Solar-Hydrogen Demonstration Power Plant

The Design of the World s First Full-Size Solar-Hydrogen Demonstration Power Plant 

As was shown in Chapter 1, Section 1.7.1,1% to 2% of the gross world product (GWP) would be sufficient to completely convert our energy economy to renewable energy sources (such as solar-hydrogen) by the end of the century. What is proposed in this book is to build the first such demonstration plant and thereby prove its feasibility, determine its performance, and evaluate its initial and generating costs. 

Post-Oil Energy Technology After the Age of Fossil Fuels 

Assuming that thermal solar collectors are installed, they will be operated by sending the hot oil either to a boiler to generate steam or to storage for use at night or during periods of low insolation. The steam generated by the 

---

Another carbon-capturing invention is to convert the captured C02 into methanol. If this process matures by the time the solar-hydrogen demonstration power plant described in this book is built, and if there is a C02 source near the plant, I will incorporate it as a subsection of the plant that is described in Chapter 4 of this book. 

The fourth chapter of this book provides the detailed design of what I hope will be the world s first full-sized solar-hydrogen demonstration power plant. In this chapter and elsewhere in this volume, I provide estimates of the present efficiencies and costs. However, the main goal of this book is to move the whole topic of the renewable energy economy from estimates to proven facts. Once this demonstration plant is built, we will have these facts. 

Today, renewable energy costs are often given inaccurately. Some are based on facts, others on wishful thinking or advocacy, but a few are based on the proven operation of full-sized power plants and actual experience. The very reason why a full-sized (1 gW) solar-hydrogen demonstration plant should be built is because its total costs of construction and operation should be established accurately. We do not have such data, because no such plant has ever been built nobody has ever obtained competitive bids on such quantities of equipment. 

The fuel used to make solar-hydrogen is free (sunshine) and unlimited, the raw material for H2 is water, and the emission when burning the H2 in fuel cells, internal combustion engines, or in power plants is distilled water. The cost of building the solar-hydrogen plants will be known once the demonstration power plant described in this book is built. It might turn out that this cost is already competitive but whatever it is, we know that it will drop by an order of magnitude when the mass production of ultrathin-film solar collectors and reversible fuel cells is started. 

The details of the methanol conversion process and its control are in development. The process itself is described in Dr. George Olah s book titled Beyond Oil and Gas The Methanol Economy, published by Wiley-VCH, and I understand that it is being developed by Universal Oil Products (UOP), which is also developing related process technologies and joint ventures for demonstration and de facto plants. Therefore, it is not certain, but it is likely that the methanol process could mature by the time the solar-hydrogen demonstration plant is completed, and in that case, it could be made part of the total power plant. 

Although the basic technologies utilized in this demonstration plant (such as solar, geothermal, H2, and fuel cell technologies) are well established, the described solar-hydrogen power plant does include some unique and original ideas and new design features. 

Therefore, once the demonstration plant described in this volume is built and we have proved that renewable energy power plants do not cost more than fossil or nuclear ones, from that point on, all new power plants should be renewable. This book also emphasizes that the transition can be speeded by energy conservation. While the ultimate solution is a solar-hydrogen economy, the immediate tasks include the use of the existing technologies serving energy conservation. 

The corresponding German plant at Neunburg vorm Wald in Southern Germany (Fig. 15.13) is set to produce 500 kW and is likely by the year 2000 to be the demonstration plant from which the most economic data on the production of solar hydrogen will have been obtained. The plant is still small and its production is less than 0.1% of that of a commercially operating nuclear power plant. 

---