Ivanpah is now open

Huge Ivanpah solar power plant, owned by Google and Oakland company, opens as industry booms - San Jose Mercury News

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/14/business/energy-environment/a-big-solar-plant-opens-facing-doubts-about-its-future.html

Will inexpensive solar PV along with natural gas ccgt and wind turbines make solar thermal obsolete? I don't know. I am glad they built one, so that we know how it works, but am not convinced that solar thermal is worth it. I'd like to be convinced one way or anouther.

 

When I first saw the wind turbines in california, I thought they were pretty. When I look at pictures of Ivanpah it looks quite ugly to me. It's much bigger and takes up more land than I thought. Now we know those initial wind turbines were too low, and that caused more birds to die so new designs with migration studies make them much more environmental. This solar thermal though, it looks like it needs to take vast areas of land, which makes is suitable for very limited areas. The thing that I think kills solar thermal in the US though is cost. The other installation was solar preheting of boiler water in at the Martin plant in florida, which seems to be more scalable, but with natural gas prices today it won't pay off.

The $2.2 Billion Bird-Scorching Solar Project - WSJ.com
Ivanpah: World’s Biggest Solar Power Tower Project Goes On-Line : Greentech Media

That means they can only drop costs to around $0.09/kwh, and I am guessing that is with the federal subsidies. I know everything is more expensive in california, but there is a solar pv project in new mexico selling power wholesale for $0.06/kwh and the last batch of Texas coastal wind wholesale is $0.06 (my utility ends up selling it for about $0.125/kwh retail (pays for grid, maintenance, back up, etc) locked in for 5 years (the wind portion, not maintenance to the grid and other power plants, these will go up, not it is not related to natural gas prices). Note my city is using brightsource to build a solar pv plant, which seems to cost $0.23/kwh but austin is not nearly as sunny as new mexico, and costs have dropped since we started our project. It may be though that brightsource simply is over priced for construction, our project was delayed because they did not do the proper and promised environmental study for the permitting. I can't see how CSP can compete. I am glad we did the project so that people can look and figure out how to reduce costs, and we have real numbers not the $0.06 that was promised when the project started. I don't see environmental reasons to pay more than solar pv or on shore wind, and both of these are easier to implement.
That brings us to the storage, but I don't think that is worth the difference in cost. There was a european study that said that wind may be cheapest over built, then with back up. The solar portion in california is tiny, less than 2% right now. Even if it grows to 15%, its likely you can just throttle back natural gas when its high, and fire it up faster if its low. Then we have to post period over 20 years from now. Then batteries, hydrogen + fuel cells, or pressurized storge might be needed, but california is far away from needing that.