There are other sources of clean energy such as hydrological, geothermal, tidal and wind. A comparison of costs and impacts with those other sources is necessary to make any decision or form an idea of the value.

Josh - go back and look at your reference to the Spanish thermal power station. It shows all the problems that dog even the molton salt storage generators.. firstly it is a pilot plant. Its 50 MW gross output is a tenth the output of an ordinary coal fired plant. The power it produces costs perhaps three times that of power from a conventional plant. That's just a guess from the Euro figure given, but it is the developer's estimates. Heaven knows what the real cost is.

Further, it is an isolated area, so you still have the problems of transmission losses and major costs of building transmission lines out to this site. And even then it does not produce 24 hours, so you will still need conventional plants to take over.

It is, I admit, several steps up from wind towers which are a complete waste of time, but far short of any soloution. I have not looked at the Queensland sites you mention, but are they high altitude desert like the Spanish site? Doubt it.

Best off advocating a switch to gas.

Curmudgeon (Mark) better off advocating a switch to nuclear power. It's a way more concentrated energy source than solar rays, works 24 hours a day without expensive salt storage and has an environmental footprint one seventh of solar thermal plants. No amounts of government subsidy is going to change the physics of solar concentrators.

The reality is that 24 hour solar thermal plants use gas along with solar and are relatively small (as you point out). It also means you need access to gas as well as good sunshine. Even BZC recognised they needed biomass support for the solar thermal plants but didn't really discuss how they were goint to get the biomass fuel to the plants.

Martin N

Yes, good point on nuclear plants, although purely from a public relations point of view gas is probably more likely in Aus. All the screaming over supposed problems with a nuclear plant would be tiresome.

By the by I only glanced at the Spanish stuff, and you mentioned gas.. was that for the back up generators or to use in the solar planet itself??

Well Mark we have to start the screaming at some time, tiresome or not :)

Andasol 1, 2 and 3 are not 24 hour plants. They have a rated turbine capacity of 50 MW but will only generate 180 GWh/yr. That makes a capacity factor of around 40% (10 hours a day). I'm not sure if they are gas hybrid plants but they do use molten salt storage.

President Obama has proposed to slash US$46 billion from their fossil fuel subsidy scheme..yes US$46 billion and that figure is a only a REDUCTION..imagine the consequences if our figures were "adjusted to suit Australian conditions" and applied proportionately to renewable energy research right here at home?

Wakatak - fossil fuel subsidies?? You may be confused on that point. Overall fossil fuels are very heavily taxed, even in America. In Australia, about half the price of petrol at the pump is tax. Its less in the US, but I'm not sure by how much.
Probably Obama was talking about eliminating tax concessions in some areas, which they certainly get. Same talk here about removing tax breaks, incidentally.

Martin N - 10 hours! I'm shocked. Why are they wasting out time with this stuff? We should go nuclear just to make a point.