Electricity generation solar power plant

Today, the largest solar power plant in the United States is the 22-year-old thermal plant in California s Mojave Desert, which has a combined total capacity of 354 mW. At Kramer Junction, California, nine solar power plants, each 30 mW or larger, have been in operation for two decades. The yearly insolation in the area is 2,940 kWh/m2. Plant efficiencies range from 10 to 17%, and their capital costs range from 2,500 to 3,500 per kWp The cost of generated electricity from these plants drops as their size increases, and ranges from 10 to 17 /kWh. 

It is estimated that the installed cost of a 1 gW thermal solar power plant is about 3 billion. The mass production of solar collectors is just beginning, and it is probable that with it will come a substantial drop in collector prices. The cost of a new nuclear power plant, if one includes the waste disposal and decommissioning costs, is about 5 to 6 billion. On average, nuclear plants generate 1 gW of electricity, which is about twice the electricity production of typical fossil power plants. The cost of a 1 gW fossil fuel power plant (two 0.5 gW plants), if carbon-capturing technology is included and if carbon emission charges are also considered, is the same as nuclear plants. 

In comparison to the cost of fossil-nuclear energy, solar power plants generate electricity at 12-20 /kWh. When using solar energy, the fuel is free and inexhaustible. Another potential of solar energy is economical if it was decided to cover 10 million American homes with solar roofs, this decision alone would trigger the biggest economic expansion of the decade (if not the century ). 

Solar One - A solar thermal electric central reciever power plant ("power tower") located in Barstow, California, and completed in 1981. The Solar One had a design capacity of 10,000 peak kilowatts, and was composed of a receiver located on the top of a tower surrounded by a field of reflectors. The concentrated sunlight created steam to drive a steam turbine and electric generator located on the ground. 

To ensure effective cathodic protection (CP) of gas pipelines in the remote arctic regions of Russia shown in Fig.l, where it would be uneconomic to run power lines and where conventional techniques such as small gas or diesel generators, wind and solar power plants fail, it is possible to use thermoelectric converters of heat into electricity and based on them standalone thermoelectric generators (TEG). 

If possible comparisons are focused on energy systems, nuclear power safety is also estimated to be superior to all electricity generation methods except for natural gas (30). Figure 3 is a plot of that comparison in terms of estimated total deaths to workers and the pubHc and includes deaths associated with secondary processes in the entire fuel cycle. The poorer safety record of the alternatives to nuclear power can be attributed to fataUties in transportation, where comparatively enormous amounts of fossil fuel transport are involved. Continuous or daily refueling of fossil fuel plants is required as compared to refueling a nuclear plant from a few tmckloads only once over a period of one to two years. This disadvantage appHes to solar and wind as well because of the necessary assumption that their backup power in periods of no or Httie wind or sun is from fossil-fuel generation. Now death or serious injury has resulted from radiation exposure from commercial nuclear power plants in the United States (31). 

Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) power plants generate electricity by exploiting the difference in temperature between warm water at the ocean surface and colder waters found at ocean depths. To effectively capture this solar energy, a temperature difference of 35°F or more between surface waters and water at depths of up to 3,000 feet is required. This situation can be found in most of the tropical and subtropical oceans around the world that are in latitudes between 20 degrees north and 20 degrees south. 

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