(these are solar thermic power plants, their panels are black and usually assisted by mirrors leading to a similar look)
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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Solar thermal concentrators, they get so hot they have to use liquid metal.
Parabolic plants also exist w/o a tower of sauron.
But half the fun is having a gleaming tower of doom!
Why would anyone want that when the alternative is a tower of sauron
Didn't this exact plant go bankrupt due to solar panels being so much more efficient?
If you mean the Vegas one, then yes it's closing, don't know if it's gone bankrupt exactly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility
The facility, though cost effective at the time it was planned (2009), is now twice as expensive to run as solar photovoltaic technology, which has decreased in price much more rapidly than was expected in the 15 years since Ivanpah's construction began.
I think that's what they called a First Generation generator.
The ones in use now will actually use sunlight to melt salt (than then is used to generate steam) rather than directly generating the steam which has way more capacity to store heat, so they have a solar conversion efficiency of between 38% and 44%, plus the molten salt can keep on being used to generate steam during the night until it cools down enough.
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It would make sense.
Thermal concentrator cost is basically fixed: mirrors of a specific quality, tracking mounts, an eye of sauron cooling loop. That tech doesn't change much. Same with parabolic pipe plants.
But the bulk of photovoltaic installation cost is the panels. And those get exponentially cheaper.
They’ve gotten cheap, in fact, that the panels are sometimes less expensive than the labor and mounting hardware.
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No. The issue is solar panels getting much cheaper. The advantage of solar thermic plants are low cost of panels in exchange for more difficulty to maintain. This stops making sense when solar panels become dirt cheap and they cannot shift their power generation outside of peak solar(easily possible with molten salt tanks for the night, but not free)
There are hundreds of these.
They also function as adequate bird-zappers from what I've heard.
There is actually a Solar Power Generation system were a solar collector uses sunlight to melt salt which then circulates through pipes to a place were it heats up water to boiling and that steam then goes through a turbine thus generating electricity.
However to reach those temperatures a simple panel isn't enough so what you have is a ton of mirrors over a large area all focusing the sunlight on a central tower were the salt-melting happens.
Here is an example.
By the way, this stuff actually has benefits over solar such as the ability to generate power at night (basically you don't extract all the heat from the molten salt during the day and just keep using it to boil water to feed the steam turbine during the night), plus it's a bit more efficient than solar panels and like solar panels it's also improving, throught things like using different salts.
You can also choose to divert power to either new Vegas, the people, or a giant space laser which is really quite nice compared to traditional methods
you can't just shoot a hole into the surface of mars!
It's pretty much a required upgrade to be able to protect yourself from dropped or balistic nukes.
How hot does heat need to be to salt melting?
Depends on the salt used.
If you check here on table 5 you'll see that common table salt (NaCl) melts at 801º C.
As for what's used, in Chapter 2 of that paper they say "Molten salts consist of alkali metal or alkali metal halides and oxygen-containing salts", so it's not actually table salt that's used in Generation 2 of those kind of power generators.
Thanks!
Do you know of the melting temperatures of any other substance you think I may be interested in?
Solar collection like this can also explode birds if they fly through the wrong area as it's essentially like a magnifying glass and ants.
Also Helios One from Fallout: New Vegas is based off of those, though I don't think we've figured out how to make an Archimedes mirror out of one and a reflection satellite yet.
Where sadam Hussein
It's always a steam turbine?
🌎🧑🚀🔫🧑🚀
Wait till this dude learns about mitochondria
I know this is supposed to be a joke, but it's important to understand how it really works:
- particles from the sun hit the solar panel
- the panel accelerates those particles, which creates fissile material
- the fissile material is the used in a traditional nuclear reactor
- the nuclear reaction finally heats water
Where is the shitpost, solar panels do work by heating up water, unlike photovoltaics.
Solar panels are good to get a baseline amount of heated water for your home.
Solar panels do not, solar thermal conversion does, but they use mirrors.
By ignoring the second half of their comment you've missed the subtly that "panel" is an overly broad term and there are several different kinds of panels that collect energy from the sun for human use, among them photovoltaics, panels for heating residential water (often seen as black roof panels with pipes), and complex mirror (aka reflective panels) arrangements for melting salts. All of them use panels in some form.
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CCGT - A gas powered jet engine but instead of spinning to produce thrust it spins to produce electricity with a turbine. Then the hot exhaust is used to boil water to make steam to spin a turbine.
If only we could figure out a way to harness the power of the Giant Fan on the other side of the sun.
This is not how solar panels work.
You sure?
This very scientific image looks very convincing to me.
I knew that photons pushing electrons around was a scam!
FR. How can photons push if they don’t even have arms?
Are you calling Lemmy Shitpost liars?
Each panel has it's own little steam turbine inside it in reality.
Some do. Not photovoltaic panels but there are plants designed around this principle.
i was coming in here to say that while this post is a joke, there is a non zero number of solar farms that use hyperbolic mirrors and glass tubes to super heat water generating pressure to spin a steam turbine
Lotta loss in that system.
Should've put the water tank on the left to avoid loss
It seems like we could make this a lot more efficient by using pistons and having the sunlight push the pistons, turning a generator.
big solar has kept the truth about free power generation hidden for years.
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Good idea! We'll just need some steam turbines to help sunlight move the pistons in order to reach peak efficiency!
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I think you forgot the oil powered generator under the boiling water.
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Appart from using solar power to melt salt as a energy storage solution, you also have water cooled solar panels that store that heat as warm water.
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Just like modded Minecraft.
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