Posted on 01/16/2020 5:56:18 PM PST by karpov
Government planning and subsidies will make America the world’s green-energy superpower, create millions of jobs, and supercharge the economy—or so we’re told. The reality is closer to Crescent Dunes, a Nevada solar-energy plant that has gone bust after receiving a $737 million federal loan guarantee.
An inconvenient truth is that the sun sets each day, but the Obama Administration’s green planners had an app for that. They decided to invest in the Crescent Dunes facility that would use molten salt to store heat from the sun, produce steam, and generate electricity even at night. The utility NV Energy had already agreed to buy the electricity. Government support would carry the project to sunny success.
In September 2011, the Energy Department described how the 110-megawatt facility would “be the first of its kind in the United States and the tallest molten salt tower in the world,” powering more than 43,000 homes a year. The precedent was Solar Two, a small pilot plant decommissioned in 1999 that had shown it was technically feasible to use molten salt to store and generate power. But in a 2006 report the Energy Department said the 10-megawatt facility “was never expected to be a viable commercial-scale plant and, in fact, did not validate economic feasibility.”
No worries. It’s only taxpayer money, and the feds jumped into Crescent Dunes anyway. The Department of Energy finalized its loan guarantee on Sept. 23, 2011, a week before the federal loan program expired. A month earlier Nevada had approved $119.3 million in tax abatements for Crescent Dunes over 20 years. The plant also received some $140 million in private investment.
Crescent Dunes began by missing the deadline established by its agreement with NV Energy, becoming operational months late.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
birds ate it
deer used it for salt lick
Did anyone try cooking turkeys with it? LOL
Turkey has to fly into the beam to be cooked!
A huge turn-a-round coming! You can take that to the roulette table.
How many Crescent Dunes executives fot out with over a Million?
Also was any of that money laundered through the Ukraine? (being an energy outfit and all)
110-megawatts powering 43,000 homes. That’s 2,500 kW per house. Don’t you dare use two hair driers at the same time. And don’t EVER use the electric stove and microwave at the same time. Lastly, curtail your FR time.
In 2018, the average annual electricity consumption for a U.S. residential utility customer was 10,972 kWh. There are 8,760 hours in a year, so that’s 1.25 kW around the clock. It looks like they took that 1.25 and doubled it to get 2,500 kW per house.
If you assume people are awake and at home 1/3 of the day; you need 3.75 kWh per average home.
Even if that power plant had worked as conceived, it was not going to power 43,000 homes.
My daughter and I drove by a solar tower power plant in Spain some years ago. When the sun was shining on it, it was very hard to look at even from a great distance away. It was like a small chunk of the sun had fallen to earth.
Yes, different place, diffeent plant.
Same result. Government money to democrat-connected politician’s families, democrat unions, democrat donor businesses
did anyone try a trebuchet?
Ayn Rand lives.
Me too...waaay back in the mid 70s.
Shoot NV is my planned retirement state now I learn they’re buying into all this green crap?
Shoddy construction doomed the plant.
Only the liberal enclaves of Reno, LV, and Carson City* (*Trending that way as it grows).
The rest of the state is still sane, but like IL, NY and several other states the sane population is becoming powerless in the face of the lunatic left.
We have seventeen counties but have been dominated by One, Clark County (LV).
Now Washoe (Reno) is also going nuts pretty consistently.
If you do come to Nevada, try to shore up one of our sane rural counties.
Went by that place a few times going up to Ore a couple years ago.
Can see that thing for mails. One big glowing ball. Extremely white. I thought, WTF is that? The first time I went that way.
I got pics someplace of it.
Miles..
Well we came here in 2011 thinking we were pretty safe. To invested to leave now. Dem controlled house with super majority and only 1 or 2 seats short of a super majority in the senate. Fidiot dem gov and most of the higher offices in the state. Clark county (vegas) and Washoe county (Reno) are the most populated so if the libs get the votes in those two, which they do, the rest of state gets shafted. Sorry to give you the bad side. It is beautiful though. Still no state income tax but you can bet they’re working on it.
Regular old photovoltaic panels work fine. 50 years. No moving parts
Just sayin
Check out a semi-creepy side trip a guy took bypassing Tonopah
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