The Gemasolar concentrated solar power plant in Spain stores excess heat in molten salt and thus supposedly can create power around the clock. Or at least that’s what’s being widely said on websites, even by Treehugger. But it’s not true. So why the shoddy reporting?
The developers say power will created at night “for many months of the year.” So it’s not 24/7. Also, it outputs 20 MW, a tiny amount. Thus it’s more of a pilot project than anything else.
This is another example of mindless renewable energy cheerleading which isn’t based in fact. Gemasolar, however innovative, isn’t 24/7 so why are people saying it is? Also, for renewable energy to be functional at grid scale we need hundreds of gigawatts of it and we are nowhere close to that.
Too much renewable energy reporting is uncritical and lazy about the facts. This does a disservice to the entire industry.