s hire experts who are not experts and where does the national interest end up in all this
Why are not politicians not responsible for lack of due diligence
and the sad thing is that Senator Fielding who was a great proponent of due diligence stopped short of that on the proposed carbon tax plebiscite on the eve of his retirement
So much for the national interest
C’est la vie
TonyfromOz –
I stand corrected. However 31% ?????? That’s almost the theoretical maximum for single cell PV. If I may repeat;
For 6,450,000 panels @ 0.1 kV per panel you might get a theoretical 2827 GWh annually, for a conversion efficiency of 14.3%.
@ 0.15 kV per panel the conversion efficiency drops to 9.5%. Either seems more likely.
Equally 6,450,000 panels with their figure for capacity (150MW) indicates the panels only rate at 0.023 kV.
I don’t know about Denmark, but there is something not quite right in Cobar.
Yes its a scandalous waste of taxpayers money.
Another point is that it will deliver its maximum power at/after midday when demand cycles back. It still cant offer an increased supply load to conform to the daily demand profile of 6-9am and than 5-8pm maximum demand…because the sun’s not at a maximum !
I guess that means we will soon be getting orders for cold showers in the morning.
Just posted this this morning: pindanpost.com/2011/06/25/solar-power-ro…ood-in-reverse/
Tom that link did not link; can you check the url
and here’s the world’s largest solar plane
www.dgsms.com/digital/1614
pindanpost.com/2011/06/25/solar-power-robin-hood-in-reverse/
Having trouble with links still, hoping this works.
My above link refers to a solar selling scam, not a commercial power plant, but they all seem like a scam of one or the other, at taxpayers expense
thanks Tom for following that up; very informative post; be interesting to see the results of a similar survey done in Aust; we’ve had 3 calls over the past 2 weeks from installers keen for us to take advantage of ‘Government rebates’
val majkus – did they serve champagne in first class?
Warwick – Trying to find the costs of solar electricity is harder than breaking a bank. Obviously the suppliers don’t want people to know the cost. The cost of electricity from the ANDASOL 1 & 2 tower plants in Spain has been estimated at $A214 per MWh. Since they had a 25 year guaranteed feed-in tariff of $280 (6.7 times cost of coal power in Aust), and when there was talk of cutting that, rushed to start ANDASOL 3 to lock that price in. But construction of ANDASOL 4 has been delayed after a 30% cut, so that estimate is probably close to the mark.
The problem is compounded by deliberate cover-up e.g. Denmark claims wind power (on-shore) only costs $A47 per MWh, when it is at least double that. There is obviously other help e.g. building subsidy.
Graeme thanks for that laugh
The conversations I had didn’t get past this spiel “…Govt Rebate Scheme for solar panels and are you the landlord or the tenant”
Quite frankly anything this Fed Govt or Qld Labor Govt are offering puts me off cos someone has to pay even if it’s not me
And that’s even dependent upon if you can treat solar panel sellers with less suspicion than used car salesmen
I have just Posted analysis for the Moree Solar PV Plant.
They are using theoretical parameters not yet achieved anywhere on the Planet to give a theoretical total power delivery of 404GWH.
There’s some stunning stuff in the proposal, most of it outrageous.
And Graeme, I made an error in the number of panels.
I read panels, and they called them modules.
So, all up, there are only 645,000 Panels in all.
The analysis is at this link.
Solar Power Australia – The Moree Solar Plant
I always like to get in right at the initial announcement. That way I have the original cost, and as has been the case with nearly every one of these renewable power plants, that cost always blows out, and sometimes quite significantly.
Tony.
About the efficiency of the Moree Solar Farm: One of the project’s partners is BP Solar so it is more than highly likely that their panels will be used. They do make a 280W panel for field installation at commercial scale but from the specs it seems they intend to use 230W panels. Their panels have efficiency ratings of 13-14 percent.
I don’t know how many hours of sunshine Moree gets but its annual mean daily global solar exposure is 5.6kWh/m2. (Moree Aerodrome) The lowest monthly mean over the 21 years of data is 2.7kWh/m2, the highest 8.1kWh/m2. The mean daily annual irradiance at Canberra Airport is 4.9kWh/m2 with an annual mean of 5.5 sunlight hours. Canberra’s lowest annual mean was 4.5kWh/m2 only 80 percent of its maximum of 5.5kWh/m2. I guess it was a cooler year.
Moree Solar Farm panels are to have to have one axis tracking. Full solar tracking is said to be about 30% more efficient at Moree’s latitude. Poly-crystalline and mono-crystalline solar panels can lose significant power output with increasing temperature on hot summer afternoons of which there are a lot in Moree.
SolarBuzz price survey for June prices a commercial roof mounted 500kW system at $US1.9million and with financing at five percent per annum amortised over 20 years, an electricity price of 16 cents per kilowatt.hour in sunny places.
One would expect costs for Moree would be lower per megawatt with panels not to be to be purchased for a number of years and the economy of scale of x 300 but realistically financing costs would be higher as would support infrastructure costs. However, $930 million seems excessive to me as does the time to implement the project.
Of course with over 600MW of solar panels on roofs most with less that optimum orientation and access for cleaning, Australian governments have shown that they are prepared to implement green schemes that have not been costed. These large scale projects are relatively cheap in comparison.
In the Australian Capital Territory, said to have had the “most generous” feed-in tariffs in Australia (not generous to poor mugs who have to pay them), there has been no effort to consider the scheme’s effectiveness and that of panels in situ. Although the Government collected data on the type and capacity of individual systems, their inclination and azimuth were not recorded. Nor does it appear that the researchers at the Australian National University’s Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems considered that this information might be valuable for research. Maybe because it would not support their ambitions for photovoltaic electricity..
I’ve finished the analysis for that Moree Solar Photovoltaic Plant.
It seems that the proposal, while on the surface looking very good, is using parameters not yet achieved anywhere in the World so far.
Graeme, I made an error by associating panels with modules.
There are in fact 645,000 Panels.
The proposal raises eyebrows to say the least.
I always like to get in early with proposals like this, as in every case so far that original cost blows out, and some of them horrendously so.
That analysis is at the following link.
Solar Power Australia – The Moree Solar Plant
Tony.
val majkus – another laugh?
in the local Advertiser there are 3 letters. One praises the (State) Govt. for getting 76,000 installations in SA, thus taking the load off the grid in mid summer. Which seems to ignore the cool summer past.
Another winges that he only gets the “Government’s” (not the way I read it) 44c per kWh plus 6c from the supplier. He then calls for the (State) Government to legislate to force all electricity companies to pay a “fair price” for solar power fed into the grid!
The third claims to have a correctly orientated, well maintained, shade free 6kW system along with a solar hot water service in a sunny part of SA. He then claims that in only summer time, with frugal practice and a LED lighting system etc. does he gets a small surplus. I can’t see how he is using less than 25 – 30 kWh per day. He is must be related to Al Gore.
It would seem that George Orwell’s (or was he quoting Joseph Goebbels) comments on repetitive slogans are right; or “coal bad, solar power good” is as far as the ordinary public “think”.
Graeme maybe the slogan should be ‘Government subsidies good’
There’s an interesting article on Catallaxy Files today catallaxyfiles.com/2011/06/29/with-the-consent-of-the-governed/
and the other view is
I prefer the second view; Sinclair Davidson’s – Government get out of the way and rule but let us get on the job of productivity
TonyfromOz – thank you but had noted panel number. I agree that the panels will drop in efficiency first, then stop working well before 30 years. A life of 50 years is fantasy. Imagine the dialog –
Desperatus Flaccus (Government spin doctor) “could we say the panels will last 50 years”.
Cave Canem (PV panel salesman who retires in 10 years) “Our panels will last 50 years”
But EVEN IF their generation figures are correct, and EVEN IF they could pay it off over 20 years, the cost per MWh would be $114 compared with $42 for coal fired. Over 6 years which is more like the time a large company would want to see, then the cost rises to $381 per MWh.
Money talks, so your taxes are saying “Goodbye for ever”. And it is not just the panels that are dirty on this scheme.
—–
val majkus – Every time the government attempts to handle our affairs, it costs more and the results are worse than if we had handled them ourselves BENJAMIN CONSTANT (1818-20) or THOREAU (paraphrasing O’SULLIVAN) That government is best which governs least.
Regards
Graeme; totally agree; the first responsibility of any govt is in Abbott’s words before the last election ‘Do no Harm’
Whether or not the majority of the electorate will accept that by the time of the next election is another matter
I see the media now comparing rooftop solar to pink batts.
“Rooftop solar the next pink batts?”
In today’s Advertiser it was announced that the Umuwa solar power station had ben off line for over 12 months (actually over 16) and was not being reopened. It was claimed that it was uncompetitive with diesel generators at 80c per kWh.
It was originally installed in 2003 with 10 tracking dishes at a cost of $4.2 million. It was taken off line in Oct. 2005.
In March 2008 a $1.2 million up-grade was announced and completed in Aug. 08.
The $M7.1 Coober Pedy 26 dish plant [When it’s completed at the end of 2009, it will generate about 1860 MW hours a year –13 per cent of Coober Pedy’s total electricity requirements. And it will cut diesel consumption by up to 520,000 litres a year, saving 1500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, adds Garrett.] has not even been started.
TonyfromOz
supposedly concentrated PV at an efficiency of 35%. Failure rate 100%.
Graeme, why are not Fed or State politicians responsible for negligent advice and actions
I cannot think of a more substantive incident of irresponsibility and/or self service than Gillard, Garnaut, the Greens, Windsor and Oakshotte and the members of Gillard’s party
What’s happened to the national interest?
TonyfromOz has another of his renewables posts here:
papundits.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/senator-christine-milnes-transition-to-renewables-at-what-cost/
(a couple of extracts)
In a media release yesterday, shown at this link, Senator Milne says that Australia needs to transition to 100% Renewables, and to do this as quickly as possible.
….
Okay then, let’s do an exercise to see if something like this can actually be achieved, and keep right at the front of your mind that Milne is a Senator , and in fact a Deputy Leader of a Minor Party, and actually has staff. Why I say that is if she can’t find out these facts for herself, then she can easily get a lackey to do it for her, and then write her up a short precis on the subject.
Instead, all she has done is to run off at the mouth with something so outrageously stupid, and something that will never be achieved in the long term, let alone as soon as possible, as she says.
In the image below, I have listed the three most recent renewable energy projects announced for Australia.
As a comparison, I have included JUST THE ONE large scale coal fired power plant, the Bayswater plant.
…..
Notice then how Senator Milne wants to be rid of all CO2 emitting power plants, and that also takes into account those natural gas fired Plants as well.
Gee, Senator Milne. That’s 92% of all Australian power by consumption.
val majkus – because they exempted themselves from the Trade Practices Act, just as they are immune from being sued for whatever they say in Parliament. They claim that it because they face “scrutiny” ever 3 years.
So, every 3 years they spend lots of money obscuring their past behaviour.
Tony’s post is quite right, there is no way that renewables can replace conventional power stations. The only (large scale) ways to produce electricity without carbon dioxide are hydro-electricity and nuclear; and we know what the Greens think of those two!
In the Telegraph (UK) is the following (slightly edited)
– energy companies last week told the Department of Energy and Climate Change that, if Britain is to spend £100 billion on building thousands of wind turbines, it will require the building of 17 new gas-fired power stations simply to provide back-up.
– ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on “spinning reserve”, 24 hours a day – because wind power continually fluctuates anywhere between full capacity to zero (where it often stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak). So unless back-up power is instantly available to match any shortfall, the lights will go out.
Two things make this even more absurd. — it will be amazingly costly and wildly uneconomical, since the dedicated power plants will often have to run at a low rate of efficiency, burning gas but not producing electricity – as recent detailed studies have confirmed, gas-fired power stations – on “spinning reserve” produce more CO2 than when they are running at full efficiency – thus negating any savings in CO2 emissions supposedly achieved by the windmills themselves.
I’ve done some calculations in the past that replacing ALL our coal stations (85%) with an equal capacity of wind turbines (the cheapest choice allowed by the Greens) would also need 82% of gas fired stations. CO2 saved 46.5%. But replacing coal with just gas stations would save 49.5% CO2, and the electricity would be half the cost. No wonder Tony thinks that Christine is a fool; he is no orphan.
PS meet Tony Abbott last Friday. Contrary to what the press would have you believe he appear quite sane, didn’t bite the head off live chooks etc. and spoke sensibly. Further, when I went up to ask a question he said “Nice to meet you again”. When I looked blank he said that we had met before; then I realized that was about 12 years ago (in Sydney at meeting) for about 1 minute. What a memory! and what a contrast with the current PM who has trouble remembering what she said last year.
I’ve had some comments about how I am ‘artificially’ inflating the cost of Renewable Power plants, and ‘artificially’ deflating the costs of Coal fired plants in any price comparison.
I was referred to a Wikipedia site, which I had long discounted as a viable reference.
How Wiki gets away with it baffles me. Anyone can come in and add anything there, and it’s always ‘pro’ renewables and ‘anti’ anything else.
One of the biggest failures they make is comparing plants on a ‘lifetime’ basis, and where that falls down is that they give the plants an equal life span, which is not only erroneous, but totally false. An average large scale coal fired plant has a licensed original life of 50 years, and in fact can be relicensed twice further, out to 60 and then 75 years.
None of the renewables, be they wind, or any version of solar has a life span beyond 25 to 30 years, that 30 years the absolute limit.
However, the Wiki site bases their ‘whole of life’ cost structure using the same life span for all plants, when they should be using that factor of doubling or tripling the renewable cost structure.
In respect of coal fired power, Wiki adds on CCS, although how they can even guess at that cost has me fooled, because it will NEVER be made to operate on large scale plants at all. What this effectively does is to hugely increase the original cost of the plant, and immediately take away 40% of the total generated power, that 40% being required just to support CCS. This then lowers the lifetime power delivery, and increases the price, so you can see how it makes coal fired power look even worse. That inflates the Wiki costings for coal fired plants even further, and it was suggested to me that it was false not to include a costing for CCS in my comparison.
They also inflate the actual coal consumption over the life of the plant, using the worst case coal consumption for existing non CCS old technology plants, when recent technology coal fired power uses less than they quote in their scenarios, closer to half the coal they quote. Then, on top of that they inflate the lifetime cost of the thermal coal, again inflating the cost structure even further.
I pointed out the cost structure I used included the price for 50 years of thermal coal at double what it is currently selling for, so I wasn’t ‘deflating; the cost structure at all, and it still came out cheaper than renewables by a factor of seven to ten.
Then there was the standard reply, that being that as more of these renewables are constructed, the price will come down, again patently false, because the construction cost is the big ticket price here, and that has to be recovered over the life of the plant. Even with the considerable ramping up of construction of these plants, the costs have not fallen, and in fact have risen, and in some cases doubled, so the sanguine view that the cost will come down is another of those ploys to say that renewable power will be cheaper.
The biggest failing of all however is that life span part of the equation.
For any cost structure comparison to be correct, then any renewable plant costs need to be doubled at least, and in fact almost trebled.
Tony.
Tony,
I belatedly realised (my comment 42) that the reason the a life of 50 years was given for solar PV was to bring the supposed cost down to near that of coal, except they didn’t dare say it in public. It didn’t seem worth mentioning, but now I bring it up as confirmation of your last comment.
From some work I did last year, I found that the cost of construction of a 2 – 2.5 MW wind turbine in the UK had gone up over 10 years (partly due to the rise in cost of steel & concrete), and has gone up again in the last year, probably due to devaluation of the Pound. These are the common ones installed, as the 5 MW machines are proving mechanically troublesome, and high in cost. Its no secret (except from Greenies) that the stresses/strains go up as the size goes up, so the move from fibreglass + polyester resin to carbon fibre (& even more exotic reinforcement) + epoxy resin is necessary. The epoxy has to be heat cured to get better strength and 30 metre pressure autoclaves don’t grow on trees.
For what it is worth the UK Govt. recently gave a cost for (on-shore) wind of $A140 per MWh. I know the Spanish producers were getting less, either 75 or 90 euros. The local (SA) wind farm at Hallett once revealed that their cost was $111 per MWh. One of the problems with the cost is the tendency of greens to confuse the (spot) price wind is sold at, with the cost. Further they always ignore maintenance.
The UK figure for coal is a little less but you have to remove the hidden subsidy for UK mines, and the hidden(?) subsidy for renewables included. I always use the Australian bulk rate for coal fired of $A42 per MWh. The USA tends to be slightly lower. I noted that the Norwegian would pay $23 for wind power (using it for pumped storage) and sell hydro back at $89, when they would have been competing with German brown coal stations, so that may be a guide to the cost of coal power in Germany.
Gas I calculate at $60-65 (but varies with demand); for nuclear I use the French Govt. stated price of €69 per MWh (that’s euros).
The cheapest electricity was that from the (French) Rance river tidal power station at $29, but that was built in the 1960’s and must have paid for itself long ago.
Concentrated Solar was enthusiastically touted as likely to be $US 110-120, but others not building (or financing) new plant preferred $US 130-160. That is without heat storage. The ANDASOL plants were supposedly producing at $A215 per MWh, with $A75 cost for 5 hours of storage.
The average life of a turbine in the UK is 7.5-9 years, but only because once they are up, it is possible to replace them with a much larger turbine without having to go through the planning process. I noted the claim that 1% of turbines suffered a blade breakage, but one near Port Lincoln resulted in over 1 year down time. The Finns reported a number of problems, averaging about 200 hours per turbine downtime per annum, but rising once turbines got to 15 years old (natural life?).
See www.ewec2010proceedings.info/allfiles2/442_EWEC2010presentation.pdf
I have lost the reference, but buried deep in UK figures (and I think in a Treasury document) was a claim that the construction cost of onshore turbines was 67% of the cost over the lifetime, with maintenance at 10%, and payments to landholders etc.
The only area of renewables where there has been demonstrated cost reductions is PV. Standard types have a life of 20-23 years. The newer thin film types are much cheaper but who knows if there claimed life of 16-20 years is true. Having seen examples of paint (untouched after 8 years outdoor in Switzerland) breakdown badly within 10 months is Qld. (Allunga near Townsville) I hold no hope for those who think that their PV cells are going to last 50 years in Oz.
I agree completely with your comments. It seems that some people prefer wishful “thinking” to facts.