
In Israeli desert, world’s highest solar tower looks to future - davidf18
http://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israeli-desert-worlds-highest-solar-tower-looks-to-future/
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kiloreux
There is one country that might have the greatest ability to generate solar
power, yet it's still not used, Algeria has one of the biggest deserts in the
world and the power generated from there could be enough to get rid of a lot
of oil generated power.

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tmalsburg2
For a long time, space is not going to be the limiting factor and "small"
deserts like Isreal's are sufficient. The limiting factors are more likely
infrastructure, logistics, skilled workers, the local energy market, and so
on. For these reasons, Algeria is not really in a better position to implement
large-scale solar than many other countries.

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Aardwolf
>Energy from a solar tower is “two to three times more expensive to produce
than classic electricity plants using carbon or fuel,” said Eran Gartner

Does that include the cost of building the plant? What are the running cost of
a solar tower, and what is the expected lifespan vs a coal one?

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yazriel
Cost is typically LCOE - levelized cost - which takes life time, maintenance,
fuel, construction, etc into consideration

This is quite a complex topic and you can google and wiki LCOE for all the
gory details.

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d4l3k
> “Everything is connected by WiFi instead of by cables. The tower and its
> boiler are also designed to reduce costs. Everything is done to pursue
> profitability.”

Is WiFi really cheaper than running cables?

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tmalsburg2
I was wondering the same. If Wifi meant no cables needed at all, I could see
it (because of lower maintenance costs). But the electricity needed for Wifi
and the motors in the mirrors requires cables anyway.

~~~
dogma1138
Photovoltaics and batteries are a possibility, electric cables are still
cheaper than ethernet ones and when you have to wire such a large surface area
those costs probably add up.

Wifi also allows technicians to connect to which ever devices that they are
monitoring more easily and if they will have wifi for easy onsite access they
might just as well pull everything over wifi.

It's quite common these days to pretty much run industrial monitoring over
wifi it reduces quite a bit of costs as the technicians can just come with a
smartphone or a tablet and connect to the web interface or use some dedicated
diagnostic app it's much cheaper than sending them out with laptops and
connecting directly or having them to use even more expensive dedicated
diagnostic equipment.

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davidf18
Israel has also been a long-time user of solar water heaters. According to
this article, about 1 million households for a population of 8 million use
them.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-03-26/at-the-
zen...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-03-26/at-the-zenith-of-
solar-energybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice)

~~~
dogma1138
AFAIK the building code requires all residential buildings to be built with
solar power heaters, they are usually augmented by either an electrical
heating element within the heater itself or by a secondary gas/fuel oil
heater.

These heaters have been used since the 50's it's nothing more than a few pipes
running through a sheet metal frame with a glass cover to force a greenhouse
effect they are highly effective and extremely cheap to produce those panels
cost near nothing and were implemented very early on when Israel had very
little access to overseas fuel sources.

Israel didn't had access to regional oil until the the Iranian coup in 1953,
it lost its access to Iranian oil in 1979 with the Iranian revolution, however
the same year Israel and Egypt signed the camp david accords and Egypt started
supplying Israel with Oil starting January of 1980.

Ironically the Iranian revolution quite likely had quite a positive effect on
Israel as it quite likely pushed them to finalize the negotiations with Egypt
and to sign an agreement as fast as possible in order regain some access to a
regional oil source.

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teslaberry
Classic typical misleading statistics in this article.

Energy is 1% of Israel's gross capacity plus this is solar so it only provides
daytime loads which makes the economics worse.

Google's major investment in solar thermal has already gone bust. This is a
small financial disaster. The economics of solar thermal are crap. Mirrors
break or stop tracking well a lot in high winds of a dessert.

Any problems with a steam turbine atop a high tower are costly to fix.

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nickserv
The big advantage of this type of solar over photovoltaics is that they
continue producing electricity after the sun sets, so can act as base load
stations. Typically, the bigger the tower, the longer it can generate, hence
the need for big projects and investments.

~~~
internaut
Do you think it would be reasonable for a hobbyist to build their own molten
salt storage system nick?

