What in Sam hell is this thing?

First thing that pops into my head is a solar collector. Looks generally like one, but I don't find any in Nevada that look like that with a single pass of Google-fu...lots of others that look pretty similar to that though...

It's a high temperature solar collector. Produces steam for power generation.

Flew over that thing on my way to Zion last april. Looks like a great base jump to me.

Ok. I was thinking it was the main alien transport ship.

Just went over this a couple weeks ago enroute to Texas. Solar collector north of Tonopah, mirrors focus solar on the tower to heat fluid to turn turbines that produce electricity. Amazing sight from the air for sure.

Greg

low rider wrote:Flew over that thing on my way to Zion last april. Looks like a great base jump to me.

Won't have to worry about being cold, kinda bright though with those hundreds of mirrors focusing the sun on you. 'Course you'd be cooked in milliseconds...

Mark J

Pretty sure it's the new home office for burning man.

There's another one of these sites being built south of Las Vegas (just south of Stateline west side of the I-15 highway).

Yeah there's three of them just outside of Vegas near Stateline. And they get really bright if you catch the angle of the sun just right off of them.

theres 3 of them on the arrival into vegas. VERY bright and a bit distracting when you're trying to make a crossing restriction…

The real answer to what is it-----TOTAL WASTE OF TAXPAYER MONEY.

tim

qmdv wrote:The real answer to what is it

FYI: http://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/18313 ... TH5648.pdf

Its an energy plant, not a gov't min control project. They actually melt salt with the sun's power, I believe. Cool stuff. Interesting way to generate power, and it looks to be a good location for it. All those panels around it reflect the light to the top of the center tower, which melts the salt/whatever to run a turbine. Very 'outside the box' thinking. I like it.

I'd like to see how the numbers pencil out as compared to a utility scale PV site. My gut tells me that the long term reliability issues would favor the PV. I know what they cost to set up, who knows with this thing. On a strictly installed KWH per $ side by side comparison, I'd bet PV would win. Then throw in the no moving parts simplicity of a PV plant and look down the road 30 years, keep it simple! This has a huge gee whiz factor, PV arrays aren't much to look at, that's why people have bought small wind turbines around here, when it is demonstrable that PV is many time more cost effective, even before factoring in the much greater long term reliability, I deal with this all the time. So much so, I feel that anyone (excluding me of course, my wind turbine is a great wind indicator, and yard art also, plus I know the real numbers) putting up a small wind turbine instead of PV may as well put a big sign on the tower "I'm a dumb ass". PV sounds too good to be true, so simple it goes over the heads of some.

Without letting politics into it, but keeping it technical, the lack of transmission losses on a residential PV system is pretty much zero as compared to a large centrally located plant hundreds of miles away. Just think if we could buy equipment to make our own gasoline, the attitude of the oil companies would be like the utilities attitude toward solar, I'll bet you anything these large salt melting plants are utility financed and promoted. On the other hand maybe they are making power too cheap to meter, what do I know.

Would anybody put in PV without taking money from me and giving it to somebody else.

Tim

courierguy wrote:I'd like to see how the numbers pencil out as compared to a utility scale PV site. My gut tells me that the long term reliability issues would favor the PV. I know what they cost to set up, who knows with this thing. On a strictly installed KWH per $ side by side comparison, I'd bet PV would win.

There are advantages and disadvantages to all options. PV is mechanically simple, but expensive to acquire. PV isn't terribly good in terms of energy conversion also, but lately has easily become "good enough".

One of the big advantages to this sort of solar system is that it works at night.

If the government doesn't subsidize (you and me) none of this alternate energy pays for itself. Nuke it. Mike

All energy sources receive government subsidies of one kind or another. Oil and gas receive significant tax breaks, wind and solar receive investment tax credits and nuclear requires federal loan guarantees to be economically viable. A diversified energy portfolio is important to energy security, so an "all of the above" approach makes sense to me. If we're going to get rid of federal subsidies for one energy source, we should get rid of subsidies for all energy sources and then we'd see our energy costs for transportation, as well as home heating and cooling go up significantly. Energy costs in this country are well below the costs in Europe, so I'm happy to be here! I like heat, lights, air conditioning and gas for my plane aavailable at the flip of a switch, or squeeze of a pump handle.