Re:The duck in the room – the end of baseload
by flir on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @07:40AM
(#36308727)
So if you want to generate more energy, "buy more land" is cheaper than "add tracking"? Seems like a solid answer, thanks.
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Re:The duck in the room – the end of baseload
by jojobas on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @07:51AM
(#36308868)
More (cheap desert) land, more roofspace, more air above parking lots.
It's also a matter of reliability, cheap moving parts = downtime.
Re:The duck in the room – the end of baseload
by Tuna-Fish on Tuesday June 13, 2023 @09:41AM
(#36310101)
Tracking does not significantly increase the amount of available energy out of a plot of land. It just reduces the amount of PV panels you need to efficiently utilize it. If you tile land with horizontal PV, all photons that hit that land hit them.
And once PV is cheap enough, the expense of tracking (and especially the maintenance expense of tracking!) to deploy a little less silicon does not make any sense.
Re:The duck in the room – the end of baseload
by Gibbon1 on Wednesday June 14, 2023 @02:37AM
(#36322242)
I think a while back solar panels got cheaper than the curved mirrors used in molten solar based solar thermal plants.
'Cheap lower efficiency solar cells' became uneconomic when the non silicon cost of the panels became too high a proportion of the total cost. Because half the power per panel at 2/3rd the cost per panel doesn't pencil out.