new natural gas power plant design

Funny.

They claim that the problem is weather, and then say "It could take until 2018 for the plant backed by $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees to hit its annual peak target, said NRG Energy Inc., which operates the plant and co-owns it with Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy."

Somebody's trying very hard to save his job, it looks like. Hopefully these sorts of projects will get a bit more scrutiny starting in January.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

On a sunny day (Mon, 17 Nov 2014 13:39:35 -0800) it happened John Larkin wrote in :

Idiot greens are starting to run the world's power production...

Not only on earth.. the recent comet lander from Europe is dead now sitting in the shadow because them idiots did not use a RTG, something what would have a been a fraction of the cost of the whole mission, that is now lost because of empty batteries, Voyager spacecraft is still flying and transmitting I think, after much more than 30 years powered by an RTG.

We need more nuculear power plants. Shoot the radioactive waste into the sun, use large electrically powered slingshots :-)

The boiler in the air scheme has always been a bit of a crock.

However, this trough method, in Gila Bend, AZ, seems to be working nicely...

APS also runs a nuke plant...

...Jim Thompson

Jan, You are such a kidder...

All those mirrors keep the birds away.

PV panels lose some output with haze or light clouds. A focussing gadget like that loses a lot more.

Why will it be any better in 2018?

It would have taken a tiny rocket, like one CO2 bottle worth, to be able to control the descent, or blast off for another try.

Program the on-board computer: "Don't land in the dark."

Climate change!

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It's like wine, it gets better with age!

Jamie

They had one. It didn't work. Neither did the harpoons.

With no propulsion, it would have been a bit hard to control.

Pretty cool to get as far as they did, although some of the elation seemed a bit forced given the multiple failures.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I could use some of that soon. Ski season is coming up.

It's a half-way house. The serious solar energy plants heat molten salts, and can store enough hot molten salts in insulated tanks to keep on generating electricity all through the night.

There's a trough reflector system running already, but it's relatively small and only stores about six hours worth of after-dark generating capacity - bigger tanks have longer thermal time constants for the same level of insulation.

If you have to put in more reflectors to keep the central collector hot enough when there's high altitude haze, it's an additional expense (and tricky to do after you've put the system together) but it's something you can do.

Finding out that kind of stuff is why you build pilot plants.

Teething troubles aren't "funny". They are why you built prototype plants.

y."

Someone put too much faith in sloppy isolation modelling and forecasting. I f they promised a certain level of generating capacity based on less haze t hat actually shows up, they've got a problem.

The Tea Party isn't into "scrunity". They know what right - and what's far- right - without having to waste time looking at evidence or making sense of it. If it costs the tax-payer money now, it's wrong. The fact that anthrop ogenic global warming is going to cost tax-payers big-time in a couple deca des does escape them but they will all be dead then - probably hanged by vo ters when they finally realise that they've been short-changed.

This is fairly HUGE company:

"After the GenOn merger, NRG has 47,000 MW of total generation capacity, en ough to power approximately 40 million homes.[2] Its nearly 100 power plant s are located in 18 states in the Northeast, Chicago area, Gulf Coast, Sout hwest, Nevada, and California.[2] Generation facilities include mostly foss il fuel power plants powered by natural gas, oil, and coal; plus four wind farms (in Texas) and six solar farms (in California, Arizona, and New Mexic o).[15] NRG also has a 44% ownership stake in the South Texas Nuclear Gener ating Station and a 37.5% stake in a coal power plant in Gladstone, Queensl and, Australia.[15] Some facilities use cogeneration and the company also o wns 28MW of solar distributed generation.[15] Despite the name, neither NRG nor Green Mountain Energy own the Green Mountain Wind Energy Center."

"Beginning in 2009, NRG began a major initiative to become the leading gree n energy producer in the United States and started investing very large amo unts of money in clean energy projects.[16] They include onshore and offsho re wind power, solar thermal energy, photovoltaic, and distributed solar po wer facilities, and repowering of some of their traditional coal plants wit h biomass.[16]

In late 2010, NRG made news by launching the "eVgo" network, the first comp letely private public car charging station network for electric power vehic les.[citation needed]

NRG continued the trend of leading in the green power market in 2011 by bec oming the largest green power retailer in New York City.[citation needed] T he company also signed a two-year agreement beginning in January 2011 to pr ovide 100% renewable energy for the Empire State Building.[17][18]"

There could be serious geotechnical engineering considerations there, given the expanse of the installation. I doubt they can get away with a fixed su rvey.

A new president? That kills the fraud?

It was sounding as if Philae had managed to complete most, and perhaps all of its primary science experiments, and transmit the results to Rosetta, before the primary battery ran down.

I'd call that a "par game" - and achieving that after a 10-year flight, and in the face of several onboard failures, is pretty impressive.

ESA's first report on what data they got from Philae, and what might have been missed, is supposed to be out Real Soon Now. Waiting with bated breath... :-)

Just in time to see the price of natural gas tank in the USA.

Why does Australia use coal? Do they have sunlight down there?

Did no one read the part that said, "Holland said the company always expected a ramp-up period of four years to reach maximum output."

enough to power approximately 40 million homes.[2] Its nearly 100 power pl ants are located in 18 states in the Northeast, Chicago area, Gulf Coast, S outhwest, Nevada, and California.[2] Generation facilities include mostly f ossil fuel power plants powered by natural gas, oil, and coal; plus four wi nd farms (in Texas) and six solar farms (in California, Arizona, and New Me xico).[15] NRG also has a 44% ownership stake in the South Texas Nuclear Ge nerating Station and a 37.5% stake in a coal power plant in Gladstone, Quee nsland, Australia.[15] Some facilities use cogeneration and the company als o owns 28MW of solar distributed generation.[15] Despite the name, neither NRG nor Green Mountain Energy own the Green Mountain Wind Energy Center."

reen energy producer in the United States and started investing very large amounts of money in clean energy projects.[16] They include onshore and off shore wind power, solar thermal energy, photovoltaic, and distributed solar power facilities, and repowering of some of their traditional coal plants with biomass.[16]

History. Lots of the coal-fired power stations were built before Bell Labs had gotten around to inventing the solar cell.

In principle we ought to be planning on retiring the ones we've got, but we just elected the Australian version of the Tea Party, whose election camp aign was largely funded by people who make a lot of money out of digging up coal and selling it to be burnt as fuel. Obama made the governing party lo ok pretty stupid at the recent G20 in Brisbane, Australia, but they looked pretty stupid before they got elected so this hasn't hurt their popularity as much as I'd like.

Again, unable to read or perhaps comprehend. The landing didn't go as expected. An anchor that was supposed to keep the lander from bouncing failed to deploy and it bounced off to land in another spot. It seems they had less control than they would have liked... not surprising considering they are operating it with a very long delay time.

But then it is easy to harp on the work of others.