A solar power plant that operates at night

[safar1980]

On April 30, a major milestone was achieved at the world’s highest-altitude concentrated solar power (CSP) tower project—the Tushuo 100 MW CSP plant in Amdo County, Tibet—where all 15,927 heliostats manufactured by Dongfang Boiler have been successfully delivered.

As a key energy project in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the region’s first tower-type CSP plant, the Amdo project is located in the Tanggula Mountains at an elevation exceeding 4,650 meters. The plant adopts advanced tower CSP technology and is equipped with an 8-hour molten salt thermal energy storage system. The total reflective area of the heliostat field exceeds 800,000 square meters.

I became interested in how solar power plants operate at night, and AI provided an explanation of their operation:
"1. How the System Works (Technical Process)Heat Collection (Daytime): Thousands of computer-controlled mirrors (heliostats) direct sunlight onto a central receiver atop a tower. Liquid salt is continuously pumped through this receiver, where the sun heats it to extreme temperatures—typically ranging from 290 to 565 C.

2.Energy Storage: The heated salt drains into a massive, heavily insulated "hot" storage tank. The walls of this tank trap the heat with minimal losses (less than 1% of thermal energy per day). The salt can remain liquid and piping hot for many hours or even days.

3.Power Generation (Day and Night): Whenever the electrical grid demands power (such as after sunset or during peak evening hours), the hot salt is pumped from the storage tank into a steam generator. There, it transfers its heat to water, turning it into high-pressure steam. This steam drives a conventional steam turbine, which generates electricity.

4.Closing the Loop: Once the salt cools down to approximately 290 C, it flows into a second "cold" storage tank. From there, it is pumped back up the solar tower during the day to be heated all over again."

[philipma1957]

On April 30, a major milestone was achieved at the world’s highest-altitude concentrated solar power (CSP) tower project—the Tushuo 100 MW CSP plant in Amdo County, Tibet—where all 15,927 heliostats manufactured by Dongfang Boiler have been successfully delivered.

As a key energy project in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the region’s first tower-type CSP plant, the Amdo project is located in the Tanggula Mountains at an elevation exceeding 4,650 meters. The plant adopts advanced tower CSP technology and is equipped with an 8-hour molten salt thermal energy storage system. The total reflective area of the heliostat field exceeds 800,000 square meters.

I became interested in how solar power plants operate at night, and AI provided an explanation of their operation:
"1. How the System Works (Technical Process)Heat Collection (Daytime): Thousands of computer-controlled mirrors (heliostats) direct sunlight onto a central receiver atop a tower. Liquid salt is continuously pumped through this receiver, where the sun heats it to extreme temperatures—typically ranging from 290 to 565 C.

2.Energy Storage: The heated salt drains into a massive, heavily insulated "hot" storage tank. The walls of this tank trap the heat with minimal losses (less than 1% of thermal energy per day). The salt can remain liquid and piping hot for many hours or even days.

3.Power Generation (Day and Night): Whenever the electrical grid demands power (such as after sunset or during peak evening hours), the hot salt is pumped from the storage tank into a steam generator. There, it transfers its heat to water, turning it into high-pressure steam. This steam drives a conventional steam turbine, which generates electricity.

4.Closing the Loop: Once the salt cools down to approximately 290 C, it flows into a second "cold" storage tank. From there, it is pumped back up the solar tower during the day to be heated all over again."

It could also be preheated using the heat from the miners!


i would love to look at this setup.

[FP91G]

I haven't heard of this solution before. The efficiency of heated salt is described as being half that of solar panels due to optical and thermal losses, plus the thermodynamic losses of the turbine, but it's an autonomous power plant without batteries.
And what happens on days when there's little sun?

[NotFuzzyWarm]

This actually nothing new and in fact a huge facility in the US is shutting down 2/3rds of its capacity. https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/once-an-engineering-marvel-two-thirds-of-this-concentrated-solar-power-plant-will-shut-down-after-a-california-utility-pulled-two-of-its-ppas/
 And
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/10/06/why-californias-closed-2-billion-solar-plant-is-not-a-signal-of-industry-failure/

Then there is the issue of them frying birds... https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/brightsource-solar-plant-sets-birds-on-fire-as-they-fly-overhead-1.2739512

[philipma1957]

Lot of land for the mirror plant 1800 hectares.

Maybe 2.5x1800= 4500 acres.

Ai says 2000 400watt solar panels on an acre.

 Or 800,000 watts an acre

3,600,000,000 watts on 1800 acres

Factor of 5 is 18,000,000,000 watts a day if using solar pa


That is 18,000,000 kwatts a day

That is 18,000 mega watts a day

At 40 bucks a megawatt 720,000 usd in power a day.

If solar panels. Not mirrors.

This build shuting down is 392 x 24 about 9600 megawatts. Maybe  392 x 5 or 2000 megawatts


To build 2000x1800= 3.6 million 400 watts panels would be under 1 billion .

So same land and 50% cheaper to switch to 400 watt panel build.


Panels have issues. But they would produce 720,000x365=  260 million a year worth of 4 cent power.
Yearly.

And at 6 cents 390 million which with no incentives pays off a 1 billion dollar  build in 3 to 4 years.

Of course  tariffs may have made the new panel build cost 1.2 billion

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Something rarely seen is the combination of PV and thermal storage. Just as with the mirror setup simply divert part of the power generated during the day to heating the salt. Gives 24x7 power without frying birds.

[Conqueror777]

On April 30, a major milestone was achieved at the world’s highest-altitude concentrated solar power (CSP) tower project—the Tushuo 100 MW CSP plant in Amdo County, Tibet—where all 15,927 heliostats manufactured by Dongfang Boiler have been successfully delivered.

As a key energy project in the Tibet Autonomous Region and the region’s first tower-type CSP plant, the Amdo project is located in the Tanggula Mountains at an elevation exceeding 4,650 meters. The plant adopts advanced tower CSP technology and is equipped with an 8-hour molten salt thermal energy storage system. The total reflective area of the heliostat field exceeds 800,000 square meters.

I became interested in how solar power plants operate at night, and AI provided an explanation of their operation:
"1. How the System Works (Technical Process)Heat Collection (Daytime): Thousands of computer-controlled mirrors (heliostats) direct sunlight onto a central receiver atop a tower. Liquid salt is continuously pumped through this receiver, where the sun heats it to extreme temperatures—typically ranging from 290 to 565 C.

2.Energy Storage: The heated salt drains into a massive, heavily insulated "hot" storage tank. The walls of this tank trap the heat with minimal losses (less than 1% of thermal energy per day). The salt can remain liquid and piping hot for many hours or even days.

3.Power Generation (Day and Night): Whenever the electrical grid demands power (such as after sunset or during peak evening hours), the hot salt is pumped from the storage tank into a steam generator. There, it transfers its heat to water, turning it into high-pressure steam. This steam drives a conventional steam turbine, which generates electricity.

4.Closing the Loop: Once the salt cools down to approximately 290 C, it flows into a second "cold" storage tank. From there, it is pumped back up the solar tower during the day to be heated all over again."

I used to be a marine engineer and this is a marvel of engineering!

[Mia Chloe]

~snip

Interesting... I'd like to know how fast both solo miners and bigger mining pools are actually adopting solar as their main energy source rather than just a normal backup plan. Solar even if it is sustainable is relatively too expensive to set up at first plus they also need to consider future maintenance too.

Let's try to compare and contrast these numbers to actually having and energy contract with a company that generates. Power probably from natural gas.

[FP91G]

A private miner can use solar power and batteries for mining, but this must be a device that doesn't consume a lot of electricity.

For industrial mining, solar power will only be an additional source of power, batteries for multiple ASICs are very expensive.

[stompix]

I used to be a marine engineer and this is a marvel of engineering!

Sure, sure

Lot of land for the mirror plant 1800 hectares.
Maybe 2.5x1800= 4500 acres.
Ai says 2000 400watt solar panels on an acre.
~
This build shuting down is 392 x 24 about 9600 megawatts. Maybe  392 x 5 or 2000 megawatts

Ivanpah generated 856 GWh, it needed 2.9 billions to be built.
Vogtle, assuming inflation, with all its inflated costs was still 60 billion, but it produces 33,871 Gwh.
The thing with subsidies couldn't beat nuclear with taxes.

Interesting... I'd like to know how fast both solo miners and bigger mining pools are actually adopting solar as their main energy source rather than just a normal backup plan

Have you seen a snail going in reverse? That wold be the speed, +/- 2-3 meters per day

[5W-KILO]

The biggest challenge of using solar setups for mining Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general is back up after the sun is down, even if you have good battery backup, Lifepo or lithium they will degrade very fast because of the intense use.

It will be a massive game changer if there is solar panels that works in the night, I'm telling you that many people will go this route rather than using even the grid.

Especially my country people where grid power isn't reliable at all, there are some cities using 4hrs of grid power everyday, after four hours they will take it until the next day, I hope this becomes reality very fast.

[FP91G]

The biggest challenge of using solar setups for mining Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general is back up after the sun is down, even if you have good battery backup, Lifepo or lithium they will degrade very fast because of the intense use.

It will be a massive game changer if there is solar panels that works in the night, I'm telling you that many people will go this route rather than using even the grid.

Especially my country people where grid power isn't reliable at all, there are some cities using 4hrs of grid power everyday, after four hours they will take it until the next day, I hope this becomes reality very fast.

Batteries will never pay for themselves in Bitcoin mining due to their high cost; mining would have to generate massive profits for using batteries to be worthwhile.
However, for residential use in a private home or apartment, it is already feasible to design solar panel systems that include batteries.

[Mia Chloe]

Batteries will never pay for themselves in Bitcoin mining due to their high cost; mining would have to generate massive profits for using batteries to be worthwhile.
However, for residential use in a private home or apartment, it is already feasible to design solar panel systems that include batteries.

Battery maintenance and setup cost is actually one of the major setbacks of solar energy generally which is basically why you see most mining farms are still dependent on the national grid. In my country the few mining farms are only using solar as a brief backup plan not their main source.

I was reading a couple articles some weeks ago and I saw google is using geothermal power for newer data centers now but I don’t think miners will adopt it because it is very expensive to setup too.

[OgNasty]

When I first saw this thread I was assuming they were running the solar plant at night by using a satellite mirror system that redirects sunlight to the solar power plant during night hours.  That actually seems like a pretty good plan to me, frying birds aside.  This plan seems cool too if it works efficiently.  It seems like heating salt and using it to produce steam like that would require a lot of maintenance and cleaning, which means downtime. 

I think the earth should just dedicate some giant area as the power hub of the world and focus a ton of sunlight on it 24/7 with mirrored satellites (kidding, maybe).

[decodx]

Something rarely seen is the combination of PV and thermal storage. Just as with the mirror setup simply divert part of the power generated during the day to heating the salt. Gives 24x7 power without frying birds.

That wouldn't make much sense, as it would be inefficient. Converting sunlight into electricity via PV to drive a resistive heating element which heats salt then runs through a steam turbine to generate electricity again is throwing out a lot of the energy (like 60% due to round trip conversion losses). Mirrors skip the electrical middleman and grab raw heat directly, which is why they work.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

Something rarely seen is the combination of PV and thermal storage. Just as with the mirror setup simply divert part of the power generated during the day to heating the salt. Gives 24x7 power without frying birds.

That wouldn't make much sense, as it would be inefficient. Converting sunlight into electricity via PV to drive a resistive heating element which heats salt then runs through a steam turbine to generate electricity again is throwing out a lot of the energy (like 60% due to round trip conversion losses). Mirrors skip the electrical middleman and grab raw heat directly, which is why they work.

As I envision it, during the day PV would directly feed the grid as a standard solar farm. Only a (large) percentage of the power would be used heat the molten salt for the boiler/turbine system that only kicks in when the sun goes down so there is no 24x7 losses. If anything the salt will act as a very stable baseline load for the solar arrays so no potential power is wasted when the grid load is less than the solar can provide. When the grid demand is low just divert more power to heating the salt.

Around here the huge solar farms nearby (over 2000 acres of them) tilt some panels to a less efficient angle to reduce output to match demand. On bright sunny days I often see around 1/4 of them not facing the sun. That is slowly changing as large utility-scale battery storage is coming on line but that comes with its own set of issues. The biggest advantage battery storage has is that because it uses the same inverters the PV panels feed there is a seamless switchover between them vs spinning up the turbine/generators and then switching to them. Either way, both accomplish the same thing by storing designed-in 'excess' solar capacity to create an energy source that kicks in when the sun goes down.

[DYING_S0UL]

Solar powers at night? I thought OP was bluffing, making jokes until I read the post!
So heat from solar, makes molten salt, that's then stored and remains hot, and lastly at night that heat is used to boil up water, and using it's steam to generates electricity.
Cool technology for sure!

Battery maintenance and setup cost is actually one of the major setbacks of solar energy generally which is basically why you see most mining farms are still dependent on the national grid. In my country the few mining farms are only using solar as a brief backup plan not their main source.

I have always wanted to go fully solar for my home (I still wanna do it). But man it's expensive as hell. The battery alone costs a fortune. And the full setup from solar panels, to battery to, inverter, and controller that's a big investment which I cannot efford that easily.

[Stalker22]

When I first saw this thread I was assuming they were running the solar plant at night by using a satellite mirror system that redirects sunlight to the solar power plant during night hours.  That actually seems like a pretty good plan to me, frying birds aside.  This plan seems cool too if it works efficiently.  It seems like heating salt and using it to produce steam like that would require a lot of maintenance and cleaning, which means downtime. 

I think the earth should just dedicate some giant area as the power hub of the world and focus a ton of sunlight on it 24/7 with mirrored satellites (kidding, maybe).

Frying birds?  What concerning me more than anything else is frying people!  Think about how bad things would get if that orbital mirrors drift by a few millimeters as a result of some kind of software glitch or collision with some space junk - you are basically creating an Archimedes death ray that is focused straight on the Earth surface.  I do not trust the government or any private contractors not to use it to fry the nearby town to ashes just because of "small" calculation error... Or maybe even worse, someone decides to hack or commit acts of terrorism.

[stompix]

Frying birds?  What concerning me more than anything else is frying people!  Think about how bad things would get if that orbital mirrors drift by a few millimeters as a result of some kind of software glitch or collision with some space junk - you are basically creating an Archimedes death ray that is focused straight on the Earth surface.  I do not trust the government or any private contractors not to use it to fry the nearby town to ashes just because of "small" calculation error... Or maybe even worse, someone decides to hack or commit acts of terrorism.

Yeah, that's not how mirrors would work, not in space!
The Germans had a plan for it, but they were off by some orders of magnitude:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_gun
You need something 40,000 times bigger than the ISS to achieve the frying death ray, not going to happen.

[Vod]

Frying birds?  What concerning me more than anything else is frying people! 

Imagine Russia threatening to destroy Star link unless it manufactures a computer error that does exactly that.  

No international consensus would allow a heat ray in space - people already think Elon is insane and he can end any country using his satellite feed.  I think Elon should take the 60k Cybertrucks that killed people when their accelerators stuck, or metal panels flew off at highway speeds, and shoot those into orbit instead.  

Two similar US projects have already failed:  Crescent Dunes (Tonopah, Nevada) and Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (Mojave Desert, California).