It is a shame that when Dr Hewson campaigns in the Wentworth byelection he is not asked some hard questions about the viability of solar thermal electricity generation schemes has has promoted over the years. He should also be asked about ARENA who found that concentrated solar thermal (CST) technology could be a commercially viable form of dispatchable renewable energy within a decade. English translation – NOT VIABLE NOW. Dr Hewson and Solastor have for years promoted aq model where tracking mirrors concentrate the suns rays on a graphite block generating steam to drive turbines – but despite over a decade of trials and pilot projects in Cooma and Lake Cargelligo I am not aware this system is working continuously anywhere delivering grid electricity economically? Solastor has no news for 2018 which suggests they realize their models are a fail. Vast Solar Pty Ltd(Dr Hewson has no connection I am aware of) have their long gestating solar thermal plant near Forbes that heats molten sodium but that has been sidelined in favour of a simple solar PV development. ARENA is not supporting any Port Augusta projects I can find and ditto for the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. I am keen to hear of any Govt support for concentrated solar thermal projects anywhere in Australia.
Almost $70 million in government money down the renewables drain on this would-be 44 MW solar project in Queensland using AREVA Solar’s Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector technology . The project wind-up report conclusion tells of supposedly unique reasons for the failure of the project, but in reality it's an all too familiar tale seeking to find excuses for the failure of yet another subsidised solar thermal project:
The only practical form of concentrated solar energy is that which provides the power keeping the big brother neighbour of this subsidised white elephant reliably generating, i.e. the 750 MW coal fired Kogan Creek power plant.
wazz – That was a good find Bob and the timing is about right for it to have been a key project that along with Californian failures – caused the scales to fall from the eyes of ARENA leading to their key study last year.
IMHO the flaw in graphite block and molten sodium systems is that while by using mirrors the suns heat can sure be concentrated on the heat absorbing block – but that block is also RADIATING heat energy in all directions at the same time. There is no way to prevent those heat losses. In the piping and heat exchangers between the block and the turbines there are also heat losses and the total of all losses overwhelmes any gains.
Good point about the heat losses. Another big downside of thermal solar is that it is an environmental nightmare. You have to cover a huge area with mirrors, leaving it useless for anything else. Once it’s going you generate air temperatures of 500 degrees C near the cores. The light attracts insects and the insects attract birds, which are then fried in mid-air.
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It seems the AREVA heat collection method for the Kogan Boost project was to have utilised sunlight reflected from long horizontal tracking mirrors to directly heat a group of water tubes at that focus point. So no liquid sodium heat exchanger required, with the process steam being produced directly in the water tubes.
My guestimate of $70 million taxpayer dollars being burned in the folly is at odds with what I read here. Because of the early demise of the project it seems the QLD and Federal hand-outs together had amounted to a lesser total of between $41M and $50M. I don't know whether there were any brown paper envelopes or miscellaneous outgoings involved?
Bob, have not looked at Thermal solar in any detail but directly heating water tubes with intermittent heat loads can lead to all sort of problems which any qualified chemical or mechanical engineer should realise. Note the concentrated radiant heat is applied to only one side of the pipes. and the area of concentration is relatively small. In a normal watertube boiler it takes days to bring into operation from a cold start to protect the tubes and the refractory. With solar thermal and tracking mirrors once the full sun is up the heat would be applied very rapidly this could cause differential expansion and overheating corrosion problems. The mirrors would need to be controlled to bring temperatures up slowly but that wastes some time. However, the passing of a cloud could cause rapid overheating and a steam surge (or lock) in the water flow.
It is more normal to use a high temperature thermal fluid circulating that then goes through an heat exchanger for water & steam. This was done with the first solar thermal plant at White Cliffs. The latter had any maintenance problems including corrosion. It had a diesel backup which also gave problems. It was closed after a couple of years then converted to solar PV but that also was not much good so White Cliffs was connected to the grid.
Yes Cementafriend I was surprised by the AREVA promotional video (linked above) which explains that the heat collection was to be achieved by focusing sunlight directly onto steel water tubes. The video also claims that the system can deal with intermittent cloud cover and can generate dispatchable power by adding “natural gas hybridisation”. Claims were made at the time that the CLFR solar plant would provide a 44 MW boost, presumably saving fuel input to the Kogan Creek boiler. How the steam was to be utilised is not clear, maybe they intended to use the boost steam for feedwater heating, replacing bleed steam?
In the SMH article that is referred to in The Wentworth Report (linked above) the project was abandoned because of rusting pipes and “rapidly moving clouds”. The rusting of the pipes seem to have something to do with the steel pipes being caught up in the flooding of the Brisbane River at the time.
I wonder if there are any examples of AREVA CLFR solar plants currently operating reliably?