$2.2 billion solar thermal plant known as Ivanpah

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wwhitney said:
OK, so your bet is looking better, but the situation still isn't clear. We are back to my second post today, except the margin is 20% instead of 6%.
Except for the fact that both you and Pete Danko quote CO2 production from a "typical" natural gas unit. I proposed a "new" natural gas power plant which should be able to operate AT LEAST as efficiently as the ten-year-old unit I quoted. I'll stick with the 36% number I calculated from that data.
Whitney said:
If Ivanpah makes enough of its electricity in the evening, it may still be a CO2 win over PV + gas peaker.
It sounds like Ivanpah's consumption of natural gas may have gotten worse in 2015, not better. We'll have to wait and see.

And all this ignores the ongoing environmental damage done by Ivanpah, including approximately 2000 bird deaths each year.
 
OK eia.gov has 2015 information. It breaks out the data by the 3 different towers. E.g. http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/plant/57075/?freq=A&pin=ELEC.GEN.SUN-US-99.A

In 2015 Ivanpah 1 produced 209,975 MWh with 168,950 mcf of natural gas. Ivanpah 2 produced 219,044 MWh with 186,151 mcf of natural gas. Ivanpah 3 produced 223,356 MWh with 209,713 mcf of natural gas.

In contrast, the Pastoria Energy Facility mentioned earlier produced 4,784,662 MWh in 2015 using 32,156,364 mcf of natural gas.

Totaling over the three towers, Ivanpah produced 652 GWh using 565 gcf of natural gas, or 1.155 Wh/cf of natural gas. In contrast, Pastoria Energy Facility produced 0.149 Wh/cf of natural gas.

In other words, had the natural gas that Ivanpah used in 2015 instead been burnt at Pastoria, it would have produce 13% of the energy that Ivanpah produced.

So the bet is not looking so good for 2015 data. Since Ivanpah is a fairly new technology, it stands to reason there would be a learning curve and the performance would improve over the first few years.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Thanks for the data. Based on the data you provided from the EIA, it appears that the natural gas consumption does not include the nighttime usage. I say this because the 2014 value does not match the value given by previously:
RegGuheert said:
Pete Danko said:
In 2014, Ivanpah used 867 million cubic feet (mmcf) of natural gas.
I calculate 778 mmcf for all three plants for 2014 based on the EIA data.

In any case, it does appear that the natural gas used for production is came down in 2015 versus 2014. That's an improvement.
wwhitney said:
In other words, had the natural gas that Ivanpah used in 2015 instead been burnt at Pastoria, it would have produce 13% of the energy that Ivanpah produced.

So the bet is not looking so good for 2015 data.
Huh? Ivanpah has no storage. Here's a link to current renewable production in CA (18 Mar 2016):

CAISO_Renewables_18_Mar_2016.png


Note the yellow curve at the very top is all of solar thermal in CA. Ivanpah likely represents 1/3 to 1/2 of that production. As you can see, since Ivanpah has NO storage capability, the timing of the production curve is quite indistinguishable from PV.

In other words, building the equivalent production of Ivanpah with PV on rooftops with NO burning of natural gas would, in fact, outshine Ivanpah in the following important ways:

- Cost would be cut in half.
- Land use impact would be ZERO.
- Reduced load on the CA power grid rather than increased load.
- Benefit would be to the ratepayers (who got the solar) rather than being an increase to all the ratepayers.
- No fried birds or encroachment on desert tortoises.
- Lower risk.
 
RegGuheert said:
Huh? Ivanpah has no storage.
No, but it does have some time shifting. Ivanpah reportedly produces energy later into the evening than PV, which would mean that it could be helping with the second spike of the duck curve. For example, that DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf you linked to says that Solar Thermal produced peak power at 3:36 p.m., while Solar (PV presumably) produced peak power at 11:17 a.m.

So the question is how much gas would you have to burn to achieve similar time shifting, would it be more or less than 13% of total energy produced?

RegGuheert said:
As you can see, since Ivanpah has NO storage capability, the timing of the production curve is quite indistinguishable from PV.
That style of graph makes it very difficult to see any such thing. The large hump in the solar PV dominates the shape of the solar thermal curve. For example, I would not have guessed looking at the graph that solar thermal peak production was at 3:36 p.m.

Of course, what we really need is more finely grained production numbers over the course of a day, averaged over many days. You may well be right that PV plus gas could duplicate Ivanpah's production with less natural gas burned.

As to comparing Ivanpah to PV plus gas using today's numbers, that doesn't really address the question of whether Ivanpah should have been built. Instead it addresses the question of "should we build another Ivanpah?" To address the question of whether Ivanpah should have been built, you would need to use numbers from the time it was being planned.

Also, to the extent that Ivanpah is an experiment, I think it is too soon to make a final judgement on it. Production seems to have improved from 2014 to 2015, so it may well continue to improve over the next couple years. Who knows, maybe they will figure out how to increase the time shifting into the evening.

Cheers, Wayne
 
Reg, I was planning to write one or more replies to you, but since wwhitney has made most of the points I was going to make, unless I chime in you can assume that he's channeling my thoughts as well as his own! :lol:

The one point which he made but I'd emphasize, is that unless it would be cheaper and use less NG (as I think you've argued, although the numbers that have been provided in the back and forth don't seem to show that) to shutter Ivanpah and replace it with a new gas-fired plant (stranding $2.2 billion of capital assets plus whatever the new plant costs), there is no rational justification to shut it down, regardless of what would make more sense if we were starting from scratch now. As I mentioned a few posts back, Ivanpah was justified on the relative costs of CSP vs. PV at the time, not the costs that changed radically in favor of PV as it was nearing completion.

As to bird kills, IIRR that potential along with the effects on desert tortoises and various other flora and fauna was discussed at length during the plant's permit hearings. Links to the transcripts of same were provided upthread. I forced myself to read them in their entirety, mind-numbing though much of the testimony was, because of the issues that would likely be faced by any more plants in similar areas. That's why the hearings were so extensive, because everyone involved assumed that this was likely to be a template for future desert installations, PV as well as CSP, so they wanted to get as many issues/objections on the table as they could think of from the start. Here's a map dated 10/18/2011 showing desert projects either approved or under review as of that date: http://www.energy.ca.gov/siting/solar/cdd_energy_points_solar.pdf
 
wwhitney said:
For example, that DailyRenewablesWatch.pdf you linked to says that Solar Thermal produced peak power at 3:36 p.m., while Solar (PV presumably) produced peak power at 11:17 a.m.
O.K. I missed that. Still, both curves should be quite flat through the middle of the day given that the solar thermal plants track and the PV have a range of pointing angles. I suspect both may be very minor peaks.
wwhitney said:
Of course, what we really need is more finely grained production numbers over the course of a day, averaged over many days.
Yes, that's what we really need. Certainly that data exists. Does anyone know where we might find it?
wwhitney said:
As to comparing Ivanpah to PV plus gas using today's numbers, that doesn't really address the question of whether Ivanpah should have been built. Instead it addresses the question of "should we build another Ivanpah?"
It's true. But simply based on the cost of electricity projected for Ivanpah from the very beginning, I would say it should not have been built. US$0.18/kWh to the utility is simply too much money. PV projects today are selling electricity for less than a third of that. And it does appear that some of the other solar thermal plants built around the same time as Ivanpah actually do offer some real benefits over PV without the need to burn natural gas.
wwhitney said:
Also, to the extent that Ivanpah is an experiment, I think it is too soon to make a final judgement on it. Production seems to have improved from 2014 to 2015, so it may well continue to improve over the next couple years. Who knows, maybe they will figure out how to increase the time shifting into the evening.
They claimed, even up front, that it would take four years to optimize the plant. Unfortunately for BrightSource, that claim was buried in filings and not really publicized. But more significantly, they are not meeting contractual obligations. That implies that their projections were not correct. In 2015 they produced about 2/3 of the contractual requirement. They still have a long way to go.

But none of this justifies supporting the corporations with taxpayer money in a manner which hurts both taxpayers and ratepayers. No one has addressed that part of the equation. I'm sorry, but that is pretty tough to justify in the case of Ivanpah which looks very poor all around when compared with the alternatives.
 
Here's another image from CA-ISO from Sunday, March 20, similar to the one I posted previously:

CAISO_Renewables_20_Mar_2016.png


In this case, solar thermal peaked 47 minutes BEFORE solar PV (10:33 AM versus 11:20 AM). But, more importantly, it appears that solar PV shows significant production for a full TWO hours after solar thermal shows no production (from 5 PM until 7 PM). My conclusion is that CA solar thermal may quit early in lower-light conditions.
 
For those who are interested in Ivanpah, this most recent post of mine provides new data on natural gas consumption at the plant, which has been a topic of conversation.

http://petedanko.net/ivanpah-co2-emissions-more-than-10-times-solar-pv/

Pete Danko
 
RegGuheert said:
wwhitney said:
Of course, what we really need is more finely grained production numbers over the course of a day, averaged over many days.
Yes, that's what we really need. Certainly that data exists. Does anyone know where we might find it?

Any finer data is proprietary to the CA ISO, Ivanpah, and to the IOUs they produce power for. Perhaps a research paper will be able to publish some data and analysis but I wouldn't hold my breath for it. Also, the renewables watch data is not always accurate and is not intended for detailed study.

You can argue till your face turns blue about how Ivanpah shouldn't have been built, but the reality is that it is built, and running. Killing it won't suddenly put solar on thousands of people's homes.
 
It seems that one of the Ivanpah's three towers caught on fire about 2/3 of the way up due to some mirrors being misaligned. Fortunately, the workers were able to get the fire under control before firefighters arrived.
Gizmodo said:
Putting out the blaze was not easy task, either. Firefighters were forced to climb 300 feet up a boiler tower to get to the scene. Officials said the fire was located about two-thirds up the tower. Workers at the plant actually managed to subdue the flames by the time firefighters reached the spot, and it was officially extinguished about 20 minutes after it started.
Here's a photo:

zr1ss21dikjfa3p4kibp.jpg
 
I wonder if the owners have been pushing a bit too hard to meet contractual requirements: from March: NRG Says Massive California Solar Plant Now On Pace To Meet Goal
Bloomberg said:
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the world’s biggest solar-thermal power plant, generated 67,300 megawatt-hours electricity in February, up from about 30,300 a year earlier, according to NRG Energy Inc., which operates the faculty and co-owns it with BrightSource Energy Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google.
 
RegGuheert said:
I wonder if the owners have been pushing a bit too hard to meet contractual requirements <snip>
I don't see how that could be a contributing factor, if the cause of the fire was misaligned mirrors as appears to be the case. Unless some maintenance that should have been done, wasn't, but that would imply that they were willing to waste power through mirror misalignment, which would be counterproductive.
 
GRA said:
I don't see how that could be a contributing factor, if the cause of the fire was misaligned mirrors as appears to be the case.
The quote that you snipped indicated that energy production in February was over twice what it had been in 2015. Insulation is not going to be double over last year, which implies there is a significant improvement in pointing. My guess is that they are gradually bringing more mirrors online to allow them to monitor temperatures and pressures as things get hotter and hotter. If you rush that process, than programming errors are bound to happen.
 
RegGuheert said:
GRA said:
I don't see how that could be a contributing factor, if the cause of the fire was misaligned mirrors as appears to be the case.
The quote that you snipped indicated that energy production in February was over twice what it had been in 2015. Insulation is not going to be double over last year, which implies there is a significant improvement in pointing. My guess is that they are gradually bringing more mirrors online to allow them to monitor temperatures and pressures as things get hotter and hotter. If you rush that process, than programming errors are bound to happen.
Alternatively, the gain over last year was due to improvements in the reliability of the boilers etc., which I vaguely recall were frequently offline in the past. We lack enough info to say what the actual cause of the failure was here.
 
Roger Andrews recently wrote a review of solar thermal generation in the US. One thing I learned there is that the Crescent Dunes molten salt facility in Nevada was down for six months starting in October 2016 due to a leak in the salt tank:
Roger Andrews said:
Last on the agenda is Crescent Dunes, the project that gave birth to this post. As shown in Figure 5, Crescent Dunes started operations in October 2015 and took its time ramping up, but by the late summer of 2016 it was achieving respectable capacity factors of between 30 and 40%. But then in early October a leak developed in the molten salt circuit and the plant was shut down, and it has stayed shut down in the five months since (probably now for six months. On March 2 of this year it was expected that it would be “another few weeks” before operations recommenced. But as of the time of writing there are no reports of the plant restarting, so presumably it’s still down):
Here's Figure 5:
Untitled.png
 
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