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.
a jones,
The issue is not just water for cleaning the reflectors – though that is an issue with both solar thermal and photovoltaics (dirt reduces efficiency) – but the cooling water needed to condense the steam across the turbine, which is what makes it spin and enables electricity to be produced. If water is scarce, cooling towers are needed, which introduces extra cost. If water is really scarce, rather than natural draft cooling towers (closed system) mechanical cooling towers can be used, but they are even more expensive, but reduce efficiency because electricity is consumed in turning the mechanical fans.
The real issue this case shows is that land is a major input in solar energy. If you work out the maximum available incoming solar radiation (solar constant ~1375W/m2 divided by approx 4 to take account of the fact we’re on a rotation sphere) at 15% efficiency for PV you get around 50W/m2. Let’s say we can get to 25% efficiency – about 84W/m2. Now scale up to a MW huge areas. Since land actually has a price, its not just the sun that makes desert attractive, but the close to zero opportunity cost of land – except as wilderness, which is where the conservationists come it.
Sorta OT, but inline with EM’s points.
Once upon a time I had a carnivorous girl friend who took exception to me shooting deer to eat. I asked her if she thought her steaks grew in celophane. All she could say was that that was not the point. I was “ambushing” the poor deer.
I asked her if she’d ever visited a slaughter house. That caused some squirming. She wasn’t about to give up meat, but also didn’t want to know about the process of getting it to her plate. That was bloody inconvenient (pun intended). And yet, she considered herself and “animal rights” person and evironmentalist. Go figure. Logical consistency ain’t a hallmark of the “evironmentalist” crowd.
Nuff said. She didn’t stay my girl friend.
Now days my wife may not want to pull the trigger, but she’s pretty handy with the butchering after I pull the trigger and has no qualms understanding the process of getting meat to the table.
Everything EM Smith said is true. However, we do not need a solar monstrosity on the Mojave. Wait until solar is available in urban areas; use some of the loose cash around to do intense R&D. Also deep six those stupid wind turbines — including all the damage they do to land, birds, and the humans they are built around. The U.S. and California has enough sources of energy we do not need these insane projects. They remind me of the worst of “modernist” grandiosity. In this one case, I do not object to environmnental nuttiness. Even a blind chick gets some corn.
The can say the same about windmils in the oceans and on land. Solar power is way less harmfull than windwils for animals.
And the LaSalle County Nuclear Station near Ottawa, Illinois produces 2,280 megawatts (enough to supply over 2 million homes). It uses a manmade cooling lake that takes up 2,058 acres, but which has become a popular fishery and wildlife habitat. The station employs over 800 people.
In summary: .11 megawatt/solar acre vs about 1 megawatt/nuclear acre (lake plus the reactor facilities). Cordova produces 2.2 megawatts/nuclear acre.
I wonder which technology is more efficient per acre? How much more asthetically pleasing is a lake vs solar array? AND I can fish and boat in the lake!
Until we get the problem of fussion power generaton cracked, it looks like fission power plants are the only real alternative to fossil fuels.
However, more money needs to be pumped into the problem of getting rid of the radoactive waste these plants produce in a ‘future safe’ way before I would support this strategy.
What will those ecominded celebs in California do when the lights go out and they won’t have energy to power their industry?
I suppose Ancient civilizations were equally non-green as they built massive cities out of stone and whatever else they could find. How dare the Romans alter Europe’s natural beauty with vias and aquaducts.
I keep going back to that story a few years ago about S. Africa’s rolling blackouts. They too quit building power generation until thier region overreached in distribution and ended up with rolling blackouts on a permanent basis.
I would like to know what the statistics are on traffic safety, as when the power is on, the cities are all lit up, but when the power is off, nothing stops.
What a staggering amount of space needed to generate, part-time, so little electrical energy. And what was the price of this energy to be, per kWh? Of course, the output is zero kWh once the sun starts to set.
Surely modern, compact nuclear plants, working 24/7, are the way to go. From what I read, California needs cheap energy, and does not want to tread the path of Spain and end up with 18% unemployment as industry flees the “green” power costs.
John Egan (21:43:13) :
[i]Hey, I know this is an extremely conservative website. The comments in many threads clearly show it.[/i]
Thinking realistic is maybe thinking conservative. Especially when it comes to the topic “energy-production”
[Note: square brackets don’t work with WordPress. Use arrow brackets instead: < >. ~dbs, mod.]
Sorry for a little OT comment:
“Ivanpah will create 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction”
No. It will not. It will “employ” 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction. Jobs will not be created out of nowhere. People that could be doing other things will be, instead, constructing the plant.
rbateman (22:48:20) :
Doh! Obelisks.
Stonecutting, the new Green Jobs.
Followed by a Great Pyramid at Sacramento
I think a really big Sphinxter makes more sense.
I was a motorcyclists in the early ‘70s. There was an article in one of the dirt bike magazines about the effect of motorcycles crossing the ‘pristine’ desert. It seems that up until the dirt bike craze of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, rain in the desert would collect in pools on the surface and evaporate quickly. The motorcycles would break the top crust and allow the rain water to seep into the ground rather than evaporate. The resulting explosion of vegetation interfered with riding the dirt bikes.
The construction of solar facilities in the desert may have the opposite effect on the region’s water supply than predicted. This, of course, would be equally objectionable to the environmentalists.
This may be hiding another agenda. I’ve heard about how projects like this are tied up in red tape and obstruction because some alternative energy developers want to use non-union labor to reduce cost in building the project. The unions have tried blackmailing these projects, saying that they’ll make sure the project is greenlighted by regulators if the developers use union labor. If not, the unions use every regulatory lever they can get ahold of to make life hard on these developers so that the project can’t go forward.
I’ll make some comments:
1. This is not a “very conservative” blog. I am a classical liberal and I don’t find it that conservative. It is a blog that talks about things which are currently very sensitive for Democrats but frankly when GW Bush was in charge it had lots of inconvenient truths about Republican political beliefs as well. There are some vociferous conservative commenters but that’s about it (and the conservatives hardly get away with spouting a party line before they get called on it)
2. This blog is about the reality of climate science and the reality of science. Therefore nobody should feel comfortable regardless of their political viewpoint. If you don’t feel your basic belief system being challenged then you’re not reading the same blog as me.
3. The green eco-alarmist panic over climate is collapsing in on itself. But its not going to go quietly, has massive financial reserves and it still has great sway over people’s lives through the political system of many countries.
Senator Lamar Alexander has an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on this topic.
“This “sprawl” has been missing from our energy discussions.”
…
“The 1,000 square-mile solar project proposed by [secretary of the interior] Salazar would generate, on a continuous basis, 35,000 megawatts of electricity. You could get the same output from 30 new nuclear reactors that would fit comfortably onto existing nuclear sites.”
…
“Renewable energy is not a free lunch. It is an unprecedented assault on the American landscape.”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574404762971139026.html?mod=rss_opinion_main
BrightSource conversation with grid operator:
BS. We have this great new energy source, we can sell you 300mw of cheap energy between 9am and 5pm.
Grid. But peak demand for electricity is a 7pm.
BS. Ummmm…
.
>>>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 was Akhenaton, the heretic pharaoh, was it not?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akhenaten
But his brother was called Moses, so Seti was nearly right.
They probably wanted to use non-union labour to build it, which in todays socialists nirvana, would have killed the project stone dead.
>>>I asked her if she’d ever visited a slaughter house.
>>>That caused some squirming. She wasn’t about to give
>>>up meat, but also didn’t want to know about the process
>>>of getting it to her plate.
And then the Green movement approve of Halal meat, where the animal just gets its throat cut, because we cannot offend another culture by showing any form of judgement or disapproval.
I remember two Americans (had to be Americans) walking by the Nile and commenting that it was so lovely that the Luxor authorities had provided ‘public showers’ along the banks of the river. Then they came to the next ‘shower cubicle’, where a live goat was kicking and bleating while having its head cut off.
Enlightenment was followed by much human screaming and hollering, ‘Abe, Abe, they are killing a goat’.
Perhaps we should create public slaughterhouses too.
.
.
I’ve found this comment and share it with you.
Although the subject is off topic, the conclusion of this comment ties up very well with the current madness exhibited by the Environmental Movement and our political establishment.
http://petesplace-peter.blogspot.com/2009/05/coming-ice-age.html
Posted by: sentient May 14
We live today in the Holocene epoch, the past 11,500 years since we melted our way out of the Wisconsin ice age. All, and this needs repeating, ALL of human civilization has occurred during THIS interglacial. Only cave paintings are available beyond 10k years ago. It is called the Wisconsin ice age for the simple reason that this is where the terminal moraines are found for the miles thick ice sheets that covered the northern hemisphere. Stepping back the previous three are termed the Illinoisan, Kansan and Nebraskan. Think about that for a moment. Miles thick ice sheets extending as far south as Kansas.
According to the National Research Council (Abrupt Climate Change -Inevitable Surprises, 2002), half of the melting that brought us out of the Wisconsin ice age occurred in less than a decade. And that does not include Dansgaard-Oeschger events which have an average period of 1,500 years, the same sawtooth shape as the major ice age events (abrupt and dramatic warming, then a bumpy ride into the deep ice age freeze), and an average near instantaneous warming of 8-10C with outliers up to 16C (about 60F). So if you are concerned about the maximum IPCC predicted rise of 2C in a century (this one), then our signal will be hard to pick out from the natural background noise of natural climate change, which reliably can result in those 8-16C jumps in from a few years to less than a decade. Interestingly, in all typical proxy records (ice cores, tree-ring cores, ostracod shells in deep sea cores, pollen studies etc.) temperature rises and from centuries to millenia later CO2 rises, temperatures fall, and the then much later CO2 levels fall.
So temperature drives GHGs, not the other way around for as far back as we can see it, and the Greenland cores see it particularly well back to the Eemian, the interglacial which preceded this one, the Holocene. Now, if you are concerned about sea level rise, then the 0.6 meter rise in sea levels by 2100 is obviously significant. But how significant? About 7000-6000 years ago, during the Holocene Climate Optimum, sea levels topped out only a mere 6 meters above present, ten times higher than what is considered a credible prediction. How about during the Eemian, the interglacial which preceded this one and the one in which Homo sapiens debuts in the fossil record? sea level highstands reached only slightly higher than today, a paltry 20 meters (52 meters have been reported for locations in Siberia).
And what does it take to make a miles thick ice sheet? Surprisingly enough there is some evidence that would suggest water is involved as the primary constituent of ice. And not all that much water at that. The average drop below present day seal levels is almost negligible, only about 300 feet on average. The NRC states that the average swing between an ice age and an interglacial is a relatively easy to geoengineer 400 feet.
So we better get cracking. And the place to start is with CO2. It will be a good learning experience. And as we all know, a mistake is a learning experience you commit more than once. So focusing the first time on CO2 for climate engineering will in no way qualify as a mistake, it will be a learning experience, perhaps of the best kind. Especially from the psychological point of view.
You see a fairly exhaustive psychological study completed in the 1970’s found that the human being is nine times more susceptible to rumor than it is to fact. Call it the 9TR for short. It is relatively easy to prove with this simple question: which, of all mankind’s religions is the correct one? In your deliberations you are allowed to consider Zeus, and the pantheon of gods once resident on Mt. Olympus, or Rah, the former sun god of ancient Egyptian society, or perhaps you might select Ishtar, the god that preceded Mohammed and the establishment of Islam, a religion still practiced today.
Which brings us to denial. Assume, for a moment, that the GHG-AGW theory is correct. Remember, this is based on predictions, not actual facts, but potential future facts, facts which have yet to occur (not substantially different from a rumor). Integrate with that what Dr. Deming has correctly reported from the factual knowledge base we have painstakingly gleaned from vast proxy records, that ice ages tend to begin very quickly, from just a few years to no more than decades. If we give equal status to future fantasies (those would be model results which have yet to duplicate a known past climate change event) and to facts (things which have occurred and are not in dispute), then the vast majority who believe in GHG-AGW may find themselves with the embarrassing need to spew out as much GHGs as possible (instead of reducing them) in order to cushion our next slide into an ice age.
Understand of course, that all six interglacials dating back to the Mid Pleistocene Transition (when we shifted from the 41k yr ice age/interglacial couple to the 100k yr one we have been on for the past 800k years) have each lasted roughly half of a precessional cycle (a precessional cycle is 23k years long). So, at 11,500 years, precisely half a precessional cycle, this one, the Holocene, is pretty much kaput.
When you get your mind wrapped around that fact, perhaps you, as I, will begin to ponder just what an ice age means as regards our own evolution. Spend some time researching climate and hominid evolution, and you will soon come to realize that it may just have been responsible for what we know is the most rapid encephalization of any species yet recorded in the fossil record, taking us from a 500cc brain case to a 2,500 year brain case in just 3 million years (or 33 major climate change events). Which puts a fascinating spin on climate change. It just could be that climate change is the only thing known to smarten members of the genus Homo up. If this really is the case, then it occurs to me that we really could use an ice age right about now.
Meanwhile, enjoy the interglacial. While it lasts…………….
Here is a unique idea, build nuclear power plants …
There is a bit of land with no current use that could be used to generate electricity, not wilderness, much of it likely to be in bankruptcy soon, so it should be as good as it gets, they call it the San Joaquin Valley. Who needs food anyway?
Define extremely conservative, Egan.
Anyway, it’s really depressing to see greenies show up spouting the usual mythology. Anyone know what each of their urban enclaves were before they were six dollar coffee joints, socialized institutions of higher indoctrination, and Needless Markup shrines? (See, two can play the political stereotyping game.)
They were vast preserves of pristine wildlands, devoid of the harmful and morally repugnant activities of the dreaded human species. And, oddly, all of them were on the opposite end of the environmental scale from the wastelands that rightly should house energy producers. It’s kind of staggering to be lectured about preserving the wastelands of Nevada (I lived in NV for a decade. I know what I’m talking about) while your PC and home theater and your side by side Sub Zero and your pool skimmers and your Volvo charger hum incessantly.
Of course, the problem with facts are not the facts themselves. The problem with facts is how they are so easily and readily assembled into poor perspectives. When they turn green, these can be so poorly constructed that we can (and should) call them myth.
It would not work anyway. The sun has disappeared. At least its no longer in the side bar and the SOHO site seems to be gone. Watts Up With That?