/sci/ - Science & Math

>>3930502

Molten salt retains heat extraordinarily well. You can think of it as a "heat battery". The outer shell of the boiler contains molten salt, the focused sunlight from all those mirrors keeps it molten, and the water boiler inside that layer is kept boiling by the heat of the salt. After the sun goes down the salt stays hot enough, long enough, to keep the water boiling overnight. There is a gradual drop in output, but it doesn't have time to fall far, as the molten salt boiler can keep the water boiling for 14 hours and the sun is up long before that.

>>3485844

>Got any tolerable citations for capital costs and production costs?

Ask Google. No, I don't mean Google it, I mean ask the Google company. They've invested in their own heliostat, the largest ever built.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/12/ivanpah-google-solar-energy/

The price they expect is realistic is around 6 cents per kwh, should be 5 and change by the end of the decade.

Can't find any price estimates for the plants themselves, just comparisons with photovoltaic power plants. On a utility scale, it would seem that heliostats are considerably cheaper, mainly because mirrors cost a tiny fraction of what solar panels do.