artie morty
It's interesting, but there's not much hard data there. One underlying problem is that no matter what you do, you can't collect more energy than is present. This means the absolute maximum is about 1KW per square metre of collector. Even if the collector can run at the that power for 12 hours a day, 365 days a year on average (highly optimistic, and certainly requires it to be steerable), then it produces 4.3 MWh per year per square metre. If I time things properly, I can buy that energy for about $60 in NSW electricity spot market.
So to be compebreastive, even if it's 100% efficient, the opportunity cost of the capital cannot exceed $60 per year. At 5% interest, that means that each square metre of collectors, plus its share of steering mechanism and hydrogen separation gear, cannot cost more than $1200, and that's buttuming that it will last forever.
They mentioned that the oxygen was sequestered in an oxidiser. Presumably energy has to be expended later to liberate the oxygen from the oxidiser so that that the oxidiser can be reused.
Add that energy requirement to the real life efficiencies, cloudy days, and so on, and the maximum plant cost is significantly reduced.
Economics can be tough.
I haven't, but if its only at the development stage, it's a bit late unless the subsequent lead time on constructing plant is much lower than for current nuclear technology. I think it takes ten years to build a nuclear plant.
Sylvia.
