Edwin Pawlowski wrote:

"Pete C." wrote in message
The magnitude of steam that we use would probably need a few thousand
acres
of solar panels in Arizona, not New England. Then we'd need accumulators
capable of holding massive amounts of high pressure steam during the dark
hours. There are NO industrial process boilers powered by solar because
of
the utter impracticality of it.

A building the size that would house such boilers and the process
equipment using their output probably has enough roof area to hold a
reflector array and collector tower to generate the daytime steam. Not
going to help at night, but assuming constant three shift use could
cover 30% of the energy needs.

To run at 50% capacity of 5,500,000 Btu it is not practical.
A very efficient solar panel can produce 20 watts per hour per square foot
at noon on a sunny day . I'd need 80,000 sq. ft. of the 30,000 sq. ft.
available to do it for even a portion of the day. Factor in cloudy day,
winter sun hours, loss of transmission and conversion, heat storage and
anything else, you see the practicality of it.

Anyone know what 80,000 square feet of solar collection is worth? Now we
have to store surplus energy to be used at other times of the day.

You're thinking of the wrong technology. You don't use solar PV or solar
hot water thermal, you use a concentrating steam boiler setup, like used
at a few CA commercial solar utility generating stations. An array of
tracking reflectors concentrating the energy on a single central
collector-boiler. For your application there are no transmission and
conversion losses since you directly generate the steam you need above
the plant that is using it. You do not bother trying to store any of the
energy for night use, you simply ramp the oil / gas fired boilers back
up for the evening. 30% energy savings using existing roof space. Think
tax credits too...