• Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Efficiency. You’re collecting 70% (potentially 80%) of the available energy. The best PV is below 30% and the best molten salts are 35% max.

      • palitu@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        I could not see where the 70% comes from, apart from the round trip efficiency of the heat capture. I dont know if that is what you are referring to. Do they have a input v output energy comparison somewhere?

      • IndefiniteBen@feddit.nl
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        1 year ago

        I thought molten salt storage gets like 90% efficiency. What’s the advantage of storing energy by cooling blocks?

      • palitu@aussie.zone
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        1 year ago

        I am listening to a The Solar Insiders Podcast, which is interviewing the CEO of RayGen (thanks for intoducing it to me, really cool).

        the 70% is the efificency of the energy storage, which is similar to pumped hydro. ie, they put in 1MWh to the chiller, and will recover 0.7MWh from the organic rankin cycle turbine.

        so, they get the 30% of the solar (or whatever it is), plus the recovery of the heat. They were saying that for 1 tower, they get 1MW of solar and 2MW of heat. but they never said how much of the 2MW of heat gets converted to electricity, or what the efficiency is, but it sounds like they need to consume electricity to use the ORC (ie for the chiller).

        one other thing is that they ORCs can provide grid inertia which is a cool outcome too.