OK, that’s a $15,000 per customer capital outlay. There will be operating costs as well, but no fuel costs, so there’s a good chance that over the 30-year operating life they can easily amortize the $15,000 at less than the fuel costs associated with a standard plant.
Looking another way, they are talking about generating 280 megawatts. Over a 30-year period, their 1 billion capital investment comes out to 1.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. I didn’t adjust for future-value of money, so let’s double that to 2.6 cents per kilowatt-hour. that is significantly less than the energy costs of a typical oil-burning plant.
The questions I had weren’t answered. When they say “280 megawatt”, is that the average per year they expect to generate hourly, or is that their peak? If peak, then the total output is much less since they won’t generate electricity at night. They probably have storage capability so my guess is the 280 is their peak AVERAGE not the peak at noon on the hottest day of the summer.
You raise a good point. But these type of plants accumulate heat (some residual) - don’t know the exact figure and not sure what the 280 MW is peak or average.
That would be a peak cost.
The real significant news is that the power company is taking on that additional load into their grid loading system for those periods.
BTW, it also impacts the availability or accessibility of the grid to homeowners who want to install PV. Let’s say a typical home produces 4kW, with 1kW available to the power company. 1,000 homeowners could produce 1 MW. 250,000 homewowners could produce the same amont of power during the same periods.
The grid though might not be able to take that much as demand may have already been met, during the daylight hours in question.
Culturally, there is a trend to shift all residential and commercial construction to promote incorporation of solar PV into std design. If the grid has already used up available capacity during those times, then this becomes an inhibitor to promoting solar PV collection in that region.
On the other hand, by an outside investor putting up the capital, if not subsidized, would save the taxpayer that subsidy.
They will likely use molten salt as a heat sink, allowing them to generate consistent steam even when it is dark, as with Solar Two.