Discover Top Posts Tagged with #crescent dunes

Crescent Dunes thermal solar plant

#Crescent Dunes #thermal solar #infrastructure #electricity #solar power #energy

#aaron cherof #Crescent dunes #music #Spotify

The trailblazing Crescent Dunes CSP project is operating again under new owners - this time just delivering solar for night

A solar power plant that generates mostly at night?

Solar–heated steam plants are not fashionable, but a point greatly in their favor is that they can (to an extent) be made controllable. This saves a great deal of trouble and cost in storage and grid–stability measures and so on.

One reason they are not in fashion is that the funding mechanisms used for PV and wind projects (which are recondite, and frankly raise some real questions when examined closely) don’t really mesh well with a multi–year construction period, followed by a fairly large amount of power coming on the line all at once. This is also part of the reason for the interest in “small modular” nuclear power units, although every time you look, the definition of “small” has crept up again. Currently units of 300 MW, almost three times the output of Crescent Dunes, are being described as SMRs, which really strains credulity.

The account of the “teething troubles” at Crescent Dunes is instructive. All steam plants seem to suffer from them. The extreme quality standards enforced in the nuclear industry typically (although not always) keep these to a minimum ― for instance, the improper welding practices which caused trouble with the replacement hot–salt tank at Crescent Dunes would almost certainly have been caught long before the tank was put in service, if they happened at all.

As Augustin Shevchik of Czechoslovakia put it at the 1955 Geneva Conference, renewable energy “will always require voluminous equipment. The problems of utilizing nuclear power, on the contrary, are problems of high–quality equipment.”

#solar energy #solar thermal #renewables #crescent dunes #economics and finance

Sometimes when I'm birdwatching

#sometimes when i’m birdwatching #things that aren’t birds #crescent dunes #concentrated solar power #got a bucket of molten salt for ya #where do you want it?#I wonder how many people #refer to these installations #the same way my partner in crime and I do #as #the eye of sauron

Commission for DD! This will be used in a chapter for a story they are writing over at AO3, which you can lookie over here. The art itself will be used on a later chapter. I RARELY do backgrounds and environment work. So I decided to take the chance to see if I even know how. I'm very happy with the outcome of these. But I think its because I have a bias for deserts. I still have a lot to learn but this was a nice experience. This is a real place called Cresent Dunes in Nevada.

#Art Commission #environment art #background art #crescent dunes #desert #nevada #my-art #night #day

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

What’s with this unique design, you ask? This Nevada solar farm utilizes concentrated thermal solar power (CSP) instead of panels that transform sunlight directly into electricity. The spiral arrangement of mirrors captures rays from the blazing desert sun and directs them to a center tower that contains molten salt. This salt is then used to heat water and power steam turbines. To get a better understanding of the sheer scale of this project, one must realize that each of those (seemingly) little mirrors is 37 feet wide and 24 feet tall…and there are over 10,000 of them. The tower in the center is 640 feet high. A project of this magnitude provides enough electricity for 75,000 local homes.

#crescent dunes #solar projects #nevada #sustainability #future is now #equinox energy solutions #carbon dioxide #power