The Ivanpah solar plant in the desert of Southern California, out toward Las Vegas, is set to close, due to being uneconomical.
This huge array of mirrors focus sunlight on water boilers on towers. But the steering systems for the mirrors tended to break down, limiting output, birds were routinely fried in mid-flight, as the mirrors drew insects, which drew birds, which then flew thru the concentrated light beams. The thing was real ugly and visually disturbing when you drove thru the area along Interstate 15 freeway. And it burned natural gas for certain low-sun periods, such as early morning and late afternoon, while charging exorbitant solar rates for what was really natural gas fueled generation.
Just as there are “a million ways” to make some energy from the wind at some cost, same with solar. Photovoltaic solar is now far cheaper than the mirrors, and even that is no longer needed, due to the simple fact that power demand is super low when the sun is shining and nobody is home to use any electricity anyway, with the daytime market for electricity already saturated with overambitious large solar arrays, nobody needs more daytime electricity. They call it “the duck curve” of power demand, and daytime is the bottom point of the curve… Anyway, rates are supposed to drop here when the utilities are no longer required to buy overly-expensive solar power from this big, ugly, bird-killing mirror solar powerplant.
So you can see, due to the heavy bureaucracy, by the time any project can finally be approved, the technology is often obsolete. Another example is the supposed bullet train from Hesperia, California to Las Vegas, which was finally approved with a stated goal of being complete by the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Right after approval, it’s now been decided it will open at the END of 2028, after the Olympics are over. Most people can read between the lines and doubt if it will ever even be built at all, like the other bullet train from L.A. to San Francisco, which has been “in the works” for decades, yet never gets built, despite spending tens of billions of dollars trying.
Meanwhile, like the ugly mirrors, the bullet train is supposed to have ugly overhead wires for 200+ miles, ruining the view for drivers. Not only that, but the average speed is supposed to be only 90 mph, due to hills and curves, making it no faster than driving, since most people drive at 90 mph in the open desert.
But it gets worse: Assuming that 5 years from now, we’ll have efficient electric self-driving cars capable of very high speeds, they would be faster than taking the train anyway, with no driver attention required. Then there’s the price for tickets: Supposed to be around $130 per person, each way. That comes out to over $500 for two people, round trip. Meanwhile a car might cost $100, and you have a car to drive around when you get there. Hmmm…
Anyway, point is, new energy-making or supposed energy-saving technologies often have a pretty tight time window of relevance or ability to pencil out. Something to keep in mind for AWE projects.