This Billion Dollar Solar Plant was an EPIC Failure

this video is sponsored by lutema more on that  in a little bit we've talked about solar energy a   hundred times on this channel but every time we do  we typically talk about photovoltaic the process   of taking in photons from sunlight knocking  out electrons in a semiconductor and harnessing   electricity but there's actually another way  to produce electricity from the sun and that   is a solar thermal energy plant so one company had  the crazy idea of actually building a large-scale   power plant in just this way in the high desert  of nevada unfortunately nevada's crescent tuned   solar thermal plant failed just a few years after  they started what the heck happened was this just   a bad idea or was there a timing involved or  some other aspect to the technology that we   could learn from we thought this epic failure  deserved a deeper dive today on twitter davinci anybody who lives in southern california if you've  driven to vegas recently you know that huge solar   farm with mirrors everywhere yeah that's crescent  dune i've seen it so many times and i wondered   how they were doing i figured they were doing well  turns out not so much startup energy venture solar   reserve backed by a handful of renewable energy  investment groups and a sizeable bump from the   us government set out to develop what was going to  be promised as a truly remarkable breakthrough in   energy production and storage we'll get to that  the project as you mentioned wasn't just another   solar farm idea but a concentrated solar power  plant with a central receiver tower and advanced   molten salt energy storage technology so what  exactly makes this kind of power plant different   remember when you were a kid you had a magnifying  glass and you try to burn ants or in my case   burn initials on like a wooden fence well that  is pretty much the idea the crescent dunes plant   was located about 200 miles northwest of las  vegas it featured over 10 000 movable motorized   mirrors called heliostats each heliostat is  made up of 35 6 feet by six feet mirror facets   yielding a heliostat overall usable area of 1200  square feet and the total solar field aperture   added up to about 12 million square feet each one  of these mirrors is fine-tuned to balance incoming   solar radiation to a mathematically precise angle  to hit the exact spot on the top of the tower   containing a molten salt solution the combined  concentrated solar energy can reach temperatures   of upwards of one thousand degrees fahrenheit csps  concentrated solar power are generally considered   to be more efficient operating between 30  and 40 efficiency compared to 20 for a pv   farm and is capable of producing tens to hundreds  of megawatts of power crescent dune boasted an   installed capacity of 110 megawatts but what sets  these systems apart from traditional pv farms   is that they also have mechanisms to store the  energy they produce instead of converting solar   energy into electricity csps converts solar energy  into thermal energy which they can then store in   a molten salt core inside that 640 foot high  central tower once it's melted the salt moves   into a storage tank where it gets used to produce  steam that steam moves turbines which then produce   electricity so that the folks in vegas can spend  hours playing the slots just one more pull and i   know i'm going to win big right that means the sun  goes down and that plant is still producing energy   long into the night once used it can be cycled  back to the receiver to the reheater and it's such   a game changer in fact that you could arguably  not even need peaker power plants because well   until maybe 2 am in the morning you wouldn't need  to have any other form of energy the prospect of   crest and dune seems so exciting that the us  department of energy gave it its full support   including some financial backing to the tune of  over 500 million dollars initially the plant was   expected to produce over 40 000 megawatt hours  every month and over 480 thousand megawatt hours   annually from the get-go construction delays  offset deadlines by several months then by the   time it finally got up and running in september  2015 the plant only operated for eight months   before it had to shut down due to a leak in the  molten salt storage system basically like a flood   of liquid hot magma powers baby yeah not good  even once all that was sorted by 2018 the average   capacity was only around 20 compared to the  original projection of 50 percent at its absolute   peak production in may 2019 the company only  achieved about half of its original production   goals and only about for nine months regular  outages and equipment failures eventually that the   plant soul buyer nevada energy to pull out of the  arrangement telling regulators that the project   posed the most significant risk to its ability  to meet the renewable energy portfolio goals that   that stings before the end 2019 the plan  officially ceased operation so what exactly   went wrong with the crescent dunes power plant  and is it a signal that all these people who hate   green energy initiatives were right that it can't  actually work but before i answer that let me tell   you about our sponsor this week lutema i know mast  and respirators can be controversial but lutema is   the u.s mass company that is manufacturing mass  right here in san diego in the early days of the   pandemic the u.s was caught totally off guard  as mass manufacturing was happening in china   really showcasing the national security need  for critical manufacturing right here at home   n95 and k95 standards can be confusing but  lutema's custom m series line brings some   clarity and even adds standards for children's  masks their respirators upped the performance   from 95 percent to 99 filtration as tested coming  from different colors and are really pushing the   industry for better public mask standards in  fact you've probably seen some pretty famous   people wearing their masks masks and respirators  are just tools like any other tools that can help   us get back to normal things like traveling for me  and school for my son so use the link lutema.com   discount tbdv20 to save 20 on your order today  huge thanks to latema and you for supporting   the companies that support this show while csp  technology does boast some benefits like energy   storage after the sun goes down it's still  really early in the life cycle of development   one major factor is cost when the technology  began to debut in 2009 concentrated solar power   cost per megawatt was extremely competitive with  photovoltaic aside from the failure of pumps and   maintenance and leaks in the molten salt reactor  tank there was a bigger problem projects like   this take years to get off the ground so odds  are people who are building this technology   were thinking about this and pitching investors  as early as 2010 and i did the math the cost of   photovoltaic power was about two dollars per watt  well then something really interesting happened   by 2020 that price has dropped from two dollars  all the way down to about 30 cents per watt   that is what the company didn't see coming and  this is a typical problem that many people face   when people think about adoption curves they do  not understand just how quickly they ramp up one   question sure if it's already built why shut  it down wouldn't it just keep on making energy   that's a great question the reason why it doesn't  make sense anymore is because of the price you'd   have to sell the energy to run at cost so for  example imagine you have maintenance teams that   are doing all the mirror cleaning up right you've  got people greasing all the joints and stuff for   the motors you've got people dealing with the  molten salt tank that all costs money so if   you want to be able to pay all those salaries  for the 5 000 people 2 000 people whatever it   is who are working at that plant well you got to  be able to pay them the only way to do that is to   then take whatever you produce and sell that for  an equivalent amount of money to be profitable   right well that number was about  four times higher than a traditional   solar panel farm and for that reason they spent a  billion dollars in the desert with these mirrors   and they can't even operate it they can't turn  it on because it would lose them money that is   the heartbreaking part about this i love that  they tried it that investors gave it a shot   i love all that about it i just i feel like this  is a good telltale sign for all the innovators out   there remember the s-curve of adoption you got  to remember that like electric vehicle adoption   battery technology adoption isn't going to be some  slow curve there is going to be a slow part and   then it is going to ramp up in an s-curve fashion  this is the part of technology disruption that   almost everybody gets wrong people are saying  evs might be half of all car sales by 2040. i   think that's way wrong the price of solar has  dropped so much that if you go back in time and   think okay if you want to make a 40 megawatt hour  plant that would have cost 80 billion dollars in   photovoltaic panels to build a farm of comparable  size but today it's only 12 billion almost at 8x   reduction in price and that's what caused them so  much trouble now it's much harder for newer less   established technologies like csp to compete but  by the end of its run crescent dune was costing   nevada energy 135 dollars per megawatt hour  compare that to roughly 30 dollars per megawatt   hour available from a pv farm located in the same  area in nevada it just didn't make any financial   sense so fundamentally this came down to an issue  of scale the thought was sure one photovoltaic   panel makes sense and if you get 10 of them on  a roof for a customer that's cool but how are   we going to build a plant that can produce 40 000  megawatt hours using these panels the thought was   that it would just cost too much to scale up  and that was kind of true back in 2010 but no   one again saw the price drop issue and this is one  of those other challenges of engineering which is   understanding scale for example if i tried to make  a pumped hydro storage system by taking a 5 or 25   gallon drum and putting it on my roof and pumping  water up there when there's extra energy from the   sun and then letting it come back down and run a  turbine when i needed it i would be way way way in   trouble because that just isn't a cost effective  way in such a small scale pumped hydro can work   in the right location when you have a large tank  a reservoir on top and bottom you can make that   very attractive in terms of cost per energy  storage per kilowatt hour but that doesn't work   for a small system and this is kind of the problem  they thought i know mirrors are cheap we can build   millions of mirrors have motors control it all  all these parts are not really that exotic we   can build something at a much larger scale but by  doing so you introduce a lot of complexion moving   parts you have motors that need lubrication and  maintenance for adjusting the mirror locations   and again molten salt you can imagine what that  must be like to handle right and this was the   problem don't worry there's still going to be  tons of solar power plants but we're not going   to probably see as many of these molten type  we will still see them they are still out there   but i think photovoltaic prices have come down so  much that it just makes way more sense to build   future plants with them but there is still one  issue right we mentioned the concentrated solar   thermal does have energy storage built right in  molten salt is going to stay hot and as long as   it does it can continue to make power after the  sun goes down this is just not going to be the   case with photovoltaic and that's where you got a  couple these plants with battery storage we did a   video on the iron flow battery built by css we had  a little lab tour we'll put a link in the video   description here they have a solution tesla has  mega packs there is going to be tons of storage   coming online and i think what we need to do is  use photovoltaic for the generation and we had   to couple that with an easier more efficient form  of storage as opposed to combining the two so does   crescent dune spell the end of solar thermal  energy well i think it will make it a harder   pillar swallow in the future but it's not over yet  new designs include alternative welding practices   to improve methods of relocating heat and cold  salt pumps to reduce the need for longer pumping   shafts and reduce downstream infrastructure  cost which could help make csp technology more   accessible endeavors like china's subcon solar  have exceeded six-month output targets at its   galinga tower in qinghai province brightsource's  solar thermal system in california's mojave desert   currently sits at the largest solar thermal  plant in the world and while crescent dune   ultimately failed datamined from its collapse is  continuing to inform current and future projects   in hopes of making this technology more reliable  and cost-effective but what do you think is csp   technology going to be the solar wave of  the future should the us government place   itself in the position of playing benefactor on  new green technology at the taxpayers expense   and what other green energy production and  storage technologies are you excited about sound   off in the comments below but before you go real  quick we have just enough time for the comment   of the week become my favorite part of the show by  the way i don't that's a good thing or not so the   first comment comes from mitchell smith this is  in regard to our mining helium 3 on the moon video   he says and others of you have noted i was  pronouncing tritium wrong i said tritium and   it's tritium so thank you mitchell for being  kind of at it and and pointing that out   i appreciate you to be fair tritium sounds  way better try tm sounds like tri-tip like   i think you're hungry that might you might  just be hungry and this is a new one uh that's   becoming more popular this is on our aptera video  mata says waiting for thunderfoot so thunderfoot   is a youtube channel that debunks things and i did  a video on the solid-state hydrogen video that we   made and so suddenly like there was an influx of  people who came in and now they just say whenever   i make a new video waiting for thunderf00t to  debunk it or something i don't know good for you   awesome thank you so much for watching guys  check out other videos we'll see you soon

Channel: Two Bit da Vinci

Views: 1,553,140

Keywords: renewable energy, solar panels, solar energy problems, crescent dune, crescent dunes solar energy project, crescent dunes solar energy project 2021, crescent dunes solar energy project problems, crescent dunes solar project, two bit da vinci, This Billion Dollar Solar Plant was an EPIC Failure, crescent dune solar, crescent dune solar plant, nevada solar plant, nevada solar plant failure, solar failure, solar power failure

Id: oiPSy2bKZkE

Length: 13min 20sec (800 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 24 2022