Along with solar and wind power, one could also consider using salt to generate clean electricity - molten salt to be precise. Molten salt can produce energy at any time of the day. There is potential, but both the cost of generating capacity and the importance of energy storage must be considered.
In 2015, SolarReserve built the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes solar facility in Nevada, resulting in 1,100 megawatt-hours of energy reserves and the ability to power 75,000 homes in Nevada. Similar Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects are planned in South Australia, Africa, Chile and other countries around the world.
Unlike solar and wind power, which can reduce the need for fossil fuels when the sun is there or when it's windy, facilities that use molten salt can operate at any time of the day and store energy for up to 10 hours. The scheme for generating electricity is quite simple: sunlight, concentrated on the tower by a field of mirrors, heats the molten salt in the tower to a temperature of over 538 degrees Celsius; the heat can then be used to generate steam and rotate the turbines.
The energy from molten salt plants is much cheaper. According to Inside Climate News, the Crescent Dunes plant can generate electricity for $ 0.06 per kilowatt hour.
Noting the importance of energy storage, Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve, told Inside Climate News that US utilities “just want kilowatt hours. They don't care when they get them. In other words, consumers are least concerned about what time of day renewable energy will be used.
For example, in areas such as California, surplus renewable energy is generated at certain times of the day, while demand increases towards the evening.
So far SolarReserve is slightly behind in the pace of adoption. The Crescent Dunes plant was supposed to generate 500,000 MWh of electricity per year, but Inside Climate News says it has yet to achieve that goal.
Meanwhile, Spanish engineering firm Sener is preparing two projects for Ouarzazate in Morocco that also use molten salt. The prices for both projects are still quite high, but the expected drop in prices could put the company in a better position to promote its CSP projects. Even Google has plans to store renewable energy in molten salt, but it still has to test its own system to see if it can be used commercially.
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