Fair enough.
"Table 4 provides a breakout of the CSP technical potential for these counties, and shows the statewide CSP technical potential to be approximately one million MW of capacity."
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2005publica...2005-072-D.PDF
Total energy demand for California is forecast to be about 65GW in 2010
Now consider that that potential solar capacity is not what will actually be supplied, and you’ll see that its contribution will be small.
While it can have a back up of 13 hrs (which is great), the amount of energy that it can provide over the course of say, two days will be significantly lower than the plant’s total capacity, as it can’t store and supply at full tilt at the same time.
From April 2008:
"Concerns about long-term water availability and consumption patterns are real and growing in importance in the U.S. west. As indicated on page 3-12 of the draft report, BLM applications for over 45,000 MW have been received in California. The vast majority of these identified sites are in arid and semi arid areas where near term water availability is often challenged, let alone 20 year commitments.
As a result, the base trough plant design, capital cost, energy production, and capacity contribution should be based on dry cooling, sized to address the summer season 12 p.m. to 6 p.m. ambient air temperature and humidity characteristics associated with each CREZ.
Several very recent studies and reports present widely different capital, O&M and levelized MWh costs associated with solar trough plants. We respectfully suggest a rationalization take place between these studies to understand how and why these levelized cost differences exist. "
And from the same report:
"If dry cooled trough plants cost more to construct per MW of capacity as a result of required design changes, typically have higher operating costs and demonstrate significant performance degradation when operating in the desert where 100 - 115 degree F plus summer temperatures are coincident with peak demand hours, all other things equal, why wouldn’t they show significantly higher levelized costs and a lower peak season capacity contribution than similarly rated wet cooled trough plants? "
http://www.energy.ca.gov/reti/steeri...irst_Solar.pdf
"Water usage at power towers is comparable to other Rankine
cycle power technologies of similar size and annual performance."
http://www.nrel.gov/docs/gen/fy98/24496.pdf
Its clearly worth asking questions, as when you're fed ideal numbers, you run the risk of being mislead.