[AR] solar power (was Re: asteroid mining...)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2020 15:00:06 -0400 (EDT)
On Sun, 23 Aug 2020, Keith Henson wrote:
The least expensive [ground solar] I have seen is 1.35 cents per kWh...
I assume that's without storage?
Yes. But I was considering using the power to make synthetic oil
(fuel). That is storage.
Indeed, it's probably the only storage technology that scales well enough
for truly large-scale use. Trouble is, doing it cheaply and halfway
efficiently is also still rather hypothetical. There are people working
on it, but no guarantee that it will be practical any time soon.
(If so, this is a valid comparison only if one assumes a nearly-zero-cost
solution to the storage problem -- not unthinkable but a big assumption.)
There are applications where the intermittency of ground solar doesn't
hurt much.
Not enough of them, alas, especially when the outages are irregular and
largely unpredictable. As a small supplement to grids dominated by 24x7
power-on-demand sources, it's fine. Cost-effective, scalable storage is
absolutely needed if it's to compete with 24x7 sources (like powersats).
Henry
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