ColdFusion - Solar Power Plants | The Next Big Thing?

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fusion TV. Welcome to another Cold Fusion video. In this video, we're going to take a look at the state of the art in solar power energy generation, specifically solar power plants. This may seem like an odd idea, but it's really been picking up steam in the last two years or so. In this video, we'll take a look. This video is brought to you by Squarespace, one of the easiest ways to build a website. The Cold Fusion website I'm building is coming together nicely,

Starting point is 00:00:34 so hang around till the end of the video to see how it's progressing, and also get to get it. progressing and also get a special offer. This month, China just completed the world's largest floating solar power plant and it's now operational. This is kind of strange because China was once seen as the world's largest polluter, but now maybe they're cleaning up their act. The plant built by Chinese photovoltaic manufacturer SunGrow, floats in water two to 10 meters deep.

Starting point is 00:00:58 Interestingly, this plant was built on an old coal mining site that has been filled with rainwater. Because of the mining activities, the water there is otherwise mostly useless. The advantages of such a plant is that no land needs to be cleared and the water also provides ambient cooling for the plant's environment, reducing long-term damage from heat. The downside? It's only 40 megawatts of power output. For comparison, Australia is building a 330 megawatt land-based solar power plant and a 650

Starting point is 00:01:27 megawatt one is being built in India. But if you want to take a look at the world's largest land-based solar power plant, it all circles back to China. They have a whopping 1,500 megawatt solar power plant. And for those of you wondering, one megawatt can power roughly 400 homes. So let's zoom out on our perspective here a little bit. How do the largest solar power plants compared to the largest nuclear power plants? Here's a general table of all the nuclear power plants over 1,000 megawatts. As we can see, they range from about 1,000 megawatts all the way up to almost 7,000. So we can say solar power plants are about half the average here.

Starting point is 00:02:04 So let's take a look at coal. The average here is a little higher, maybe 3,000 to 4,000 megawatts. So the solar plant output is a bit under half here. So this is very interesting. A lot of people usually laugh or are very skeptical of solar power. But as we can see, the largest solar power plant already has half or just under half the energy output of the average large-scale coal or nuclear power station. What's more about all of this, is that if you look at the years in which these solar

Starting point is 00:02:33 power plants were commissioned, it's all of the energy. It's all mostly been happening in the past two to three years. This is all very new stuff. So what this means is that at this point, the technology is at its worst efficiency and the most primitive it will ever be. Solar power plants are only going to get better from here on. All right, so this sounds all pretty good, but what about the energy storage? How do you store the received energy from the sun to use at night? Well, there's a couple of options. You should go down the battery road with the implementation of a new use for an old technology. Specifically, battery packs like Tesla's power packs.

Starting point is 00:03:09 They are the utility scale battery packs that are used in California and also use to currently power entire islands in Hawaii from solar power. With this method, the off-demand storage issue could be solved. For power plants that use solar thermal energy directly, storing excess energy in molten salt is also a solution. One of the more interesting methods I've heard of is a little experimental. It involves storing energy within rock cavities such as mountains, using the energy in the pressure. A friend of mine who I met at the St. Gallen Symposium is doing this with his company,

Starting point is 00:03:43 Alicase. I've already briefly mentioned him in my Europe video, but we'll be doing a video together on this technology. It's pretty interesting stuff. This experimental method could be a future solution to the off-peak energy problem with power plants that are unsuitable geographical locations. Another problem with solar is that obviously when it's night or cloudy, you're hardly going to get any power from the sun. For this reason, solar power plants are probably going to be a complementary technology to take the strain off the main power grid until energy storage solutions get perfected. So I know what some of you would be thinking. What about the pollution caused by the actual production of solar panels? Well as it turns out, the amount

Starting point is 00:04:23 of environmental damage caused by the production is totally dependent on who's creating the solar panels in the first place. The environmental impact ranges from virtually nothing all the way to pretty devastating in places where environmental consideration isn't a priority. The main risk comes from from the chemicals used. Fabricating solar panels requires chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, hydrofluoric acid and carbon tetrachloride, which can all lead to dangerous waste byproducts. According to studies done by Stanford and the US government, most of the dangers from solar panel manufacturing come from upstream in the supply chain. This is where the raw materials are being treated. In other words, it's the most dangerous for the actual workers producing the panels.

Starting point is 00:05:04 However, if regulations are followed, it is a safe work environment. But the big question is that with China being one of the world's biggest solar panel manufacturers, are they following the proper workplace and environmental regulations? In the past, a Chinese firm was caught dumping toxic solar panel waste into a river. While this was a few years ago, and since then from the limited data received, China is getting much cleaner in their production pipeline, it still raises some questions. At this point, it really is up to the integrity of the firms to make sure that they're doing the right thing. thing. The safe recycling of old solar panels is also an emerging industry with Australia leading

Starting point is 00:05:41 the way. So on this point, if companies obey regulations and solar panel recycling becomes commonplace, we could have a future with true clean energy on a large scale without waste. It sure isn't the final destination in clean energy, but it's rapidly becoming a valid stepstone. So why have these solar plants only been coming online in the past two to three years? Well in a video that I did a while ago on solar I did mention that there was a rule similar to Moore's Law called Swanson's Law it's a rule of thumb about how quickly the price of panels will drop in relation to time the cost of solar panels are dropping rapidly and will continue to do so so right now and in the future it's enabling mass scale solar

Starting point is 00:06:23 panel production so there you have it the strange world of solar power plants what was once completely unfeasible due to cost is now becoming a silent trend in the utility energy generation marketplace. What are your thoughts? Do you think this is the right way to go and a valid step towards clean energy or do you have some reservations against it? Let me know your thoughts in the comment section below. If you like this video, feel free to give it a thumbs up and if you're new to this channel,

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ColdFusion - Solar Power Plants | The Next Big Thing?

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