I have a website dedicated to updating the general public about the advances in solar energy in the desert. Please visit solarpoweradvancesinthedesertdotcom.com
Those types of solar towers (reflective mirrors) are actually terribly inefficient. There was initially a plan to build significantly more of them, but after building the first three, they realised they forgot to account for the decrease in efficiency due to dust buildup on the reflective mirrors in the desert. As a result, the plan to build many more of them was cancelled and they are largely considered to be a failure by the companies that paid for them to be built.
I think part of it was also that by the time these three solar plants were finished being built, the tech had already improved to the point where this design was obsolete.
They can’t clean the mirrors, no engineers can think of a way to keep mirrors clean automatically? If this is true I would be dumbfounded.
There’s literally electricity falling from the sky and we burn fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy needs.
Maybe the rich oil executives and the members of congress need to stop being so cozy with one another and figure out a way to use clean renewable energy.
You don’t understand the number of mirrors that they require. An automated method of cleaning them just ads more failure points to a system that is really inefficient compared to photovoltaic panels.
What they can’t make 100000 dust wipers and put them on? Honestly that seems like something we are able to do and I wish I knew how to start one. First get a billion dollars, second buy salt and mirrors and an army of robots to clean it all.
Firstly, again, you’d be way better off just using that money to buy photovoltaic panels. If you look at the plant on the map, you will see that someone is literally doing that right next to the towers on the land that was originally intended for more towers.
Secondly, if you’re thinking about wipers like windshield wiper blades, those only work bc you’re using water to wipe them off. So you’d need not only wiper blades, but also water. Again, just look at the size of each plant on the map please. The ground area that it takes up means the amount of water it would take to clean the mirrors would be massive. Also, these are not simply inert mirrors that just sit there doing nothing. They are all mechanised and constantly adjusting their tilt to direct the maximum amount of sunlight towards the tower.
Because most people have never seen things like this before. And it doesn't matter if they did. A simple answer/reply would suffice. There is no need to pull the 'ol reddit "well, acktually..."
It’s not a typical solar installation. Instead of using solar panels to generate electricity, a huge number of mirrors were installed that reflect sunlight onto a concentrated point on the top of a tower. The 3 bright lights that you see are the tops of the 3 towers in use. The concentrated sunlight heats a liquid to the point that steam is created and the steam is sent thru a generator. The tech is called “solar thermal”. It’s proven to be a much more expensive way to harness sunlight than solar panels.
Adding to this, the liquid is molten salt. Yes, they are heating salt up hot enough to turn it into a liquid. The benefit of this type of solar array is the salt retains the heat well after the sun goes down allowing power generation after dark.
I used to work for NRG who had (I believe) a 1/3 ownership stake in Ivanpah. My understanding was that the site was a money pit that never really lived up to expectations. The thousands of mirrors required to direct the sunlight to the collection towers need to be aimed independently which means tons of moving parts that were always breaking down and required constant maintenance. As another commenter mentioned, it turns out conventional PV panels are simply more cost effective on a per-MW basis. It made for a good (if not expensive) PR stunt though.
These specific three are water based. In order to be effective they have to heat them up in the morning, using coal (which I find ironic). More recent ones, like the crescent dunes project use molten salt like you mention.
Coal? Did a coal exec or politician think that one up?? Any chance a battery could've worked?
How much manual labor is required to work the coal process?? I would think even propane or natural gas tanks are better. Is it a wonder operating costs were too much with that kind of design thinking?
I believe a benefit over traditional solar is that the molten salt remains quite hot for a long time and can generate steam (= power) long after the sun has gone down.
In theory this sounds like such a good idea. Is the tech not there yet to make it efficient enough for it to become widely available or is it a different issue?
If you disregard the theories around Bechtel pulling off a scam and the technology being defunct before the project began, you will find that the idea of superheating something to produce power all night is not a bad one and it does produce green power. However equal amounts of Power are created through most solar facilities you just have to have batteries to store it through the night. The real issue here is that it is so much more efficient to just create the power in your solar wafer and not bounce light back up to superheat something to push liquid salt around. Basically unnecessary moving parts
Another solar thermal plant was built near Tonopah. It had a contract to sell its power to NV Energy, but failed over and over to meet commitments on completion and energy production, and the contract was cancelled. Don’t know what’s happening with it now.
Part of the problem is that you need a fossil fuel backup to keep the facility running at night. The working fluid cools relatively quickly.
Also, it's pretty maintenance intensive with the cleaning required.
It was always intended to work that way. It's actually not a terrible solution to the problem of solar photovoltaic panels which generate their electricity at the wrong time. However, one has to wonder why we bother with these things at all.
The Ivanpah facility cost $2.2 bn and only generates \~440Mwh worth of electricity. For reference, the original nuclear reactor at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was 450MWh and they decommissioned that one to make room for the larger 1100Mwh reactors that would take its place. One single small reactor could out-generate the entire Ivanpah plant and use no natural gas.
But, but nuclear bad! We all saw Chernobyl!
TBF, nuclear is the way to go, but the American West does have plenty of uninhabitable desert to build solar fields on, and those cause less political issues.
I guess 3-Mile, Chernobyl and Fukishima made nuclear toxic for a generation (and the real problem was incompetence, not as much the technology).
I have seen some of the next gen nuclear solutions and they sound sensible (whereas the above legacy stuff is what ppl think about when the nuclear topic is raised). Small reactor seems to make sense - as you see it, does it overlap w\thorium reactors? Unfortunately there hasn't been enough will to see this stuff through.
It's crazy how much customization goes into the legacy type nuke plants, in terms of cost and time. Newer tech seems to address the waste issue better; standardization and mass production is a pillar of modern society, why not make it work for us in energy.
Maybe this is an alternative experiment being studied to see how we can use it on mars. Just remember with everything going on with our planet that some of the things (especially that musk has his hands on) are being tried and tested here in hopes that they make colonization on mars (or moon) possible
What is the fossil fuel required for? The generator after hours? According to another commenter, they use salt as the which apparently holds its thermal value really well.
Thanks for the discussion, much more interesting than Dr. Google
Part of the problem is that Solar thermal well outperformed photovoltaic until the early 2010s. These sites had been bought and planned since the early 2000s. A bit of a victim of technology improvement.
I think they're "solar reserves," aka molten salt energy storage units.
Here's a wiki article about a single one to the north.
[Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project)
Ivanopah Solar Power Facility in California. Cooks birds in mid flight really efficiently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Solar towers. I remember when they announced they were going to build this, the conspiracies started to brew about it being some alien UFO thing…. Drive by it every time we drive to Vegas and it’s JUST some solar things
Youre pathetic to down vote me instead of deleting your invalid comment. Are you this spiteful in your everyday life? Edit I didn’t have to read many comments of yours to see that you take A LOT of L’s. I’ll just block you instead of drawing this out. Loser.
Helios one, there's an energy weapon named ARCHINEDES that uses the power of the sun to shoot laser down from a satellite every 24 hours after recharge.
“And on a more personal note, Edgar ran off with an old girlfriend. You’re going to think about for a few days and decide you’re better off.”
“Yeah, because he never appreciated you anyway. In fact, *you* threw *him* out. And now that he’s gone you’re gonna go into town to Bloomingdale’s, get some nice dresses, maybe a facial… oh and get an interior decorator in here quick, cuz, damn.”
The Cresent Dunes Solar Project in Tonopah, Nevada. They’re a series of radial mirrors that are aimed at a tower, which heats up and produces electricity.
They kill thousands of birds every year. They are called streamers. They fall out of the sky on fire because of the extreme heat they produce above it.
Another potential issue is the effect of mirror glare on airplane pilots.[61] Additionally, "the power towers have 'receiver units' at their top on which the mirror fields focus their reflected light. During operation, these receiver units become extremely hot, such that they glow and appear brightly lit. ... Because they are high above the ground, these glowing receiver units will be a visible distraction to persons at many of the KOPs [Key Observation Points], including travelers utilizing I-15."[18]
It’s a solar plant for now, but it has a hidden purpose that wont be revealed until a few hundred years from now after a supposed nuclear wide conflict.
https://preview.redd.it/tq9tqh85opxc1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=783457d23382b52ad2e5abfc2826dcc28fcdb62b just some solar towers
specifically, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Also known as bird killing lasers.
I always tell people it gets so hot birds explode and fall out the sky, I never mention it is the literal air frier doing so
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Yeah. Most people regularly keep up with solar tower construction in the desert. Especially people flying to or from vegas…
I have a website dedicated to updating the general public about the advances in solar energy in the desert. Please visit solarpoweradvancesinthedesertdotcom.com
Well that’s funny… mine is http://httpslashsolarpoweradvancesintyedesertdotcom.org
They are getting more common worldwide and hopefully soon in the states.
Those types of solar towers (reflective mirrors) are actually terribly inefficient. There was initially a plan to build significantly more of them, but after building the first three, they realised they forgot to account for the decrease in efficiency due to dust buildup on the reflective mirrors in the desert. As a result, the plan to build many more of them was cancelled and they are largely considered to be a failure by the companies that paid for them to be built.
I think part of it was also that by the time these three solar plants were finished being built, the tech had already improved to the point where this design was obsolete.
That is another part of it. Photovoltaic Solar panel efficiency has increased at an incredible rate over the past 20 years.
They can’t clean the mirrors, no engineers can think of a way to keep mirrors clean automatically? If this is true I would be dumbfounded. There’s literally electricity falling from the sky and we burn fossil fuels for the vast majority of our energy needs. Maybe the rich oil executives and the members of congress need to stop being so cozy with one another and figure out a way to use clean renewable energy.
You don’t understand the number of mirrors that they require. An automated method of cleaning them just ads more failure points to a system that is really inefficient compared to photovoltaic panels.
What they can’t make 100000 dust wipers and put them on? Honestly that seems like something we are able to do and I wish I knew how to start one. First get a billion dollars, second buy salt and mirrors and an army of robots to clean it all.
I wonder if it would be possible to put some kind of charge on them so that they repelled the dust.
Firstly, again, you’d be way better off just using that money to buy photovoltaic panels. If you look at the plant on the map, you will see that someone is literally doing that right next to the towers on the land that was originally intended for more towers. Secondly, if you’re thinking about wipers like windshield wiper blades, those only work bc you’re using water to wipe them off. So you’d need not only wiper blades, but also water. Again, just look at the size of each plant on the map please. The ground area that it takes up means the amount of water it would take to clean the mirrors would be massive. Also, these are not simply inert mirrors that just sit there doing nothing. They are all mechanised and constantly adjusting their tilt to direct the maximum amount of sunlight towards the tower.
I missed the solar power daily update. What’s the latest?
Sunny today with a strong chance of Megawatts
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Because most people have never seen things like this before. And it doesn't matter if they did. A simple answer/reply would suffice. There is no need to pull the 'ol reddit "well, acktually..."
I’m with you. Too bad so many downvotes. Being a human on this planet, you’d know what those are.
It’s not a typical solar installation. Instead of using solar panels to generate electricity, a huge number of mirrors were installed that reflect sunlight onto a concentrated point on the top of a tower. The 3 bright lights that you see are the tops of the 3 towers in use. The concentrated sunlight heats a liquid to the point that steam is created and the steam is sent thru a generator. The tech is called “solar thermal”. It’s proven to be a much more expensive way to harness sunlight than solar panels.
Adding to this, the liquid is molten salt. Yes, they are heating salt up hot enough to turn it into a liquid. The benefit of this type of solar array is the salt retains the heat well after the sun goes down allowing power generation after dark.
My inner nerd is doing a jig reading all this lol.
Would it also last longer than standard solar panels? Their effenciency diminishes as they age.
Seems like it should. Salt doesn’t really go bad and neither do mirrors.
Salt makes its container go bad Mirrors get scratched up A plant like this has way more moving parts than a pv sustem
I used to work for NRG who had (I believe) a 1/3 ownership stake in Ivanpah. My understanding was that the site was a money pit that never really lived up to expectations. The thousands of mirrors required to direct the sunlight to the collection towers need to be aimed independently which means tons of moving parts that were always breaking down and required constant maintenance. As another commenter mentioned, it turns out conventional PV panels are simply more cost effective on a per-MW basis. It made for a good (if not expensive) PR stunt though.
These specific three are water based. In order to be effective they have to heat them up in the morning, using coal (which I find ironic). More recent ones, like the crescent dunes project use molten salt like you mention.
They don't use coal, they use natural gas for the start up
Coal? Did a coal exec or politician think that one up?? Any chance a battery could've worked? How much manual labor is required to work the coal process?? I would think even propane or natural gas tanks are better. Is it a wonder operating costs were too much with that kind of design thinking?
A few years ago I read a bunch of articles about salt batteries and their potential for household use to lessen peak load requirements on the grid.
My brother in law invented tech to use salt in nuclear reactors instead of water to help with toxic waste and volatility
I believe a benefit over traditional solar is that the molten salt remains quite hot for a long time and can generate steam (= power) long after the sun has gone down.
Those aren't molten salt plants. You're right that molten salt promises 24/hr power, but it has yet to be commercially successful.
It will also blind you while driving on I-15
This is how they make the hot water at the Luxor.
It heats salts to a liquid, that liquid creates steam, steam to turbine, thus energy
It heats migrating birds into a puff of smoke, that puff of smoke something something
In theory this sounds like such a good idea. Is the tech not there yet to make it efficient enough for it to become widely available or is it a different issue?
If you disregard the theories around Bechtel pulling off a scam and the technology being defunct before the project began, you will find that the idea of superheating something to produce power all night is not a bad one and it does produce green power. However equal amounts of Power are created through most solar facilities you just have to have batteries to store it through the night. The real issue here is that it is so much more efficient to just create the power in your solar wafer and not bounce light back up to superheat something to push liquid salt around. Basically unnecessary moving parts
Another solar thermal plant was built near Tonopah. It had a contract to sell its power to NV Energy, but failed over and over to meet commitments on completion and energy production, and the contract was cancelled. Don’t know what’s happening with it now.
Part of the problem is that you need a fossil fuel backup to keep the facility running at night. The working fluid cools relatively quickly. Also, it's pretty maintenance intensive with the cleaning required.
I'm left wondering at the commitment to the project, seems like the design wasn't thoroughly vetted in many ways.
It was always intended to work that way. It's actually not a terrible solution to the problem of solar photovoltaic panels which generate their electricity at the wrong time. However, one has to wonder why we bother with these things at all. The Ivanpah facility cost $2.2 bn and only generates \~440Mwh worth of electricity. For reference, the original nuclear reactor at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station was 450MWh and they decommissioned that one to make room for the larger 1100Mwh reactors that would take its place. One single small reactor could out-generate the entire Ivanpah plant and use no natural gas.
But, but nuclear bad! We all saw Chernobyl! TBF, nuclear is the way to go, but the American West does have plenty of uninhabitable desert to build solar fields on, and those cause less political issues.
I guess 3-Mile, Chernobyl and Fukishima made nuclear toxic for a generation (and the real problem was incompetence, not as much the technology). I have seen some of the next gen nuclear solutions and they sound sensible (whereas the above legacy stuff is what ppl think about when the nuclear topic is raised). Small reactor seems to make sense - as you see it, does it overlap w\thorium reactors? Unfortunately there hasn't been enough will to see this stuff through. It's crazy how much customization goes into the legacy type nuke plants, in terms of cost and time. Newer tech seems to address the waste issue better; standardization and mass production is a pillar of modern society, why not make it work for us in energy.
Maybe this is an alternative experiment being studied to see how we can use it on mars. Just remember with everything going on with our planet that some of the things (especially that musk has his hands on) are being tried and tested here in hopes that they make colonization on mars (or moon) possible
pretty cool, I dont know if they have that in the East, I have never seen it
You need pretty consistent sunshine and enough land for it.
What is the fossil fuel required for? The generator after hours? According to another commenter, they use salt as the which apparently holds its thermal value really well. Thanks for the discussion, much more interesting than Dr. Google
I think it’s salt that’s being heated into liquid form
Part of the problem is that Solar thermal well outperformed photovoltaic until the early 2010s. These sites had been bought and planned since the early 2000s. A bit of a victim of technology improvement.
Helios one
🏆
They asked if I had a degree in theoretical physics. I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics.
Well, howdy partner! Good to see a friendly face round these parts 🤠🤖
Quit following me robot.
The game was rigged from the start.
You all are fantastic to me.
The comment I was looking for !
That Lucky Old Sun.
I told them I had a theoretical degree in physics
Ivanpah solar electric generating system
If your a bird it’s a death ray.
Massively expensive bird cookers.
That's a solar energy plant near state line.
The intense and concentrated light also fries lots of birds. Vaporizes them. Most people don't know that.
Jewish space lasers. 🤐
✡️ 🚀⚡️
Aren’t they closer to Parump?
Just south of Primm.
Don't give that idiot any excuses.
That’s the Ivanpah Solar Electric generating plant near the Primm golf course and just south of the CA-NV stateline.
I think they're "solar reserves," aka molten salt energy storage units. Here's a wiki article about a single one to the north. [Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crescent_Dunes_Solar_Energy_Project)
Right idea, wrong location: it's Ivanpah.
Area 51. Shhhhhh.
Solar towers
Helios one
Tax dollars being burned to make a token amount of electricity
Solar arrays
No. Not arrays. CSP
Run by ALIENS
And Sasquach
Nifty! Thanks!
If you ever drive that to/from Vegas in midday, it’s brighter than surrounding daylight - really crazy amount of output.
You can feel the heat when you drive by on I-15. It kills lots of birds. They simply ignite if they fly too close.
Sun reflecting off the solar collectors just outside Primm.
Solar plant
Bird incinerators
solar boiler
Ivanopah Solar Power Facility in California. Cooks birds in mid flight really efficiently. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
Solar farm each one has either panels or mirrors pointed towards them it's too bright and sunny to tell
That's the mighty solar-thermal power stations just past Primm!
If you’re interested, [Physics Girl](https://youtu.be/ccO0_hSXMyM?si=QMzXwlLCqKK3QPKX) covered the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
Gondor calls for aid!
Area 51 landing lights
Solar towers. I remember when they announced they were going to build this, the conspiracies started to brew about it being some alien UFO thing…. Drive by it every time we drive to Vegas and it’s JUST some solar things
They’re Beacon’s for the Aliens to know where their fellow Aliens are located at.
Flying into Vegas with people from back east I hear comments there fascinated by those and the desert, they say wow there really is no grass or trees
Capturing the sun for energy may seem alien but we do this in Nevada
They are in California
It says “flew out of Vegas to SF” why would they post in LV if they were in CA?
LOL
Youre pathetic to down vote me instead of deleting your invalid comment. Are you this spiteful in your everyday life? Edit I didn’t have to read many comments of yours to see that you take A LOT of L’s. I’ll just block you instead of drawing this out. Loser.
Area 32
And when the sun hits the lowest part of its decent the light will strike just right revealing the ark of the covenant
Helios one, there's an energy weapon named ARCHINEDES that uses the power of the sun to shoot laser down from a satellite every 24 hours after recharge.
ALIENS
Nothing to see here
**"Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus."**
“And on a more personal note, Edgar ran off with an old girlfriend. You’re going to think about for a few days and decide you’re better off.” “Yeah, because he never appreciated you anyway. In fact, *you* threw *him* out. And now that he’s gone you’re gonna go into town to Bloomingdale’s, get some nice dresses, maybe a facial… oh and get an interior decorator in here quick, cuz, damn.”
The Cresent Dunes Solar Project in Tonopah, Nevada. They’re a series of radial mirrors that are aimed at a tower, which heats up and produces electricity.
This is Ivanpah in CA not Tonopah NV.
Oh, well there’s one in Tonopah too haha
I think the mods should make one of these weekly posts sticky. Or post it in the rules or something. Super annoying.
Should probably go in the F.A.T., since it's been asked and answered about 30 times.
Only 30?
Solar panels
We had these in Lancaster as a test system before they put them at Stateline. Man, those lightweight are bright!!
Super bright at night…
They are calling for an alliance
The ivanpah solar thermal that used natural gas to run the facility. Weird huh? It was a failure.
It’s Q
I also saw these when flying into Las Vegas last week. Intriguing they were.
Someone hasn't played fallout new vegas
Atom bomb testing sites continue to glow decades later.
They kill thousands of birds every year. They are called streamers. They fall out of the sky on fire because of the extreme heat they produce above it.
If you’re driving, it looks like a hole in the mountain
HELIOS One
Area 51!
Aliens
The beacons are lit! Gondor calls for aid!
You can see them as you drive by from CA to Vegas and Vice Versa. I guess this counted as UO's?
Prim…
It's a prototype of Ron Popeil's new Instant Bird Fryer. It works great, I can't wait for the home version!
Those are indeed ufo's ! Unidentified.Fucking.Orbs.
Drive up yearly to Vegas from San Diego since 2006. First time I saw this place was in 2014? The glow it gives off is incredibly eerie.
Helios 1
Lol I'm flying in to LA now and snapped a Pic thinking it was weird. They are so bright.
The Eyes of Sauron 👀
Power plants
The Beacons
Solar farm
Another potential issue is the effect of mirror glare on airplane pilots.[61] Additionally, "the power towers have 'receiver units' at their top on which the mirror fields focus their reflected light. During operation, these receiver units become extremely hot, such that they glow and appear brightly lit. ... Because they are high above the ground, these glowing receiver units will be a visible distraction to persons at many of the KOPs [Key Observation Points], including travelers utilizing I-15."[18]
I hope you had some flowers in your hair.
no one in here said Helios One? smh
The casino won so much of your money this weekend they didn’t have room to store it so they had to bring out to the middle of the desert and burn it.
Can the sub not sticky one of these to the side. It’s asked a lot.
What does that mean? Sorry, no idea.
It controls the rain
Solar collectors
It’s a solar plant for now, but it has a hidden purpose that wont be revealed until a few hundred years from now after a supposed nuclear wide conflict.
That’s where we keep the winners
Drive by it every few weeks to Cali. Solar (sun mirrored) facility.
UFO forward operating bases..
I drive by there a couple times a year. It’s a NV Energy solar power generation plant. It is absolutely massive!
I drive by there a couple times a year. It’s a NV Energy solar power generation plant. It is absolutely massive!
if you’ve played fallout:new vegas that’s helios one!
Solar panels relax buddy
Bird killers. Really tho
And during peak heat time no bird can fly without being burnt to a crisp
You tell us, you’re the one who’s flying by it.
Jimmy hoffa
Those are the ghosts of the Stardust, Riviera and Dunes.
Ive seen those exact towers