Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun sets

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

Does the 30% Fed solar apply to solar thermal? I assumed that that was just a PV thing (since it's commercial/residential in nature and CSP makes no sense at those scales).

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

I'm pretty sure it does for solar water heating - don't see why it wouldn't also apply to CSP.

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

because CSP is strictly a utility scale endeavour, not a commercial or residential scale thing. My understanding is that the fed tax credit is capped at 1 or maybe 10 MW, which would at the very bottom of CSP plant size.

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

It is part of the subsidy of the 30MW PV installation in webberville texas, that should start construction after an environmental impact report. But Again I don't know if there is a maximum amount or if it is in play here.

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

ah, that's interesting. I'm all for subsidizing it. Fossil fuels get something like $72B/yr in subsidies (mostly tax breaks/write-offs) so these emerging technologies need a lot of love to be competitive. I'd love to see the fossil fuel sector lose its subsidies, but I'm not gannin' tae hold me breath.

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

I agree with the principle of subsidizing solar so that it can complete, but the amount of money spent by the government could be better used on research and smaller pilot programs.

 

Re: Sicily's new molten salt Solar Power Plant continues to produce electricity even after the sun s

That this point though, CSP doesn't need pilot programmes. What it needs for investors to be getting the right market signals to put money into deploying utility scale projects. IMO, economies of scale are more important than research ATM. Research is always important, but this stuff is ready for prime time so fostering it in the early days is important, esp because we continue to make fossil fuels artificially cheap.