just build a nuclear power plant and stop eff'ing around with all this garbage.

Yup! I like the underlying tech but this will never be practical and/or ever generate a useful amount of power.

Don't listen to trash mouthed wrong headed nuke apologists. Build, baby, Build!

But i'm concerned; If that molten mixture of sodium and potassium nitrates (eutectic, yes?) cools off and congeals, would that not plug up the works?

The thermal system is interesting, but if they are not also using the steam cycle to desalinate water, they would be better off using sterling cycle engines to produce the electricity.

Italian Nobel for fisics Carlo Rubbia proposes a variant to this kind of power plant, it replaces the tower and the heliostats with parabolic mirrors which have an absorber tube as receiver.

a 3d model of the "project archimede" (actually running in Sicily since this july) can be found on Second life, enel's land, enel park

Why was Solar two shut down? Too expensive to operate? Can't make a profit with a measley 10 MW output? If its already built and functioning why kill it? 10 MW is 10 MW, no?

Thorium nuclear plants are the answer. Look it up!

Salt plants in Northern Africa should work very well,

Large masses can be melted, from solid into gel,

Providing needed power, to send beneath the sea,

To European countries, that need electricity.

One day when this will happen, solar then will find,

Its place in power production and a changing of the mind,

That concentrated solar, with salt to hold the heat,

Is a generation process that should help coal to unseat.

Good innovative approach for wider usage of Solar Power.

Dr.A.Jagadeesh Nellore(AP),India

I wonder what the payback time is for a plant of this size. Also why not just generate the electricity during the day, and let some other supplier provide night-time energy? Then you wouldn't need the molten salt. All the heliostats take a lot of maintenance. This whole project looks enormously expensive. Maybe someone has talked a lot of investors into parting with their money.

@ Don Bill: I would suggest to you that the salt mix is not flowing, rather, is a heat vessel that tubing holding the heated media lays in. Like a tankless hot water coil in a boiler.

The salt just kinda sits there changing state accordingly.

Curious thing this salt towers and the other projects availible, They were first considered in the 1950's but fear or rather the suggestion of fear that this type of technolgy would leed to massive unemployment in the oil, gas industry. Grey Goo might have been one of the excuses for not proseeding. Much like the nano carbon fibre screen that separates Hydrogen at the point of use thru magnetic remediation,with minimal electrical use in production, is dormant because of similiar such fears.Like it might open a portal into another world and the sky might fall or you be forced to be a socialist and a dozen forms of fears purposely generated are more grey goo spread around by the folks like the Petroleum Institute. But eventually the conditions of useing out dated methods of energy production out weigh the need to protect the big cash cows, These projects are indications of the real concerns,which is no longer a laughing matter.