Hillhater said:
Cresent Dunes Thermal Solar plant headed for bankruptcy
Thats another $700+ million lesson in RE practicality !
. Even after securing DOE funding in 2011, Tonopah wasn’t able to commence commercial operations until 2015. And since then, power purchaser NV Energy has been less-than-thrilled with the project’s output. NV Energy was supposed to purchase power from Crescent Dunes until 2040, but the project has failed to generate target electricity output over the past four years. Finally, on October 4, NV Energy called it quits and terminated their agreement with Crescent Dunes.
https://townhall.com/columnists/rossmarchand/2019/10/09/crescent-dunes-solar-is-doomed-as-taxpayers-pick-up-the-tab-n2554430
Yep, imagine receiving $700million of taxpayer money from the DOE to build such a contraption then having the audacity to then sue them for baloney reasons as to why the project didn't work.
Classic standard business practises stuff here, I bet the CEO/board members of this dodgy solar project paid themselves something like $1million a year to run this project as its a complex project that is "risking" a lot of taxpayer money.
I STILL see people on Facebook/Twitter share very impressive looking solar thermal project demo videos on their social media accounts saying "Why aren't we doing this? It looks fantastic! Lets save the planet with solar thermal!"
Talk about suckers.
I was sure South Australia would build theirs which was from the same company in the USA.
Despite the money the government was going to give to help the project it still wasn't enough, maybe the easily web searchable Wikipedia MWh stats helped sink it compared to flashy Facebook video demos.
There was a demon in me that hoped they did build the SA solar thermal project because then we could see how dumb it is locally.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-05/solar-thermal-plant-will-not-go-ahead-in-port-augusta/10973948
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/08/south-australia-to-get-the-worlds-biggest-solar-thermal-plant-what-the-experts-have-to-say/
I like how bad the "experts" information was about this project back in 2017
But what do experts have to say?
Wasim Saman is a Professor of Sustainable Energy Engineering at the University of South Australia
This is first large scale application of solar thermal generation in Australia which has been operating successfully in Europe, USA and Africa.
Australian Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wanted the Port Augusta Solar thermal power-station entirely public-funded and owned by the Australian taxpayer.
Solar thermal plant should be publicly-owned
https://www.sarahhansonyoung.com/solar_thermal_for_port_augusta
Sarah is like a mini version of Al Gore, she frequently sited as always carrying two of the latest smartphones in a real leather designer handbags and racks up $1million dollar travel expenses bill on the taxpayer going around the world to see Mardi Gras etc.
HIGH-profile Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young has claimed almost $1 million on travel entitlements
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/sarah-hansonyoung-greens-senator-claimed-almost-1-million-in-travel-entitlements/news-story/fdd7fc151fb29a0ba2cd23f99b4e43f9
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3213698/Greens-senator-Sarah-Hanson-Young-racks-travel-expenses-bill-1-million.html
https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/greens-senator-sarah-hansonyoung-partied-at-mardi-gras-with-taxpayer-money/news-story/295a35dff5be6fdc01e6c4f3aaf68ffd
It's stuff like this that helps me like Hydrogen more, because if the government wants to subsidize stuff then Hydogren is harder to cheat the taxpayer and cause problems.
If the government guarantees to pay a supplier of Hydrogen $30 a kilo for clean hydrogen then if some dodgy wind/solar company claims they can create Hydrogen at $10kilo with their new amazing clean energy electrolysis hydrogen factory, then they shouldn't have trouble getting funding from private industry.
Unlike MWh which can be dumped on the grid when its not wanted or cause grid instability because the power is not synchronized or because it's hard to predict the weather.
None of these dodgy problems exists with Hydrogen, it's far more fungible.
Great little 1minute overview of why fossil fuels are so used in context to fungibility.
https://youtu.be/v6uVnyjTb58?t=1402
I don't know if anyone looked at my Hydrogen-Fuelcell post https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=61153&p=1410624#p1410624
But it includes this great video from
Engineering Explained has a great "Overall efficiency & emissions" of "Battery EVs vs Hydrogen Fuel-Cell vs Petroleum-cars vs Hybrids-cars", what's interesting is the Fuel-cell EVs are very close to BEVs in distance/emissions efficiency.
The only thing I don't like about his comparison is he doesn't include the $10,000 worth of energy/materials/emissions cost at minimum thats included with the giant lithium batteries for the BEVs which I think is cheating, because as discussed before is the equivalent for about 150,000km worth of combustion driving emissions that are "pre-emitted".
[youtube]2rywz73vwKw[/youtube]
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Cheaper Catalyst Can Generate Hydrogen in a Commercial Device-Researchers have shown for the first time that a cheap catalyst can split water and generate #hydrogen gas for hours on end in the harsh environment of a commercial device
https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/cheaper-catalyst-can-generate-hydrogen-in-a-commercial-device/