It’s not just Wind Turbines that kill wildlife, from the Wall Street Journal:
“A giant solar-power project officially opening this week in the California desert is the first of its kind, and may be among the last, in part because of growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds.”
“The $2.2 billion solar farm, which spans over five square miles of federal land southwest of Las Vegas, includes three towers as tall as 40-story buildings. Nearly 350,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect sunlight onto boilers atop the towers, creating steam that drives power generators.”
“The owners of the project— NRG Energy Inc., NRG, Google Inc. GOOG and BrightSource Energy Inc., the company that developed the “tower power” solar technology—call the plant a major feat of engineering that can light up about 140,000 homes a year.”
“Ivanpah is among the biggest in a spate of power-plant-sized solar projects that have begun operating in the past two years, spurred in part by a hefty investment tax credit that expires at the end of 2016. Most of them are in California, where state law requires utilities to use renewable sources for a third of the electricity they sell by 2020.”
“Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require.
That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.”
“The BrightSource system appears to be scorching birds that fly through the intense heat surrounding the towers, which can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The company, which is based in Oakland, Calif., reported finding dozens of dead birds at the Ivanpah plant over the past several months, while workers were testing the plant before it started operating in December. Some of the dead birds appeared to have singed or burned feathers, according to federal biologists and documents filed with the state Energy Commission.”
“Regulators said they anticipated that some birds would be killed once the Ivanpah plant started operating, but that they didn’t expect so many to die during the plant’s construction and testing. The dead birds included a peregrine falcon, a grebe, two hawks, four nighthawks and a variety of warblers and sparrows. State and federal regulators are overseeing a two-year study of the facility’s effects on birds.”
“The agency also is investigating the deaths of birds, possibly from colliding with structures, found at two other, unrelated solar farms. One of those projects relies on solar panels and the other one uses mirrored troughs. Biologists think some birds may have mistaken the vast shimmering solar arrays at all three installations for a lake and become trapped on the ground after landing.”
No surprise that green types are selective in their outrage about bird deaths depending on the source. You never see PETA types throwing red paint on the leather jackets of big, burly dudes coming out of outlaw biker bars, only on little old ladies wearing fur.
Gamecock says:
February 14, 2014 at 5:05 am
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You are correct that thorium was not used in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) at ORNL back in the late 1960s. I assume you have some knowledge or expertise in the area of nuclear power technlogy, so I will ask you this: If there some huge disadvantage that you are aware of when using thorium rather than uranium in a LFTR that escaped the understanding of Alvin Weinberg and his people back then? I ask this because they wanted more funding to continue the research. Nixon stupidly pulled the plug on it back in the early 1970s for political reasons as I understand it, not technical ones.
The advantages of LFTR as I understand them have this stupid solar project at Ivanpah beat by a thousand miles. It’s a tragedy that the technology for LFTR has gone all but ignored all of these years, but it is at least reassuring that LFTR is getting the attention now that it deserves. And it deserves a lot more of it.
That $2.2 billion spent on this solar boondoggle would have gone a long way toward getting LFTR up and running someday. Tragic and stupid.
Surely, if 390 w/m^2 of DWLWIR is enough to raise the temperature of the earth over 33 K then it should be enough to run this when the sun does not shine.
Jimmy Dell says:
February 14, 2014 at 6:24 am
Trying to determine why this facility was built is a mystery.
Oh give me a break. There is one, and only one, reason that this facility was ever even engineered, much less built, and that is that we taxpayers were suckered into guaranteeing a 1.6 billion dollar loan to build it, a guarantee that is almost certainly going to be exercised, and because the loons that govern California are screwing all of their residents by requiring “green” energy be purchased by supposedly-private utilities at exorbitant cost.
How exorbitant? Well, exorbitant enough that you can’t even find out, even though regulatory bodies should be subject to public record laws if such laws are to mean anything. From the above article:
“But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.”
First, it’s an indication of the quality of present-day journalism that no enterprising reporter anywhere in the vast state of California has taken it upon himself to dig out that information, even if, perhaps especially if, it requires action under the FOIA.
And second, with regulators like those in charge, who’s to say that anyone is watching the plant’s operation closely enough to determine that they are not importing wholesale electricity at a cheap price and exporting it at the agreed-upon, exorbitant regulated price to the saps who own the private utilities so that they can sell it at the mandated inflated rates to the saps who elected the people who run California. For that matter, with this crowd in charge, who’s to say they aren’t actually in on any scam that would line their pockets? Seriously.
I’ll give you that, but somewhere along the funding process a review board would had to have asked the very same elementary questions that I asked. If that is not the case and as you believe, that all in the process are corrupt, which I do not believe, then we are doomed. I’ve gone through the funding process on a MUCH smaller scale and my impression is that most decision makers are uninformed and swayed by the hot green topic of the moment. Further when they are funding a project it’s not treated as though it’s real money, in their defence in this case, it’s not real money, it’s a loan guarantee. So the officials that need to deal with the collapse and liquidation, should that occur, will not be the same parties that issue the guarantees, hence escaping any blame.If the fallout from the Solyndra collapse is any indication of what might befall any of these decision makers; they have little to worry about and we should expect more not fewer of these boondoggles. .
Severian says:
February 14, 2014 at 7:55 am:
” …You never see PETA types throwing red paint on the leather jackets of big, burly dudes coming out of outlaw biker bars, …”
—-l
Very accurately observed (or did you pinch that from Last Continent?”
Dirk Pitt says on February 13, 2014 at 5:26 pm: “Being an engineer myself, the first thing that would come to my mind when designing something like this is how long these mirrors would last exposed to sand storms, before being sand blasted to next to no reflectiveness. This plant is in a desert, isn’t it?”
I’ll go one more… Once this the facility is shut down who is going to be responsible for decommissioning and clean-up. I’ll bet BrightSource Energy and NRG have already figured out how to bail out on those costs. You can bet they already have a plan to transfer ownership and responsibility to some other entity, let it declare bankruptcy and throw it on the government to do the clean-up (and eat the unpaid loan).
The article does indicate that the water used in the boilers will be recycled but doesn’t mention another problem with water use: keeping the mirrors clean. They need to wash the mirrors and the only water available is from pumping groundwater from a basin with extremely low recharge.
Whom the gods would destroy, they would first make insane.
“””””……“The owners of the project— NRG Energy Inc., NRG, Google Inc. GOOG and BrightSource Energy Inc., the company that developed the “tower power” solar technology—call the plant a major feat of engineering that can light up about 140,000 homes a year.”…..””””””
So in 15 years (roughly how long we have had no warming), this thing will be “lighting up” over 2 million homes..
Currently I “light up” my home with 200 Watts of electric power consumption (ALL LED lighting), so this solar plant must put out a power of at least 28 megaWatts (per year of course).
Now it is five square miles in area, but let’s cut that to three square miles if tilted to track the sun, so that works out to 7.77 million square meters.
So 7.77 gigaWatts of solar energy falls on that place when the sun is up, and they are getting 28 megaWatts of electricity. (my calculation), which says their solar collection efficiency is 0.36%.
Well that’s really wunnerful !
The trouble with these steered mirror array thermal collectors, is that as the mirrors move to track the sun, they shadow each other; so they have to be widely spaced apart, to track the sun for any time. So most of that 5 square miles is simply vacant waste space.
If the birds had died near a gas fired power plant all hell would break loose. Eco-loons would be camped out there day and night demanding this slaughter to stop. Where are they now?
Wind turbines and bat deaths. The slaughter continues.
“About 600,000 bats killed by wind turbines in 2012, study shows”
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/about-600000-bats-killed-by-wind-turbines-in-2012-study-shows/
That’s just the bats across the United States.
Contra Costa Times have done some research:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_25134533/huge-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-opens-industry-booms
Among their findings, one MWh will cost $261 (for a conventional coal plant it is $100). And 11 dead birds were found in the month of November.
“””””…..Col Mosby says:
February 13, 2014 at 4:19 pm
One thought about solar panel farms is the fact that they are heat absorbers/sinks. It would be interesting to observe the temps 200 feet above the solar farms compared to the surrounding real estate. Are the farms themselves creating more warming than their emissions are supposed to reduce?…..”””””
Actually they are not. “Heat” is very undesirable for solar cells; it lowers their efficiency in several ways. For one thing, the Forward Voltage of the cells drops 2 mVolts per deg. C (junction Temperature) so well designed cells have reflective coatings, that reflect solar wavelengths that the cell (silicon) cannot convert to electricity, to prevent that being captured as “heat”.
Also the solar cells convert the usable part of the solar spectrum, into electricity, not into “heat”, so the cells are not generating as much “heat” as the bare ground would. Moreover, that electricity, can be conducted to the other (night ) side of the earth, and then used to create an efficient LED light beam, which can be beamed out to dark space, instead of back to the sun.
So the solar panels are NOT in thermal equilibrium with the sun. Demonstrating that although electro-magnetic radiation can transport energy through empty space, it transports NO “heat”, which requires a material medium to convey from one place to another, by Convection or conduction.
The schools can continue to teach that “heat” is transported by EM radiation, as well as conduction and convection. Solar cells and LEDs prove that it transports useful energy, not waste “heat”.
I think solar cells theoretically can convert about 75% of the solar spectrum energy into electricity. The current demonstrated record is about 43%, and LEDs can convert about 60% of electricity, into EM radiation (in air), and maybe more in the future.
As a California taxpayer, I would like to know just how much NRG Energy Inc, is paying in Property taxes, on this valuable desert land, that Californians worked so hard to protect, against environmental damage, and also what they pay in property taxes on the real estate improvements, that they have added to the land, like towers, mirrors, boilers etc.
I pay my property taxes, why shouldn’t they, on their five square miles.
“”””””…..RACookPE1978 says:
February 13, 2014 at 5:48 pm
This plant is 392 MegWatt, according to Reuters above. “…..””””
That works out as 30 Watts per square meter for the whole 5 square miles (13 million square meters).
Assuming 1,000 Watts per square meter for the sun input , but maybe 60% of that for that latitude so 50 Watts per square meter, that’s 5% efficiency, which I don’t believe given the mirror shadowing factor, to be able to scan even 8 hours a day.
If you want a True Green Solution it is to develop a a small mass producible modular nuclear technology similar to the 50 year old proven Naval Nuclear Power plants. .. You standardize on a design and license the technology to all comers — no need for tons of red tape and paperwork.
The plant consists of a site housing the standard electrical gear with an underground “bunker” housing the collection of packaged nuclear thermal units — with the size of the plant quarantined in say 100 MW per unit..
These plants don’t need to be twenty year construction projects, nor need to store spent fuel rods. Like the modern Naval Reactor — when the clock runs out after many years, each of the individual modules are removed and refueled in the factory. Meanwhile the plant continues to operate with just a slight (say 1 of 10) reduction in capacity — 24 X 7
Silent Spring?
Mirrors to kill animals is not a new idea. Larry Niven used light reflecting “Slaver sunflowers” in his sci-fi novel Ringworld (1970).
Fabi says:
February 13, 2014 at 4:02 pm
Something I never see in the AGW’s calculus for solar farms: land acquisition costs
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Here is an example of how the ‘land acquisition costs’ were dealt with in Antelope Valley
Bare ground with the owners desperate to sell is always a lot cheaper that a home where the owners refuse to move.
So why the try to make a go of SunPower? This is just a bit from this article (No, really)
Every time I see one of these, I marvel that ANYONE can think this is GOOD for the environment.
What’s not to like? Birds are a renewable resource. They are biomass. In that desert climate, their little bodies will dry hard in just a couple of days, and then they can be burned for fuel.
Unless the air is pristine and sand storms never happen, the maintenance will be horrendous.
Cleaning mirrors in sunshine would be a no no. Some friend of a friend will most likely get the cleaning contract. Night shift only. Fixing any tracking problems or tower/ generator problems,
would also be night shift. Ten years from now this will be an abandoned folly, covered in sand and tumble weed.
Much like the forests of dead wind turbines that already exist.
Rightly so. Because it is obvious at first sight, that it is not an “engineering marvel” at all.
I assume automatically adjustable mirrors cost money and 347 thousand of them, the size of a garage door each cost a lot. I also assume engineers are supposed to find solutions that decrease costs without compromising operability.
Now, roughly concentric arrangement of mirrors at Ivanpah is suboptimal, one could achieve higher average light flux density at the top of towers with less mirror surface. It is a simple puzzle in geometric optics, any moderately educated engineer should be able to find a much better solution in no time. I myself could do a decent job on it, with several hundred lines of code at most, although I am only a mathematician by training. The difference is not negligible, it can be as high as several hundred million dollars.
It only shows no attempt was made at Ivanpah to decrease costs, that is, it was never meant to be a commercial venture, but something else. Fried birds are only a minor inconvenience compared to this blunder.
Really, “dozens” of birds over the last few months? Do you realize that feral cats alone are estimated to kill more than 100 Million birds per year in the US? A single house cat can kill 300-500 birds per year. The biggest risks for bird are cats, buildings, and cars – upwards to a billion birds per year. Let’s keep this in perspective, especially when fossil fuels kill wildlife as well (including people) – emissions, chemical waste, gas explosions.