When you consider that the true cost of burning hydrocarbons might include rendering the earth virtually uninhabitable; the cost of solar power looks incredibly cheap.

But how do you keep your lights on at night with all of this solar?

Even the kramer junction power station pictured in this article is not exclusively a solar thermal plant. It gets up to 25% of its power from natural gas in order to make the plant fully dispatchable without comprimising the renewable energy tax credit.

We could get a lot of our peak load from solar, but it is no magic bullet with existing technology.

"But how do you keep your lights on at night with all of this solar? "

The Ausra link in this post shows one way to get some power from solar at night.

But obviously, solar should be combined with wind, wave farms, deep geothermal, hydro and such...

Baseload over the above can probably come from nuclear, but that's controversial. New models of reactors produce less waste, at least..

Perhaps a global-grid would have to be proposed to reduce loss, Buckminster Fuller I remember used his geodesic pattern to create a concept for one.

"How do you keep the lights on at night"
Batteries - they don't even have to be in the traditional chemical format.

What if you used excess solar power to lift a large weight into the air and then allow it to fall slowly, and in the process turn generators. Like an old grandfather clock on a masive scale. And since here in the US this is likely to be in the SW, you could even use a mountain as a base, and let it slide down all night and pull it up during the day.

Or use some of the sunlight to super heat a rock, and then use it's heat all night to run a stearling or steam engine.

As long as the energy is cheap, it is easy to come up with additional ideas to create power.

Solar isn't necessarily the answer for 24/7/365 power, but consider that those bright, hot summer days are also the says when we use the most power for air conditioning.

Cover the peaks with solar, and you greatly reduce the need for building or expanding coal or other fossil fuel plants.

Idiots

Saying solar is not a magic bullet, that means nothing. No energy source is a "magic bullet". Oil, gas, hydro, nuclear, geothermal, wind, none of them are a magic bullet.

How can you leave your lights on all night? Most people turn their lights off at night. If something doesn't produce power at night, that does not make the power it produces during the day any less valuable.

Facts are better

Solar power produces clean power, and jobs. We know solar won't produce ALL our energy needs, but neither will any other energy source. That is NOT a reason to not use solar. However, it does have the potential to produce all our power and more, there is enough sunlight hitting the earth. The planet Earth should be installing solar power plants worldwide as fast as it can, and some countries are doing that right now. Because it PAYS.

Pay back figures are based on todays cost of electricity, so they are wrong. Electricity and energy costs are going up, you may have noticed. Invest in solar power now, and collect much more in the future with the power produced.

Well, it seems like utilities are getting on this. There was recently an article about the 13 largest solar thermal plants in the world, and I counted up the capacity comming on line (admittedly I also counted the proposed future expansions) and it was ~5 GWs--which is over twice the world PV intallations last year, although admittedly most of them will be a few years in the making.

My idea is for an integrated energy complex--combining solar thermal, nat gas/coal gasification and algae biodiesel. The solar thermal would produce peak load power and desalinate water (which they do as a byproduct anyway), the nat gas/coal gasification would produce baseload power, and the CO2 from the FF plant and the desalinated water and produce biodiesel.

Q: How do you get power at night from solar thermal?

A: Solar thermal plants actually store the hot "water" and continue to spin the turbine into the night. Depending on the design you can have as much storage as several days worth.

In a PBS (Science Friday)radio interview with the two main companies that build these - they said that the design similar to the one in the story. the inside temp of the pipes is over 800F within minutes of sunrise!

Living near the Mojave Desert in California, the delays and obfuscations of naysayers and anti-renewable energy folks has been unbelieeeevably frustrating. We could have bypassed ALL of this stupid global turmoil, if only.... .

But I digress. One question is been troubling me - are there any assessments for the ecological impact on life on the desert floor underneath large solar arrays?

Hopefully we be utilizing areas already disturbed by development (like roofs), but large, uninhabited desert is such a tempting no-brainer for utility scale use.

Thanking someone in advance for pointing me in the right direction for answers to this question and any research into mitigation procedures (if it is indeed an issue).

if you think about how much money Bill Gates has, and how much he gives away as charity, what if possibly he left some of his life savings when he dies, to this technology and putting it into action here in the US.

The article exists in an English version aswell:

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,550544,00.html

Another thing about natural gas being used as a secondary source: Natural gas is mostly methane. Anaerobic bacteria can generate methane. Poop power to the rescue! GE has been working with this, though with siphoning methane off of a landfill.

As someone else said, there is no magic bullet, but we're not on a single power source as it is. It's time to stop making excuses and acknowledge the way we're doing things now won't work forever (or if some estimates are right, just a matter of a few more years.)

Use the solar to create hydrogen at the site. Then use this elsewhere. Done.

Excuse me!
On the subject of 'how you'd get power at night' is really a non-issue in the long run... For one thing, the sun shines somewhere on our planet 24 hours a day. It's only a matter of setting up a world-grid to direct power from a sunny source. The red squares are used to demonstrate the comparative size(s), not suggesting Solar would only come from there! Solar can be installed at opposite sites in many of the world's hot deserts...
J. R.

Good point about 24hr sunlight - it's a beautiful concept. But I'm not sure if the world will be mature enough to embrace a 'world grid' in the near future, or ever.

As for energy storage, this will surely not be a challenge more difficult to overcome than generation and distribution? There are plenty of creative solutions out there whose capabilities can be dramatically improved if enough research into these techniques is undertaken.

Have we established the facts enough to allow us to start dis'ing the sun this early in the game? The sun fuels most of our renewable energy resources, afterall. If it's that enormous a source of energy, how on Earth can we sideline direct solar energy as a 'peak load' generator?!

We know our limitations, we know our capabilities and most significantly, we know what we have to do to get through these growing pains of human society. So lets get to work...

Centralized solar power production in deserts could provide some shelter for plants, animals and yet unimagined commercial enterprises. Decentralized solar power production on rooftops of homes, businesses, and factories, brings more goodness and is less vulnerable to greed and terrorism. It's wonderful to see a viable future ahead of us. In the case of fossil fuel and nuclear, some heads need to roll. The question is how much have we fouled our nest on earth and how quickly can we get with the program? We've been solar for 15 years at our home and see no down sides. What is humbling is the slowness of people everywhere in all walks of life in actually doing something. If you are not involved already I challenge everyone to make solar happen in any of the many ways available now. In the beginning there is talk. Time-a-flying, do it at your house, a family member's , a friend's or business. Write your utility, Get on a committee, be vocal, act up, make it happen in small ways or large. It's all good.

One of the earlier posters mentioned lifting large weights as a means of energy storage. Similar systems are already in place using flywheels.

As I understand it, you would never receive power directly from the solar grid; everything generated would power the spinning of a flywheel (or system thereof); energy would be drawn off when it slows. Using this type of system not only allows power usage at night, but also makes it less vulnerable to weather, obstruction, etc.

See for basic info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flywheel_energy_storage

I think the alternative energies issue has a weak point: The question is if the world is willing to stabilize, to stop increasing its current demand of energy: either, if it is willing to change people's lifestyles and surpass capitalist development. If not, there is no such a type of energy that will cover the amount required by of this ambition.
Solar energy, or wind energy, etc. are already entering in conflict with land property of indigenous people, who are poor or less developed, and perhaps dont want to pay on for this world energy management.
êrhaps we should learn: development, sustainable or not, has got limits.

I think that the arguments for NOT attaining more energy from the sun are ridiculous and narrow-minded. As an earlier post said, "...the sun shines everywhere on the earth..." We can't get our power from the sun 24/7/365? Don't be a Neanderthal. Yes, little Timmy, the sun goes away, but it'll be back tomorrow. Humans are nothing if not innovative. We can figure something out. Coal plants now store most of their power in batteries. The lines don't leave the plant go directly to Mr. Johnson's house.

Transportation of the power produced? As it stands we don't live only where the resources exist to make power. We don't build communities around the resources. We don't surround our hydroelectric dams. We don't exist solely around the coal mines of the US and other countries. We don't live on, or even near, the places where we get uranium. I haven't seen an oil derrick in years. We transfer things all over the place to where the people live. The only thing that has ever been important to human settlements has been, and will be, water.

For solar we pick the places that are LEAST inhabited... the places where no one WANTS to live or life is exceedingly difficult... or where, like West Texas, where they already bury NUCLEAR WASTE because no one lives there. We set up our solar fields in the sunny areas of the world and sit back and reap the benefits.

And there will be benefits.

Socially: Imagine a country like Mexico now having an incredibly potential resource. What does that do for a people? If you're curious, look at the world pre-World War. The world's power source was coal. Simple as that. The war machines of the world ran on coal and kerosene. But, then there were the oil fields of Arabia and our focus changed didn't it? Where is the wealth of the world now? Though I realize their governments don't let them see much of it.

Technologically: We hem-and-haw over "...what will we do about getting the power where it needs to be? Will I have to move to the desert?" Or "Solar panels aren't THAT efficient, you know. And eventually they have to be replaced." What happens when a technology catches on? A million copies. Once a technology takes root and is found to be profitable--and solar will be insanely profitable because not everyone wants panels on their roof and not everyone lives where that is even feasible (I live in Portland, Oregon, not exactly the sunshine state for 9 months of the year)--there is no end to man's ingenuity. Progress in the field will occur by leaps and bounds. One of the motivators for invention is necessity. It is also money.

Finally, and to nip an argument in the bud, one that I am actually surprised to have not seen expressed here, though I've heard it a thousand times: Isn't a localized energy resource a terrorist threat? You mean to tell me that we CAN fortify bunkers all over the world against nuclear fallout and foreign invasion for our political leaders but we CAN'T keep a few dissidents out of a plant or two? Security is what you make of it. Well-trained and well-motivated (not to mention well-armed) men and women are our best line of defense against the enemies of any nation.

To quote a shipping friend of mine, "I feed the world. I don't ship weapons and I don't ship poison. I ship grain. I can wake up everyday and its a good day because I feed people." Why couldn't we energize the world? Wouldn't that feel better than the fighting for scraps that's going to occur when the resources start to run low?

Life can change for the better or it can keep on keepin' on. We have a choice. Any argument against solar power is, I repeat and say this with all due civility, RIDICULOUS.

Dang this is long.

Has anyone ever thoaght how much energy it takes to make one panel or wafer?

Nothing is free. But solar panels "pay for themselves" within a short period of use. I think that even though their production has a carbon footprint, they more than make up for it by providing jobs and not producing more waste throughout their lifespan. Europe has already proposed a solar panel recycling program to take care of the units that deteriorate over time. But I see what you mean, Maggie.

I agree. Solar Thermal is just another part of a big mix of solutions. There are no magic bullets and it's silly to think there might be. Solar Thermal though with thermal heat storage can offer a significant contribution to the overall range of solutions for the long term. We must continue develop this technology, because the SUN is free, and fossil fuels are increasing in price.