They have trade offs, like every power solution. One perk is that they generally cleaner to produce, since shiny metal is simpler than modern complex solar panels.

That being said, I have little faith in any report issued under the current administration.

[–] Nindelofocho@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That still requires sunlight to work…

[–] ricecake@sh.itjust.works 20 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It requires sunlight to charge, not to produce electricity. Because liquid salt doesn't cool the moment it goes dark the plant can continue to use it to boil water to spin a turbine for a fair bit of time without sunlight. I believe one implementation only produces power at night, and spends the day collecting heat.
But yes, solar power does require sunlight at some point.

It's kinda moot however, because having now read the original post I was correct to assume they (the doe) was being disingenuous. The heat they seemed to be referring to was "the weather". As in "despite the high temperature, the sun still went down causing solar generation to ebb in a predictable fashion that grid operators were unsurprised by. This is why it's good we forced them to keep 150 year old coal plants burning".

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago

This is probably what explains that 1% generated by solar during the night.

[–] Crozekiel@lemmy.zip 1 points 4 weeks ago

Oh jeez, that somehow feels even dumber than what I thought it meant which is "it got so hot that solar panels stopped working after dark". Like they were blaming the "extreme heat"... So by their understanding, Solar should work all summer long day or night because it's hot, but not work at all in winter because it's cold?