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(please read my post again for the water/pipe)

Well, my point is precisely that the items you don't have are very relevant and do drive the actual price of electricity for the various technologies. In one case they are included (and even oversized), and in the other they are ignored, or at least unknown.

That's why there's more to the diary than just the first two paragraphs :).

If you look risk and maintenance by small window of the scale of physical parameters in the plant:

  • Wind: normal temperature, large physical forces/motors, no hasardous material
  • Solar thermal: high temperatures, moderate to large physical forces (stirling engine or other), may be hasardous materials (to move heat)
  • Solar PV: normal to moderate temperatures (they cool the PV cell if I understand correctly), no physical forces (just moving small mirrors on ground), no hasardous material.

I can't quantify the induced risk and maintenance overhead of course, but I'd say solar PV will likely have the lower of the three.
by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Aug 15th, 2007 at 01:50:01 PM EST
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This 189 pages PDF has many info:

http://www.azcommerce.com/doclib/energy/az_solar_electric_roadmap_study_full_report.pdf

page 88-90 it gives 2006 cost per installed effective Watt at 21.7 USD. It notes than if more than 10 MW/year are installed this cost would likely go down to 13 USD.

But the interesting line is their "Non-Fuel Fixed O&M" if you look at the tables you see that CPV are low compared to other solar tech (and projections for the future are even lower).

Amonix technical paper for 2006 has a section on maintenance of their CPV systems for the past years.

by Laurent GUERBY on Wed Aug 15th, 2007 at 02:22:54 PM EST
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