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Politics : Politics of Energy -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (1021)	7/27/2008 10:32:21 AM
From: Brumar89	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

How does solar thermal power generate power at night and on cloudy days? This implies they operate 90% of the time: over 90 percent of fossil fuel–generated electricity in the United States and the majority of U.S. oil usage for transportation could be eliminated using solar thermal power plants

To: Road Walker who wrote (1021)	7/31/2008 2:42:03 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 86355

With concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) capacity expected to double every 16 months over the next five years, worldwide installed CSP capacity will reach 6,400 megawatts in 2012—14 times the current capacity. Doubling every 16 months for 5 years is quite ambitious, but this much might be doable. Lets assume this does happen. 6400 megawatts in 2012, isn't exactly a very significant part of our electric use. Also while you can store energy and continue to produce during the night, its far from clear that even with storage that you will actually have anywhere near 6400 megawatts production 24/7. Just because you can store energy and continue to get some production nearly 24/7 doesn't mean your likely to get the rates capacity 24/7 If the projected annual growth rate of CSP through 2012 is maintained to 2020, global installed CSP capacity would exceed 200,000 megawatts A geometric curve like that isn't particularly likely to be maintained. It gets harder with each doubling. Its very easy to say "if the projected growth to 2012 is maintained to 2020...", but its very hard to actually do, and there is no good reason to anticipate that it will happen, or even that it has any significant chance of happening.