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Hooray! Someone, at least has been doing research after my prodding.
The nuclear plant you cite produces about 3.7gw on 4000 acres (excluding from consideration waste storage, etc.) which is an acreage requirement of about 1.1 acres per megawatt. By contrast, traditional solar PV rule of thumb is 5 acres/mw, which is much larger. that's the traditional rule of thumb, which is about 4.5 times as big a requirement.
The solar plant cited is about 1900 acres for 280Mw, which is a requirement of about 6.7 acres/Mw, about 6 times the nuclear, and even higher than the 5 acres/Mw of the rule of thumb.
You might well ask, 'why are they so careless of acreage', and the answer is that the design does not control for square footage. That's why most of the solar plants are built in deserts of the west (75% in California). Land is cheap. And this is a valid constraint freedom because the calculation for total land required for all US electric needs is small.
That's why the AZ plant is so prodigal with land. It frees the developers to work on the other constraints. It comes down to money: the fixed land cost is swamped out by operating costs (capitalism at work!), so you look at Revenue returned on Capital at the margin, in other words, marginal ROI. Which the article points out is better than other electrical systems (except hydro).
Basically, the AZ plant is a pilot system. It would be fine if all the solar plants the US needs were to be situated in western deserts, but then a lot of power would be burned up (as it is now) in extensive electrical grids, so ultimately we want to distribute solar generators throughout the US, even near more populated eastern cities where land is expensive. So there IS an underlying desire to improve that acreage requirement figure.
And there are projects that produce better yield. For example, in California at Carrica plains, which is somewhat more valuable land, a new solar plant is going in which is on 640 acres and will produce 177 Mw, which gives an acreage requirement of about 3.6, which is about 3 times the nuclear site.
That's without even really trying. In engineering R&D pilot systems 3 to 1 is pretty good. You'd be worried if it were 20 to 1, or something like that.
There are other projects that narrow the gap even more.
We know from experience that once a newish technology goes into production we can find many ways to increase yield. But first, the primary economic cost/revenue projections must be verified.
Yield is pretty easy to increase once stable pilot systems are working. In fact, we have seen that very thing in nuclear energy where production is 10 times or more what it was just a few years ago.
We know that there are enhancements at hand that can increase solar yield: improved PVs, improved technologies (like Stirling engines, concentrated solar, solar thermal, etc.) that can be expected to mature as we proceed.
The real proof of the pudding here is that real honest-to-goodness US investors are willing to put THEIR money into these projects. Not only are the willing, but they have already committed billions of dollars to development. real people are making real product as a result of private investment. By contrast, not one nuclear plant anywhere has been privately financed.
But the playing field is tilted in favor of traditional energy, primarily oil (to say nothing about nukes, which are totally coppered by the government). To even get close to a level playing field alternate energy needs the Tax Credits you've heard about. Now the thing is about the tax credits is that they are NOT money from the government to industry, they are simply tax reductions. Whereas, oil gets both tax breaks and direct subsidies (10s of billions a year).
Why is it so hard to get the Tax Credits passed? Because congress and the administration are playing a game of Financial Chicken to hide the REAL facts of our terrible financial situation. It turns out that an accounting convention in USA accounting holds that any financial bill with an expiration date or a renewal clause doesn't get counted in annual revenues/expenditures! How weird. But that's why Bush tax cuts have an expiration date, for example: that way they aren't accounted for! And if they keep extending them, they will never be accounted for! We'll go broke not even knowing it. So they tacked a renewal clause on the tax creits, too, so that they would not have to be accounted for, but with such a short term that they can be threatened every year or two. Is this any way to run a government?
Oh, there are a lot of foreign investors that are putting their money into these things, too. If we in the USA turn our backs on these technologies then foreigners will get the fruits. We will end up buying from them, which will hasten our descent into being a third-world client economy.
Remember, the whole thrust of the Globalization free-trade scheme (that US business has embraced whole-heartedly) is that the US has NO advantage in manufacturing, only in technology. We have always been THE tech leader for the world. If we forfeit that we are lost!
The nuclear plant you cite produces about 3.7gw on 4000 acres (excluding from consideration waste storage, etc.) which is an acreage requirement of about 1.1 acres per megawatt. By contrast, traditional solar PV rule of thumb is 5 acres/mw, which is much larger. that's the traditional rule of thumb, which is about 4.5 times as big a requirement.
The solar plant cited is about 1900 acres for 280Mw, which is a requirement of about 6.7 acres/Mw, about 6 times the nuclear, and even higher than the 5 acres/Mw of the rule of thumb.
You might well ask, 'why are they so careless of acreage', and the answer is that the design does not control for square footage. That's why most of the solar plants are built in deserts of the west (75% in California). Land is cheap. And this is a valid constraint freedom because the calculation for total land required for all US electric needs is small.
That's why the AZ plant is so prodigal with land. It frees the developers to work on the other constraints. It comes down to money: the fixed land cost is swamped out by operating costs (capitalism at work!), so you look at Revenue returned on Capital at the margin, in other words, marginal ROI. Which the article points out is better than other electrical systems (except hydro).
Basically, the AZ plant is a pilot system. It would be fine if all the solar plants the US needs were to be situated in western deserts, but then a lot of power would be burned up (as it is now) in extensive electrical grids, so ultimately we want to distribute solar generators throughout the US, even near more populated eastern cities where land is expensive. So there IS an underlying desire to improve that acreage requirement figure.
And there are projects that produce better yield. For example, in California at Carrica plains, which is somewhat more valuable land, a new solar plant is going in which is on 640 acres and will produce 177 Mw, which gives an acreage requirement of about 3.6, which is about 3 times the nuclear site.
That's without even really trying. In engineering R&D pilot systems 3 to 1 is pretty good. You'd be worried if it were 20 to 1, or something like that.
There are other projects that narrow the gap even more.
We know from experience that once a newish technology goes into production we can find many ways to increase yield. But first, the primary economic cost/revenue projections must be verified.
Yield is pretty easy to increase once stable pilot systems are working. In fact, we have seen that very thing in nuclear energy where production is 10 times or more what it was just a few years ago.
We know that there are enhancements at hand that can increase solar yield: improved PVs, improved technologies (like Stirling engines, concentrated solar, solar thermal, etc.) that can be expected to mature as we proceed.
The real proof of the pudding here is that real honest-to-goodness US investors are willing to put THEIR money into these projects. Not only are the willing, but they have already committed billions of dollars to development. real people are making real product as a result of private investment. By contrast, not one nuclear plant anywhere has been privately financed.
But the playing field is tilted in favor of traditional energy, primarily oil (to say nothing about nukes, which are totally coppered by the government). To even get close to a level playing field alternate energy needs the Tax Credits you've heard about. Now the thing is about the tax credits is that they are NOT money from the government to industry, they are simply tax reductions. Whereas, oil gets both tax breaks and direct subsidies (10s of billions a year).
Why is it so hard to get the Tax Credits passed? Because congress and the administration are playing a game of Financial Chicken to hide the REAL facts of our terrible financial situation. It turns out that an accounting convention in USA accounting holds that any financial bill with an expiration date or a renewal clause doesn't get counted in annual revenues/expenditures! How weird. But that's why Bush tax cuts have an expiration date, for example: that way they aren't accounted for! And if they keep extending them, they will never be accounted for! We'll go broke not even knowing it. So they tacked a renewal clause on the tax creits, too, so that they would not have to be accounted for, but with such a short term that they can be threatened every year or two. Is this any way to run a government?
Oh, there are a lot of foreign investors that are putting their money into these things, too. If we in the USA turn our backs on these technologies then foreigners will get the fruits. We will end up buying from them, which will hasten our descent into being a third-world client economy.
Remember, the whole thrust of the Globalization free-trade scheme (that US business has embraced whole-heartedly) is that the US has NO advantage in manufacturing, only in technology. We have always been THE tech leader for the world. If we forfeit that we are lost!
