This cute desert tortoise enjoying the sun and flowers needs to move in order to make way for a new kind of flora in the Mojave desert: very environmentally friendly solar panel trees. Environmental regulations and countless required studies usually stymie the development of large-scale industrial projects, especially in pristine habitats of sensitive critters (and in California in general). However, “the looming expiration of crucial federal financial support for the multi-billion-dollar projects, though, could turn the boom to bust.” State approval of Mojave desert solar power farms is being fast-tracked in order to qualify for federal money, which will disappear due to the stimulus spigot being turned off, and the fact that the country is broke.
The scale of each “suncatcher”, the number going to be installed, and the vast amount of acreage required for each farm is simply astounding. Yet, the presence of federally threatened desert tortoises is not enough to stop the project; they’ll simply be moved somewhere else, and chances of survival are admittedly very low (see below). I wonder if the Central Valley farmers who are suffering from lack of water due to the Delta smelt will get fast track approval to use their barren moonscape farms for these same solar plants? How can the cute tortoises stand in the way of Progress and reducing carbon footprints?
From the Reptile Channel:
Supporters of BrightSource’s project, the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System, say the benefits of the project outweigh the potential negative environmental impact. According to BrightSource’s website, the solar thermal power plant will generate 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction and prevent 450,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
From the La Times on the “tortoise roundup”:
Federal wildlife biologists said it was needed to make way for construction of BrightSource Energy’s 3,280-acre, 370-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation System.
Without the roundup, an estimated 17 federally threatened tortoises — and an unknown number of half-dollar-sized hatchlings — in the 913-acre initial phase of the project would have been squashed by heavy equipment.
A total 36 adult tortoises are believed to inhabit the project site. “We can never say we got them all out of there — these are cryptic creatures,” said Roy Murray of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery office.
Under a plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, as many tortoises as possible will be captured, weighed, measured, photographed, blood tested, fitted with radio transmitters and housed in quarantine pens with artificial burrows.
The tortoises will remain in the pens until they can be transported and released in natural settings elsewhere in the region determined to be free of disease and predators — a process expected to take several months.
Tortoise translocation is still an experimental strategy with a dismal track record. In previous efforts, transported tortoises have shown a tendency to wander, sometimes for miles, often back toward the habitat in which they were found. The stress of handling and adapting to unfamiliar terrain renders the reptiles vulnerable to potentially lethal threats: predation by dogs, ravens and coyotes; respiratory disease, dehydration and being hit by vehicles.
Here is more information about the absolutely stunning scale of these solar farms:
Resembling a giant mirrored satellite receiver, each Suncatcher stands 40 feet tall and 38 feet wide with a Stirling engine suspended on an arm over the center of the dish. As the dish tracks the sun, its mirrors concentrate sunlight on the hydrogen gas-filled heat engine. As the superheated gas expands, it drives pistons, which generates 25 kilowatts of electricity.
Now imagine planting 26,540 Suncatchers on 4,613 acres of federal land for the Calico project.
This is the result of AB32, the global warming law California still has on the books (Prop 23), which mandates the state receive an increasing percentage of electricity from renewable sources and a 25% reduction in emissions by 2020. Thousands of acres of these Suncatchers are required to meet those goals, regardless of whatever threatened species get in the way.
Why $0.07/kwhr?
Solar systems give you electricity during “Peak” hours. In S. Cal, I believe that electricity is costing upwards of $0.20/kwhr. for many customers.
What will it be in 10 years? 20 years? What will it be when the price of coal goes back to $140.00/tonne, and then rises from there?
Now, about this “you’ve gotta have a back-up for when the sun isn’t shining,” argument. First off, when the Sun isn’t shining you’re not going to need as much electricity in S. Ca.
Second, they’re not going to build a back-up fossil fuel plant. This solar farm will cause a plant, somewhere, to not operate (and burn ever-increasingly expensive fossil fuels) as many hours.
Here in Australia, the Greens party routinely help to obstruct any infrastructure project on the grounds of distubing faunal habitats, etc., but when it emerged that a windfarm in the greenest state of all (Tasmania, where the devils come from) was killing rare and endangered eagles, the Greens did absolutely nothing. Their leader issued a vague expression of regret on his website, then crossed the road and walked away as fast as possible while avoiding eye contact.
This wouldn’t be the same endangered desert tortoise that got the last rare-earth metals mine operation in the U.S. shut down, now would it?
Molycorp Digs Rare Earth in Mojave Desert Mine
http://www.paul-hughes.com/molycorp.htm
GREENS FORCE STRATEGIC MINE OUT OF BUSINESS
http://www.papillonsartpalace.com/greedns.htm
Can anyone say “picking winners and losers”?
I live in the Mojave desert between the 1000 MW Tehachapi wind farms and the 360 MW LUZ solar plant. I am an engine design engineer, including Stirling engines. I bought some PV solar panels for my company, and have a deep interest in the various grid power technologies.
Some comments. First, fossil fuels will get more expensive and run out someday. [insert long discussion on how and when] I think a proper function of government is to subsidize new technologies that may or may not become competitive with old technologies. Government takes risk that private industry isn’t suited for. That’s an opinion, your mileage may vary. Tessera’s public statement is that price is $2800/KW, comparable to a nuke.
Second, the article is conflating the Tessera/SES Stirling dishes with the Ivanpaugh BrightSource project that uses a power tower and heliostats. A significant difference is that the BrightSource uses a lot of process water and the Stirling engines are air cooled. That’s a big deal in the desert where there is lots of sunlight and not much water.
Per the article, they have found 34 turtles and plan to move them. It looks like they chose that location at least partially because there aren’t many turtles there. The impact on the greater Desert Tortise population will be tiny regardless how they handle this. It’s a big desert with a lot of turtles. I have seen several near town here. These projects may have large numbers of hectares, but still a tiny fraction of the desert.
Third, the Stirling engines, built by McLaren of race car fame, use hydrogen because it’s the best choice. Helium is second. Nitrogen or air are not even close to optimum. This is based on engine efficiency (from gamma, the ratio of specific heats), the outstanding specific heat of hydrogen, and the low pressure drops in the machine caused by low viscosity.
Fourth, the local grid is stressed to the max on the hottest summer days, when air conditioners are running. 24/7 base power is not the best way to address that. Solar plants generate power when it’s most needed, unlike wind power which comes at random times and rarely when most needed. The wind farms here are not as bad as most, in that there’s a high voltage link to the Castaic Lake / Pyramid lake pumped storage facility. Wind farms produce energy, not power.
Fifth, the US needs badly to start building nukes again. There are 58 under construction around the world and none in the US. Even Green Germany is reconsidering their decision to phase out nuke plants.
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_New_nuclear_policy_voted_through_2910101.html
Nuke power using current technology has fuel to run for 100 years, but it’s easy to reprocess the fuel and get another 50 years. The Koreans are working on versions of the CANDU reactor that burn unprocessed LWR plant waste; that could be another 50 years. Then, there are Thorium reserves that could double those totals. Then, both slow neutron and fast neutron breeders could extend nuke power technology to a thousand years. That fits any reasonable definition of “reusable”, just not the government definition.
Dan in California says:
October 30, 2010 at 8:55 pm
I am going to comment on your fascinating post but a little out of the order you present.
Fossil fuel availability we will agree to disagree. As we will disagree about government money to develop new technology. Except for making weapons in times of national emergency it has never happened and even then the advance was only possible because private industry had done the groundwork. The only possible exception was the atomic bomb.
I have never visited the Mojave desert but understand it to be quite large and it seems like you I cannot get terribly excited about using a small fraction of it even if that disturbs the local inhabitants.
I take your point about A/C power demand peaking during the day, I do not know what space heating demand you might have during the night, but in the end this is about specific solutions to meet local demands. Something politicians and pundits do not seem to understand: there is no universal panacea, you select the engineering solution as best meets local requirements bearing in mind capital and running cost.
You do not use the same solutions in Siberia as you would in the tropics.
About nuclear fission I am less sure, even though I originally trained as a nuclear physicist and engineer. My view is this, the industry has been so starved of money that we no longer have the technicians to expand a new programme: which is why they are offering veterans like me absurd sums of money to come back and tell them how to do it.
But I am not sure it would be wise to build a new generation of plants essentially based on the technology of fifty years ago. Make no mistake it works and is well proven. But there are better uranium fission reactors on the horizon and perhaps we should look to develop these.
There is no shortage of fuel of course because although it is still cheaper to mine and refine yellowcake extraction from seawater is now a proven technology so for all practical purposes the reserves are infinite. At a price: and only about twenty percent more than yellowcake. It is not a thousand years of reserves try ten thousand.
Everybody seems to be jumping up and down about thorium, I cannot really see why, there is just such a baby reactor some two hundred miles south of me which has been working for fifty years. It works and could be made into a practical power generating technology, but at what cost?
No my view is that this technology is not needed now. The reserves of natural gas are huge, and the modern dual phase gas/steam power stations that burn it are very efficient and responsive to demand. They are also very cheap to build. It seems to me this is the practical solution for the future: for the next thirty years at least: and perhaps for a century or more. Known natural gas reserves already vastly exceed those of oil or coal. And there is no shortage of those either. Again not hundreds of years but a thousand or two.
There is no great hurry you see: unless you demonise CO2.
As for the Stirling engine, well in theory it can get very high efficiencies which are not obtainable in practice. It’s great virtue as you point out is that it needs no supplies and will run quite happily for many years with next to no servicing or attention. Which is why at times it has waxed and waned in popularity under various names such as hot air engine and the like.
But it is telling that it has never really managed to find a role: other engine technologies are simply cheaper and better. We could dispute over the details of design but they are hardly relevant.
Now I am not familiar with the designs of the solar stations you refer to. I merely observe that if you have a solar furnace you can raise temperatures to any level you require. If the sun shines and you have the alloys to stand it. And in such a case if you want generate electric power you do not need a Stirling engine, a helium filled multi stage turbine with enclosed generators will get you far better efficiency and possibly at lower cost. After all the French have had one for forty years. All of 100 Kw too.
When the sun shines of course.
Kindest Regards
A. Jones 12:06 pm:
“…Lord Copper.”
?????
DaveF says:
October 31, 2010 at 2:05 am
It is a quote from E Waugh’s novel witten in the 1930’s and lampooning the London newspapers, Fleet Street, of that era. Lord Copper is the owner of a newspaper and a man who takes odd ideas to absurdity and is checked by his secretary and staff with the comment “Up to a point Lord Copper”. It is very amusing but I don’t imagine it would appeal to the modern US reader.
Nevertheless the phrase is still current in British English.
Kindest Regards.
a jones says: October 30, 2010 at 11:16 pm
snip
It looks like we violently agree on the important things. 🙂
“As for the Stirling engine, well in theory it can get very high efficiencies which are not obtainable in practice.”
Stirling, Brayton, Rankine, Otto, and others are all limited to Carnot efficiency, but I prefer thermal efficiency as a comparison. Big coal fired plants are Rankines and the best are about 48% thermal efficient. The LUZ Kramer Junction solar plants are Rankines and have the advantage that they can burn natural gas to fill in the demand curve. I visited there and understand that after LUZ went bankrupt, the new owners are making profit. Of course their per KWH rate from Southern Cal Edison is higher than from conventional plants.
“But it is telling that it has never really managed to find a role: other engine technologies are simply cheaper and better. We could dispute over the details of design but they are hardly relevant.”
An example of the enormous inertia of the market place. The Wankel never really caught on, and its low use of amortized tooling was a large factor. Stirlings have the disadvantage of continuous high temperature and pressure. Ottos and Diesels only see intermittent high pressure. Hence lower cost favors the Otto. Stirlings have the advantage of not being internal combustion, but this is no advantage in an auto that carries its fuel regardless. It does make them an excellent choice for solar power though, along with Brayton and Rankine.
“Now I am not familiar with the designs of the solar stations you refer to. I merely observe that if you have a solar furnace you can raise temperatures to any level you require. If the sun shines and you have the alloys to stand it. And in such a case if you want generate electric power you do not need a Stirling engine, a helium filled multi stage turbine with enclosed generators will get you far better efficiency and possibly at lower cost. After all the French have had one for forty years. All of 100 Kw too.”
That’s a Brayton cycle. My current day job is developing an 83 KW closed cycle Brayton, so I am quite knowledgeable on this topic. The highest efficiency grid connected power plants are the natural gas peaker plants that use jet airliner cores to run alternators instead of the fans that propel the airplane. They achieve 60% and are the lowest cost to install. But natural gas is the highest cost fossil fuel, so they are not base load generators.
In the early 1980s when the Space Station was still in the optimistic stage of its evolution, NASA looked at Stirling, Rankine, and Brayton engines to augment the PV arrays. Mechanical Technology Inc built a free piston Stirling engine (I think it was 10 KW) for that project. I had my arms around it but it was too heavy for me to lift.
Why did SES/Tessera choose the Stirling engine over a Brayton for their solar tracking dishes? I don’t know, and I’m not going to second-guess them. The biggest factor is $/KW of the entire unit, followed by the “ilities” (maintainability, reliability, manufacturability, etc). Engine efficiency is in there somewhere but only interesting to nerds like you and me.
On a slightly different topic, my residence is connected to Southern California Edison, and the rates are USD$.13/KWH for the first 483 KWH, $.15 for the next 106 KWH, then $.24 for the next 200 KWH per month. The price doubles if you use more more. I have cut my bills about in half over the past two years partially by remodeling with fewer and better windows, but mostly by buying a new, more efficient AC unit.
And finally, Mr Jones, yeah I agree with your statements about nukes. I worked for Westinghouse (but not in their nuke division) in the late 1970s when their nuke power business died. That was just after they decided to build type approved plants instead of each being unique. I’m curious as to your opinion that the AP1000 is obsolete. It’s safe, cheap, reliable, and you can buy them. Certainly new technology is coming, but that’s true of just about everything.
A. Jones 2:01:
Thankyou for the explanation of Lord Copper. I am British myself, but sadly lacking in knowledge of literature, in which I have little interest. I take it you mean that the book on Stirling engines that I quoted was absurd. Regards, Dave.
IIRC, protecting the habitat of the Desert Tortoise was one of the reasons given back in the day for shutting down the Mountain Pass Rare Earth mine, giving China a virtual world monopoly on the minerals critically important to so much modern technology, including lasers, flat-screen TVs, cell phones, et cetera.
I totally love the turtles and wouldn’t want to see one of them killed for such a project. That said, I once had a Gopherus Berlanderi tortoise as a pet back when it was legal to have one. This sub species is very similar to the above type of desert tortoise. These tortoises are very intelligent and have an excellent memory. They are also extremely adaptable. Mine went from it’s desert diet of prickly pear cactus and such to peas and carrots and okra and lived in the house, garden and out on the lawn in California. They like it warm and they like to have shade so that they can adjust their body temperature. So move them temporarily, leave six inches of space under the fences in spots so they can travel and plant some veggies as ground cover. They will love it. Just don’t run over them. They are very adaptable. No “wild” animal can get spoiled faster than this tortoise.
As for the mirrors, dust and stuck on dirt will be one of the major problems just like a sky light window in a house and they will have to be washed regularly. The water can drip down to the soil below. This will grow some type of vegetation for the critters.