> Electricity already comes from a lot of sources.
Very true
> It is pretty myopic to think people talking about solar panels means replacing all electricity generation with solar.
I don't think that all will be replaced with solar panels in the future, but considering the amount of energy that is absorbed by earth every second and the available surface area to collect and concentrate it, I think it possible that most of the energy will come from it (solar in general, not just solar panels).
I still think roll out will be slower in some areas and faster in others (mostly due to the incentives of all the different actors and their relative exposure to all the existing infrastructure).
> Solar installations already pay for themselves in under 7 years in sunny areas.
> Peak electricity use is in the summer during the day, when solar would have the most impact and can be double the energy used at night.
Yeah, its the short term time horizon (7 years vs 30 years) for profitability and looking at peak providing capabilities that attracts more projects in the US now (possibly because its a complement to all the existing hydro carbon infrastructure in place that wont be needed when more electricity generation can come from PV and CSP, that others places in the world don't have to the same degree and continue to build out CSP).
> Lol, show me where this anything like this has made money.
Cerro Dominador Project connected to the grid in chile in april this year with 110MW of CSP, so it's making money for someone in the chain (they also have 100MW of PV). Besides, I think nowadays cash flow matters more than present day absolute profitability, something that O&G producers have less of every year as demand growth slows due to higher end user prices and extraction costs rise.
> Molten salt would have to be super heated
That's what happens when you concentrate a large area of sunlight onto a receiver that contains the salt …
> and then enormous amounts of energy would have to be used to move it.
We already use "enormous amounts of energy" to move energy related products…
> Do you actually think that molten salt, with a melting temperature that is double what it takes to start weakening steel as well as being corrosive (https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zjb2pv4/revision/2)
Not all molten salts are created equal, nor do I think steel will be predominately used in most casing that actually touches the salts with higher delta_k and high heat capacities, UHTCs come to mind.
> is going to be better to transport energy than copper cable (which is already run everywhere with electricity !)
You make it seem like I'm saying that copper cables wont be used at all, where as I don't think it makes much sense over long distances… even now grids need to have power stations every so often in between all the copper cables… power stations that have to consume some source…