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.
Donald in Australia (02:45:50) : 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.
Well, in the last couple of months we went from 10% to 12.2% unemployment and still rising. Meg Whitman has announced she is running for governor with part of her platform being repeal of our version of Cap and Tirade as it is a jobs killer and companies will continue to flee until it is repealed.
OK, 2 percent in about 2 months. 18-12= 6
By my calculations, this “positive feedback loop” with “catastrophic runaway job loss” has hit a “tipping point” and we are “doomed” to hit 18% unemployment about March of next year. Even if you cut job losses in half, we hit 18% by one year from now.
Not pretty.
So what was that about Spain again? Oh, California in March? And when are the elections?
Memo To World: Watch California. This is what you are signing up to have.
(Is there any stronger word than “implosion”?)
I tend to agree with john Egan that the use of water for cleaning is a fatal flaw in this solar farm, and to my thinking all others. The most rational thing to do is build coal, gas, and nuclear plants instead.
w demisch (20:13:40) :
“Conservation land” covers most of the California desert (1/4 of the state). The California Desert Conservation Area is a multi-use area, with specially-protected set-asides for desert tortoises, kangaroo rats, joshua trees, and more. http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/cdd/cdca_development.html The chosen spot could not have been one of those set-asides, or the project would never have gotten this far. I speculate that this land was part of an effort to expand the CDCA and head off development in the 1990s, when Congress was being pressured to close off most human uses.
This land is only about three miles from the I-15 freeway, shortly before one reaches the Nevada state line. They probably chose the location because of its proximity to the freeway right-of-way (high voltage power lines also have an approval process), as well as for the jobs-poor communities in the area.
John Egan (21:43:13) :
This is about as close as we can get to putting towers along the I-15. If not there, where? Where are all those advances in photovoltaics?
RACookPE (22:41:35) :
Believe me, the high desert is teeming with life. Cleared land quickly repopulates after it rains. And because the mirrors cannot completely shut off all light and moisture, there will be life underneath them. (If they were built, that is.) Snows are only a few times per year.
Residents of the Mojave Desert want projects like these. Non-polluting jobs. Jobs outside of the gas stations and diners that dominate the local economy. A chance to make “green” energy prove itself. And, yes, they want to keep the tortoises and wildflowers. I’m sure BLM could have used the additional revenue to hire more rangers and cut down on off-road vehicle riders going outside their assigned areas.
Beside eliminating needed energy production, this will result in additional damage to the Mojave due to lack of funds for enforcement against ORV riders who continually seek fresh areas to tear up.
E.M.Smith (09:29:53) : Well, in the last couple of months we went from 10% to 12.2% unemployment and still rising.
Oh, and just as a point of clarification: That 12.2% does not include the folks who have bailed for other states, gone back to Mexico, or, like me, are not seeking an unemployment check.
I’d love to get a job managing a computer site, teaching computer stuff, or even just doing programming. I’m “making a living” by trading a modest sized retirement account (a decade or so earlier than expected…) But folks like me are not counted in the unemployment insurance numbers. Nor are the folks who have run out of said unemployment payments. So the actual unemployed from California are far far higher than that 12.2% number.
“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.”
Callaway in MO produces 1200 MW on 5228 acres, but the “Campus” is probably on less than 200 acres. They wanted to put in a second 1600 MW reactor but the environmental concerns closed it down. Would have stayed on the original “Campus” sight. In the meantime, the other 5000 acres is pretty dang good hunting.
ralph (04:52:39) :
>>>Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and
That was Akhenaton, the heretic pharaoh, was it not?
It was standard practice for every power shift. The prior Pharaoh would live for ever in the afterlife and be a threat as long as their name or likeness existed. But if you erased them from all stone and writings, then you erased them from history and from the afterlife as well.
And that is why so many of the great artworks of egypt are missing a nose or other parts.
There were several cases where they almost erased everything, including the female Pharaoh who did a better job than most of the men…
Hatshepsut
Interestingly enough, they found her mummy and are mapping her DNA. Maybe there is something to this eternal existing thing. We might be able to whomp up a new Hatshepsut clone in a couple of years…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2007/jun/28/artnews.egypt
Jari – Any names on the $1/Watt companies? – surely they are all on the same playing field? Or are you saying there are some who have stolen a march somehow?
EM Smith – “Olive green” Good stuff!
Re: water and dust:
http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/about_us/environmental_stewardship/
No numbers on consumption but obviously it is an issue they are aware of. I’d say it would n’t be too difficult to make a closed system for water cleaning which could run at night to minimise evap. losses?
Ron de Haan (05:21:06) :
I’ve found this comment and share it with you.
Marvelously well done!
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.
Um, not all precessional cycles are created equal. This one has a rather shallow change of obliquity, IIRC, so might last a bit longer than most and / or might have a shallower entry into ice age conditions. The operative word being “might”…
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.
Gosh, and invert the logic (a standard technique that I love) and you get that maybe part of our slide into idiocy has been the last 10,000 years of pleasant stable warm climate…
BTW, D/O events continue into the interglacials as Bond Events. Same process, different name, since different folks found it in different records in the two climate regimes. It is a nominal 1470 year cycle but has error bands of a couple of hundred years. The last one was the start of The Dark Ages in 535 AD. Got that. OK, for the guy in the back with the puzzled look and his hand up: 1470+535= 2005
So you say the sun suddenly stopped making spots and shut down some processes via an unknown process with unknown effects? And the volcanoes are starting to grumble all over the place? And Chaiten is looking like a potential Supervolacano and has been venting for 18 months straight? (So when does the caldera depressurize and collapse in a super erruption?)
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/bond-event-zero/
Personally, I’m hoping we just have some modestly cold winters for 30 years until the PDO flips back and Bond Event Zero ™ happens in a few hundred years… or more.
But worry about CO2? It isn’t even on the list. Frankly, I’m more worried about athletes foot fungus than CO2.
E.M.Smith (21:00:51):
Great rant! My friend is writing a book called “Electricity Comes From Walls” and your post would make a good chapter.
SunLover (08:31:55) : The business to get into is selling power to California. They will soon be completely dependent on outside power.
Um, we already are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_DC_Intertie
Ivanpah is still alive and kicking. The project that got scrapped was a smaller project also being planned by Brightsource.
“The rapid increases in efficiency of photovoltaics may actually make thermal solar obsolete in short order – think 8-track tape players.”
While that is certainly possible, it is still a leap of faith. We can’t make spending decisions or not make spending decisions based on what might happen “someday”.
We have the technology right this minute to eliminate all of our coal power production. We could recycle nuclear fuel. That doesn’t mean that we should stop working on PVs, it just means that in the meantime, we could right now eliminate coal plants with the techology we have at hand.
Please google for “Smarter Use of Nuclear Waste”, an article that appeared in Scientific American in 2005. There are some copies of it in PDF form on the web. I seriously invite people to read that. It certainly appears that India and China have.
Jari (09:19:57) :
Mr. Hancock,
Silicon is not toxic.
But the phosgene and arsine gasses used as common dopants are incredibly toxic. And don’t forget the tons of lead solder used on those things, especially the polycrystaline ones.
Not against ’em, BTW, just need to be aware that they do involve rather a lot of toxic materials in their processing. We’ll get it down over time (the ones printed with PV ink are very low toxics) but it is not a free lunch.
FWIW, I’m from the “Poison is in the dose” school. Salt is lethal, water is lethal, even oxygen is lethal if the dose is high enough. We all have some amount of Plutonium in us and we all have dioxins and mercury too. The only thing that really matters is the dose. (For fun, look up the Potassium 40 percentage in your body and the radiation dose it “provides” to you… then go eat a banana…)
BTW, silicosis is not pretty:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicosis
You need to control cutting and milling dust in making silicon cells and you need to be very careful in mining the silica from which it is made.
Me personally, I would rather see a Coal fired power station built for the cheapest, cost effective electricity money can buy… It is also nearly as clean as gas nowadays with all the pollution controls and technology.
As for future power, that lies with nuclear fission, uranium and thorium… and later possibly fussion.
As for Solar…. I don’t mind them building a solar powered station in the desert…. as long as it is not subsidized by tax dollars…. Engineering challenges must ultimately be cost effective and reality based.
Doh… Last part should read…. ” Solutions to Engineering chanllenges…..
slow to follow (10:19:33) :
EM Smith – “Olive green” Good stuff!
Thanks! I’ve put up an initial summary of the idea here:
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/09/20/im-an-olive-green-rational-environmentalism/
E M Smith (10:26:06) – Your inverted logic works for me . To take such thinking a little further , might not the accelerating slide into idiocy that I have observed over the last two decades indicate that Homo Sapiens’ cranial capacity has diminished as a preprogramed evolutionary response to an impending glaciation ? After all , some studies have suggested that ice ages occur very rapidly – say , in a period of twenty or so years . Just askin’ .
“…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…”
…and it’s known as Washington D.C.
A Jones: Solar receptors have to be kept clean. Washing is the best choice and the need to clean in the desert is frequent. Translated, that means solar farms require a great deal of water.
kim (06:45:54) :
“Here’s an idea I don’t see discussed enough. Dump unrecyclable nuclear wastes in the deep oceanic trenches, where nothing can happen to them for hundreds of half lives except be silted over. Easy, simple, solution.”
Deep ocean trenches are the product of tectonic plate subduction zones. The plate that goes down is heated by friction resulting in a line of volcanoes parallel to the trench.
Whatever is dumped into a trench is likely to be put in the atmosphere from an eruption. I don’t know how long it might be from subduction to eruption but that needs to be answered with some conviction before dumping radioactive waste in the ocean.
One of many such sources is: http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Tw-Z/Volcanoes-Submarine.html
henry (11:38:42) :
…and it’s known as Washington D.C.
A Sterling engine next to the Capitol could produce vast amounts of power.
I have doubts about 20% PV efficiency. Maybe under ideal conditions. Real world? Probably half that. And a lot less after a sand laden wind storm. Zero after a good Colorado style hail storm.
If we reprocess spent nuclear fuel and waste, we can reduce the volume by 90% and recover a lot of useful fuel. France has done it for 30 years.
I’ve been a ‘rational ecologist’ since Silent Spring appeared. “Do what works” doesn’t get invited to fancy cocktail parties.
Yeah, here’s more proof that those green jobs are really working for California. 41% unemployment in the San Joaquin Valley to save an unendangered fish. State unemployment is over 20% when you include people who’ve dropped off the unemployment roles. Wonderful. Vote in environmental enthusiasts, vote out jobs.
While nuclear is the obvious choice (at least in my mind), California in particular will never build any more (until things become extremely dire – if even then). Interestingly, I never hear a peep about wave or tidal energy. California (and the entire West coast) are uniquely suited to wave energy generation in particular.
http://www.oceanpowertechnologies.com/tech.htm
In my mind wave farms could be used to power desalination plants during severe drought (even those like our current “severe drought” that are largely man-made… thank you Delta Smelt Enviros).
Plus the wave farms are installed over the horizon and are not visible from the shore. Greenies should be happy as the buoys don’t affect whale migration, and indeed the moorings actually attract fish (artificial reefs).
However, if you really want consistency from the ocean, then I think you have to go tidal. Last I heard, there was a pilot project underway in San Francisco Bay (of all places). In order to avoid using underwater turbines (so as not to chop up the local inhabitants) the device utilizes a shape that creates a venturi… don’t recall the specifics of how that turned land based turbines… nor do understand how subjecting a mackerel to a massive underwater tornado would be more humane than dicing it in a turbine. But I obviously don’t have a whole grasp on the technology involved.
I think there should be more public discussion (at least on the coasts) of these ocean based alternate energy sources (I personally would just drill for oil and gas… but these are the times we live in).
PS- on nuclear waste – Richard A. Muller in “Physics for Future Presidents” indicates that the average annual waste from a single nuclear plant will fit into the back of a standard pickup truck.
Have you not heard of RoHS, man!
“Lead’ is on the list of prohibited metals:http://www.rohsguide.com/rohs-faq.htm
http://www.edn.com/hot-topic/48810/rohs.html
And RoHS-compliant solder is lovely stuff requiring higher reflow oven temperatures and with resultant solder joints not quite as neat and clean as the now condemned lead-based solders yield …
.
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Build nukes:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig9/hogan3.1.1.html