Ive read where Texan Solar Thermal plants will only be charging $0.05/Kw-hour, much less than fossil or nuclear plants. As I have studied Ivanpah, I can tell you how it would be done there. First, the plant cost $2.2B dollars to build, including federal loan guarantees of $1.6 billion. Ivanpah is also supposed to supply 350-400 thousand customers. Thats $0.05kW/hours X 400,000customers/kW X 24 hours/day X 365 days / year = $175M dollars/year income. Then it will take ~12 years to pay off Ivanpahs capital/construction costs. Not bad. The only negative is the land usage. To power all of California this way one would need ~ a hundred Ivanpahs. All of the west, maybe three hundred. The land is available so this is doable. But it will take time.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Mar 2014 18:14:33 +0000
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