According to the New York Times, a major solar power project in California has been canceled. It seems that even creating solar power in the middle of nowhere in a desert can’t get past California environmentalists these days. If not here, where then on earth will be acceptable? Don’t hold your breath.
Excerpt:
BrightSource Energy Inc. had planned a 5,130-acre solar power farm in a remote part of the Mojave Desert, on land previously intended for conservation. The company, based in Oakland, Calif., said Thursday that it was instead seeking an alternative site for the project.
The Wildlands Conservancy, a California environmental group, had tried to block the solar development, as had Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who proposed that the area become a national monument.
The land was donated by Wildlands to the Interior Department during the Clinton administration, with assurances from President Bill Clinton himself, the group says, that it would be protected in perpetuity. But the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a Bush administration initiative, opened the land to the development of solar projects.
Here’s the details on the project from the company website:
BrightSource is currently developing its first solar power complex in California’s Mojave Desert. The Ivanpah Solar Power Complex will be located in Ivanpah, approximately 50 miles northwest of Needles, California, and about five miles from the California-Nevada border. The complex will be a 6-square mile facility (4065 acres) within the 25,000-square mile Mojave Desert and will generate enough electricity to power 140,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 450,000 tons per year.
Fast facts
* Location: Ivanpah, California
* Output: Up to 440 megawatts
* The Ivanpah Solar Power Complex will power 150,000 homes and reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 450,000 tons per year.
* The Ivanpah Solar Power Complex will nearly double the amount of solar thermal electricity produced today in the US.
* Ivanpah will create 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction.
Project details
The 440 megawatt Ivanpah Solar Power Complex will be built in three phases – two 110 megawatt facilities and one 220 megawatt facility. The first phase (110 megawatts) is scheduled to begin construction in early 2010 and completed by 2012. The second phase will begin construction roughly six months after the start of the first phase in early 2010.
A 100 megawatt solar thermal plant utilizes approximately 50,000 heliostats.
If the lights start going out the sane people in the country may over-rule the insane ones.
When are people going to wake up to the fact that environmentalists are liars? They’re not interested in ‘alternative’ energy sources. They’re interested in capping energy and therefore human growth and activity. They want to see the world turned back a few centuries to a time when the world population was a fraction of what it is today, with people ‘living off the land’, hard lives and early deaths for all. Their ideas are not driven by science or reason, but by the worship of Earth as an entity, a goddess. The American government which is not supposed to establish a religion is establishing the morality of the religion of Gaia.
This is not the only solar project they’ve opposed in the American deserts. And while this one has a twist in that the land was donated for the express purpose of conservation, other such projects have been proposed on land free of such entanglements. They were still blocked by rabid greens.
John Egan – I used to live in the Mojave. It’s massive, and massive tracts of it are already set aside for nature. How much land do we have to set aside? I’m all for having national parks and wilderness areas. But Gaia worshipers have abused the system as a means to blocking all human development. We need to set aside land for nature, and land for man. And on man’s land it doesn’t matter what gets paved or what topsoil is damaged. It only matters what benefits man.
You would think the politicians would be getting wise to these Luddites by now.
They are probably good for the environment as those 50,000 heliostats form dew in the morning which drips to the ground. Because the heliostats reflect the sun the surrounding ground receives less sun/heat so I’d expect the ground around the plant to blossom with plant life, that’s what happened under the solar tower exprimental unit..
Hey, I know this is an extremely conservative website. The comments in many threads clearly show it. But there WAS a Republican president who is considered by many to be one of the founders of the conservation movement – Theodore Roosevelt.
In his day, Roosevelt was considered a lunatic by financiers, businessmen, and others seeking to make their fortunes from the public domain. After all – it was just a wasteland, right? T.R. had seen, firsthand, the wanton destruction of the American Bison. He was aware of the irresponsible destruction of northern forests in the Great Lakes region. He saw the results of massive overfishing on salmon runs.
For his time, T.R. was most certainly radical. The fact is – for most of the history of the United States, Americans have viewed the desert as a wasteland. A number of posters here have used such terminology. Rarely do we value anything until it is gone. In actuality, many of the Western desert environments are already utilized. Ever hear of Bonneville Salt Flats? Or the Nevada Test Site?
As for water use – yes, facilities such as this use quite a lot of water – not in generation but in daily cleaning. Dust build-up reduces the solar efficiency of the mirrors. Cleaning with pressurized air risks scratching the mirrors; thus, cleaning with water is required. Most of this water is lost through evaporation or runoff.
The automobile is not the most efficient form of transportation in terms of total energy used, cost, space, etc. – but it has proved more than adequate in providing transportation for Americans and others for multiple generations. (This guy can’t be a flako leftie if he just said that!!) Solar power generation can be accomplished effectively in dispersed locations that are already developed for other uses. Hell, you could build solar towers all along I-15 to Vegas and pay for the project with billboard advertising – although where the water will come from remains an issue.
The rapid increases in efficiency of photovoltaics may actually make thermal solar obsolete in short order – think 8-track tape players. Sorry, the Owens Valley has already had its water stolen to fill swimming pools in Southern California. Half of the public lands in the Southwest are used for military training, tests, or disposal.
This project is an Edsel.
It takes 4000 acres to produce 440 megawatts?
Forget about the ecology.
That sucks.
Hank,
“Our present administration and the envirowackos overlook the “Tarzan principal.” You don’t let go of the vine that has carried you until you have the next vine firmly in grasp. They demand that industry let go of oil and natural gas under the fallacious belief that renewable energy is in our grasp. The outcome is quite predictable – it’s going to be a hard fall.”
Well said.
I have worked in the energy sector as an engineer for almost 50 yearse and the current policy is suicidal. Tons of taxpayers dollars are being pumped into alternative energy sources that don’t have a “snowball’s chance in hell” of providing viable cost efficient energy. The energy companies have been looking for the magic bullet (using the brightess and best engineers and scientists from the top universities) for decades without success. To think that a bunch of inept politicians and Government DOE employees wildly splashing around you tax dollars will provide a quick breakthrough is naive at best.
John Egan (21:14:04) :
Just where would you put the solar plant? I’m sure there was a reason why the Mojave was selected over other places.
RE: John Egan (20:42:14)
Edward Abbey, whom you reference, wrote books romanticizing Eco-terrorism. I don’t think this blog should be a forum for posters advocating Eco-terrorist authors (specific reference “Monkey Wrench Gang”).
I happen to think that windmills, nuclear plants, dams, solar farms, etc. are as beautiful as any dry wasteland. The universe so far is filled with waste lands, so far only one planet has beautiful structures created by intelligent minds and so far we only cover a tiny fraction of this planet.
The eco-systems that have grown up behind the Columbia river dams and all across the San Joaquin Valley are full of birds, mammals, fish where only sand some scrub trees existed before. I counted 14 species of birds from a friend’s yard in Moses Lake, WA > was that man-made Garden of Eden evil? The problem you eco-terrorists types have is you view man as evil and cannot see that some things human kind does are pretty awesome.
All the best,
Keith Minto (21:05:41) :
Inxwalt (20:35:37),
” You aren’t likely to find such large animals in that part of the Mojave Desert. There is very little water The jackrabbits and coyotes would have rested underneath the shade. Smaller rodents (mostly nocturnal) wouldn’t care, either.”
It would change the ecology, plants and animals would be more abundant,soil would be more moist. The dishes as you say would have provided shade and protection, there would be less evaporation from the soil leading to a richer more diverse plant community.The taller grass and shade from the dishes would provide protection for the animals from raptors, they would probably change their habits and be less nocturnal.Altogether the biota would be be more abundant but different and therein lies the problem for the ‘frozen in time’ environmentalists.
===
The land under a solar glass mirror is sterile – or will be once the sunlight is turned off. And it should be: you don’t want any trees, bushes, vines or algae/moss growing across the upper surface.
There’s an advantage to this site = The land is no sterile. Look at it: not even scrub or catus, no life at all. Which makes it about the only place in the US that IS alright to put a solar installation.
Doesn’t matter. Without your tax dollar subsidies, there is no reason to build solar. It is a waste of time, moeny, resources, energy, and manpower. It is a waste of copper and glass to put thepower lines in to ship the elctricity out, the day-to-day driving into the site every shift to bring supervisors and technicians in EVERY DAY for teh enext fifty years to run the thing. To ship in pipes, plumbing, glass, rebar, steel, copper, concrete – how to you make the foundations without more water, cement, steel, digging equipment and people and power and energy and roads between the ten thousand acre facility…. The gas for their trucks and maintenance? )
I can put a 65% efficient combined cycle power plant in 10 acres in the middle of the city – where power is needed NOW – and produce 500 MegWatt in two years. And not need a single extra power pole or road or pipeline.
it’s just not politically popular right now – because the federal government wants to deny (electric) power to the people who need it, in favor of granting more (political) power to the people who want it.
This makes a great case for more Coal & Nuclear Plants. If we can’t build alternative energy plants, then we’ll have to build conventional. Oops, can’t do that either.
You heard the Conseratory and the Senator.
No alternative energy is allowed.
Ok, everyone, start unplugging the street lights, marker lights, lawn lights, security lights and whatever else you can. We need more power, and we cannot build it, so we’ll have to strip out everything. Your ration is one LED light/home.
The Senator has spoken.
So it is written, so it shall be done.
REPLY: what, no obelisks? – A
E.M. touched on this obliquely: one of the reasons the totally clueless environmentalists who oppose every thing that makes modern life possible is that someone might make ~gasp!~ a profit.
(Ooooo! I had to slap myself for saying that dirty ‘P’ word. Sorry all. I hope your children aren’t reading this.)
N.b. I’m not including the practical enviromentalists that do have a clue, as there are quite a few that post here.
Robert E. Phelan (21:53:51) :
John Egan (21:14:04) :
“Just where would you put the solar plant? I’m sure there was a reason why the Mojave was selected over other places.”
—
Dry desert air means less inbound solar energy is shielded by the humidity – on average.
Low latitude means the sun is higher every day (on average) and so the net efficiency is slightly higher.
Desert soil and no water means the soil is already sterile and so there is less competing biological impact. (You don’t need to clear cut 10,000 acres and keep it clear cut every spring, and you don’t need to cover 10,000 acres with asphalt under the collectors to prevent ground erosion from rain runoff. What? You want to keep mowing the grass around teh bottom of the 10,000 acres of solar collectors in FL or AL or Mississippi or TX, only to see the mud run off between them whe it does rain?)
No hurricanes or tornadoes.
Dust is bad – but can be managed by cleaning – as noted above.
A higher elevation helps reduce atmospheric absorption of the solar energy, but the high deserts are more ecologically sensitive, and get covered with snow half the year. (Big oopsie to lose half your production to snow or storms – again, a major reason to build solar installations in the dry deserts.)
Unfortunately, nobody lives in the deserts, and no power is consumed in the deserts. So, you also have to build expensive power lines across the deserts, each power line requiring additional roads and mountain transits and valley/cliff transits and “bridges” – very, very expensive installations. That cause up to 48% of the power to be lost rather quickly.
Unless even more expensive high volt transformers are built at each each of the power lines – which requires even higher towers and more copper losses opver long distances and in the transformers. So, figure about 1/2 the opwer will lost to heat losses from resistance just crossing the desert 1000 miles to the next large load. (And, as line temperature goes up, heat losses increase even more.)
Our existing generators out in the desert – such as at Hoover Dam? Their lines are already overloaded, and are subject to these same losses. You can’t add much to the existing power lines – even assuming they went in the right direction. Which they don’t.
rbateman (22:29:51) :
The Senator has spoken.
So it is written, so it shall be done.
REPLY: what, no obelisks? – A
— Er, uhm, no. An obelisk cuts off the sunlight from your neighbor’s solar cells to the east, north, and west of your “property” and must be taken down.
Unless there is a bird nest in the obelisk, in which case the bird has priority and your neighbors to the east, south and west must turn off all of their lights every night near the solstices so the migrating birds don’t get distracted and can’t navigate home ……
REPLY: “So it is written, so shall it be done” was spoken by Yul Brenner playing Ramses II in Cecil b. De Mille’s epic film The Ten Commandments (1956) which also starred Charlton Heston as Moses. Another great line was from ruler Sethi, played by Cedric Hardwicke who said (with a slight English accent): “Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt.”
That’s what I was referring to. – Anthony
Doh! Obelisks.
Stonecutting, the new Green Jobs.
Followed by a Great Pyramid at Sacramento.
I have always said that Sac needs a mountain.
The Limestone Quarry at Auburn, perfect.
The Granite comes from Rocklin and Penryn.
I still think that dilithium crystals are the only way to go.
Solar power is the wave of the future!
And always will be.
Has Feinstein done anything good or productive as a Senator? I can’t remember hearing about one good thing “Senator” Feinstein has done. This woman shouldn’t be a Senator. Californians gotta vote that useless woman out of office.
RACookePE (22:27:40),
Desert soil is sterile on our moon but not on planet Earth, shaded or not.
A lot goes on below the surface, have a look at http://www.springerlink.com/content/l227322032g85059/.
There is even a Polar Bear to look at.
John Egan (21:43:13) :
OK, you answered the question before it got posted. I’ll support the towers along I-15, but I’ll make a small wager (preferably in Lucia’s Quatloos, all I can really afford and I can print them at home) that THAT location will also prove environmentally unacceptable and that no technology will be green enough.
Hmm, I was asked during 1989 by Rio Tinto staff at the Argyle diamond mine to do a back of envelope calculation to work out how many solar panels would be needed to supply 15Mw electrical power. It had to be 15Mw 24/365 so that meant battery storage for night time to keep the mill working.
The reason for the request was the Wilderness Society’s demand Rio deploy solar energy for its expected power requirements.
My rough calculations included the need to find another copper mine, lead mine, and a couple of sq km for the solar arrays. Not to forget the copper buss bars and cabling to get the DC current to the mine.
That experiment tipped into the anti-greenie mode.
“Hell, you could build solar towers all along I-15 to Vegas and pay for the project with billboard advertising – although where the water will come from remains an issue.
The rapid increases in efficiency of photovoltaics may actually make thermal solar obsolete in short order – think 8-track tape players. ” – John Egan (21:43:13)
While I think solar PV’s have a bright future in small niche applications, I see quite a few problems with solar PV’s playing much of a role in supplying the grid within the next few decades.
While solar PV cells achieving 40% conversion efficiency can be manufactured in very small quantities, the cost is astronomical and the cells degrade in performance over time. Solar PV’s achieving any acceptable conversion efficiency are made of toxic substances (including silicon and other doping chemicals). Several small towns in China have been rendered polluted waste lands from the manufacturing of solar panels.
Another major issue is the erection of said towers. The cost would be prohibitive. Given the public distaste for cellular towers and the like, it is unlikely any plan to build a string of solar towers along public highways will be acceptable. Then, as you well point out, there’s the water issue.
Finally, solar PV’s provide no practical means to store power, particularly in the desert, limiting them to small applications where batteries are employed. Batteries are impractical, expensive, and present their own environmental issues. The only solution to the intermittent and poor demand response of solar PV’s is to build CO2 spewing “spinning reserves” of equal capacity to the solar PV array.
I personally think that solar trough or tower turbine plants offer a much better, although limited, option in the renewable energy future as there are viable means to store the heat to provide some demand regulation and run the turbines for several hours after sunset.
It isn’t about the environment, it’s about hatred of your average everyday working human critters by the over educated elite.
Which is fine with me, because I welcome the day when California runs out of power and there’s rolling blackouts, and electricity costs close to your monthly rent. Because after years of putting up with the gerrymandered tax and spend morons in charge of the government here, I’ll be retired in another state laughing my ass off.
Pofarmer (21:49:45) :
It takes 4000 acres to produce 440 megawatts?
The Cordova nuke plant in Illinois produces 1,700 megawatts on 765 acres, and some of that acreage is in corn.
My wife has occasionally conned me into watching “Living with Ed”, the cable program about Ed Begley Jr.’s domestic problems trying to live a maximally green lifestyle. On one of those he discussed how he must routinely climb to the roof to clean his solar arrays to maintain their efficiency. How do large PV installations deal with this, or if they don’t, what kind of efficiency losses do they experience from dirty panels? If the losses are significant that would seem quite problematic in a desert environment.