OK so I’m in scince class right now and were doing a project on “Solar Power Plants”and we can’t find anything on them…so would anybody know on how much it would cost to build one?
It could be as little as $10. But this solar power plant would only produce enough energy to light a very small light bulb!!
It all depends on the power output of the power station. I would estimate that it would cost about 100 times what it costs to build a fossil fuel powered plant for each megawatt of power produced.
So, a 10GW (Giga Watt) oil fired power plant may cost $1billion to build, so a 10GW solar plant would cost about $100billion to build (and would probably take up 1000 times the land space required for the oil plant)
Try looking up “Kramer Junction” for an example of a solar power plant. You can use Google, but here’s one example:
That plant uses solar thermal energy to turn conventional turbines.
If you’re looking for data on photovoltaic power, a utility scale plant is probably going to run around $6 a watt today, but expect panel prices to drop up to 25% in the coming year. So a 1 GW plant, a typical size by the way, would cost $6 billion. [Ironically, that first guy who gave a flip answer is pretty close.] Compare this to $1.3 billion for a coal-fired plant of the same size. For costs, see this link:
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Mr. J Said,
May 29, 2009 @ 11:06 pm
Approximately $5,876,908,087.67, that’s an approximation though.
it_is_my_life3478 Said,
June 2, 2009 @ 12:29 am
This is a very open ended question.
It could be as little as $10. But this solar power plant would only produce enough energy to light a very small light bulb!!
It all depends on the power output of the power station. I would estimate that it would cost about 100 times what it costs to build a fossil fuel powered plant for each megawatt of power produced.
So, a 10GW (Giga Watt) oil fired power plant may cost $1billion to build, so a 10GW solar plant would cost about $100billion to build (and would probably take up 1000 times the land space required for the oil plant)
And they wonder why solar hasn’t caught on yet!
roderick_young Said,
June 2, 2009 @ 4:23 pm
Try looking up “Kramer Junction” for an example of a solar power plant. You can use Google, but here’s one example:
That plant uses solar thermal energy to turn conventional turbines.
If you’re looking for data on photovoltaic power, a utility scale plant is probably going to run around $6 a watt today, but expect panel prices to drop up to 25% in the coming year. So a 1 GW plant, a typical size by the way, would cost $6 billion. [Ironically, that first guy who gave a flip answer is pretty close.] Compare this to $1.3 billion for a coal-fired plant of the same size. For costs, see this link:
Tommy Said,
June 4, 2009 @ 10:34 am
It cost less than $200.
See