The Six Biggest Solar Power Megaplant Projects

[karmakop]

Record-breaking oil prices, soaring greenhouse-gas emissions, and the rise of carbon trading all add up to one thing: a new dawn for solar power. From New Mexico to Australia, governments and businesses are collaborating to create enormous plants that will each bring clean electricity to tens of thousands.

Foreign Policy: The List: Solar Power’s New Megaplants

[oztrailrider]

It amazes me that the 154Mw plant in Mildura is only going to be 0.1 percent of what the total electricity production in Australia was in 2006. I didn't think we consumed that much electricity!.

[LMagic007]

Originally Posted by oztrailrider

It amazes me that the 154Mw plant in Mildura is only going to be 0.1 percent of what the total electricity production in Australia was in 2006. I didn't think we consumed that much electricity!.

Not sure mate, but be careful not to confuse national annual Megawatt Hours produced with rated Megawatt output capacity of the power station. You would need to work out the average daily Megawatt hours output of the power station and then compare it to the annual national gigawatt hours consumed.

Just some quick in the head estimates, alternatively if Australia's electricity grid is around 50 GW in capacity thus 154 MW is about 1/3 of 1% of that ( .00308 ) . Obviously power generation capacity factors vary between technologies, but one could conceptualize that with equal capacity factors across power generating technologies, you would need around 333 of them with 24/7 energy storage to power the grid at an average load.

Obviously capacity factor is not consistent across technologies, so being more conservative I would bump it up to around 500 x 154 MW power stations ( combined 77 GW rated capacity ) to power the national grid with storage. Of course you would not want to invest the grid in just one renewable technology, but this is just giving an idea of scale and number of 154 MW plants required on an elementary theoretical level. Also this is just rough approximation.


See NRELs views on Solar Thermal energy and baseload potential;

As the cost of thermal storage is reduced, future parabolic trough plants could yield capacity factors greater than 70%, competing directly with future baseload combined cycle plants or coal plants.

NREL: TroughNet - Parabolic Trough Power Plant Market, Economic Assessment and Deployment

Either way solar thermal in general has significant potential.

[oztrailrider]

Will keep that in mind, I was just amazed to see that figure and realise how big the capacity of the national grid must be. I found some interesting stats here: Australia's Electricity.

Namely this: "In 2006 Australia's power stations produced 255 billion kilowatt hours (TWh) of electricity*, 65% more than the 1990 level and growing at 3.3% pa"

[LMagic007]

Yes I do agree it does seem like a daunting task. It's matter of putting one foot in front of the other. Make a start and the next step becomes easier and so on... etc..