Massive solar panels north of Waikoloa Village

[leilanidude]

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023...ave-desert

Interesting article on the mega solar farms in the California desert. I do wish they would have offered more info on the water use that is alluded to.

[HereOnThePrimalEdge]

more info on the water use

Concentrating solar plants in the Mojave Desert have brought up issues of water use, because concentrating solar power plants with wet-cooling systems have high water-consumption intensities compared to other types of electric power plants; only fossil-fuel plants with carbon capture and storage may have higher water intensities.[42] A 2013 study comparing various sources of electricity found that the median water consumption during operations of concentrating solar power plants with wet cooling was 810 gal/MWhr for power tower plants and 890 gal/MWhr for trough plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_powe...ave_Desert

[MarkP]

I know that the mirrors in concentrating solar plants are regularly pressure washed with distilled water. This strikes me as necessary because if they aren't clean they will not only reflect less light, they also won't properly aim the light they do reflect at the collector. As for solar PV, well mine get cleaned every coupla years whether they need it or not. Some kind of algae-like something grows on them. Maybe commercial installations have higher standards. Anyway I assumed that the water use referenced was something to do with cleaning the panels.

Lots of the complaints are about things related to construction like noise and dust. That should stop once construction is complete. Other concerns such as destruction of cultural artifacts would be equally likely to happen regardless of what the construction was for so it seems unfair to blame solar power.

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Can anyone speak accurately about the new panels working with varying levels of sun? 

I heard some of them will generate during the full moon?!

I often see articles about radical new horizontal axis wind turbines with pictures of said turbines mounted actually below the ridgeline of the roof.  Folks, there is some basic physics involved.  There is no magic tech that will allow you to harvest more energy than what is in the environment.

[leilanidude]

more info on the water use

Concentrating solar plants in the Mojave Desert have brought up issues of water use, because concentrating solar power plants with wet-cooling systems have high water-consumption intensities compared to other types of electric power plants; only fossil-fuel plants with carbon capture and storage may have higher water intensities.[42] A 2013 study comparing various sources of electricity found that the median water consumption during operations of concentrating solar power plants with wet cooling was 810 gal/MWhr for power tower plants and 890 gal/MWhr for trough plants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_powe...ave_Desert

Makes sense then, but why wouldn't they have used a closed loop system to avoid losing all that water (presumably steam) when there is this company called ORMAT that has this closed loop generating system they named OEC...

[AaronM]

Agreed! Closed loop water cooling system seems like a such a no brainer I guess I'm not smart enough to figure why they wouldn't operate that way...