Uh, oh. From NatureWorldNews
![crescent-01[1]](https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/crescent-011.jpg?quality=83)
“It’s no secret that solar power is hot right now, with innovators and big name companies alike putting a great deal of time, money, and effort into improving these amazing sources of renewable energy. Still, the last thing you’d likely expect is for a new experimental array to literally light nearly 130 birds in mid-flight on fire.
And yet, that’s exactly what happened near Tonopah, Nevada last month during tests of the 110-megawatt Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project.”
“According to Rudy Evenson, Deputy Chief of Communications for Nevada Bureau of Land Management (NBLM) in Reno, as reported by Re Wire, a third of the newly constructed plant was put into action on the morning of Jan. 14, redirecting concentrated solar energy to a point 1,200 feet above the ground.”
“Unfortunately, about two hours into the test, engineers and biologists on site started noticing “streamers” – trails of smoke and steam caused by birds flying directly into the field of solar radiation. What moisture was on them instantly vaporized, and some instantly burst into flames – at least, until they began to frantically flap away. An estimated 130 birds were injured or killed during the test.”
“Officials behind the project have refuted that claim, saying that most of the streamers are floating trash or wayward insects, but federal wildlife officials have begun calling these ‘eco-friendly’ power towers “mega traps” for wildlife.”
Surprisingly:
“US Fish and Wildlife Service officials are now waiting for a death toll for a full year of operation at the Ivanpah plant. The subsequent report may impact plans for future solar power towers in the United States.”
h/t to WUWT reader “catcracking”
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This makes more sense than the operator claims:
“Wildlife officials who witnessed the phenomena say many of the clouds of smoke were too big to come from anything but a bird, and they add that they saw the ‘birds entering the solar flux and igniting, consequently become a streamer.”
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2728009/SLAUGHTER-quest-clean-energy-Worlds-largest-solar-plant-scorched-bird-body-count-build-one-larger-flight-path-flocks-millions.html#ixzz3TFjK3sEN
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It’s a pity the daily Mail can’t spell ‘Nevada’ or ‘Lake Havasu City’ – see the map at the bottom of the link.
This is all just so monumentally, horrifically, evil.
Within 5 years these things will be in mothball-caretaker status. The Federal subsidies will vanish, and these inefficient bird-cookers will be written into the history books as another failed Green-socialist experiment.
Were I the engineer, with any input, on the project it would have been designed with this in mind.
The solar portion would just be fluff and associated profit from subsidies. The infrastructure is paid for by the subsidies and the green investors … when things fall apart and ownership is restructured you then have a relatively low efficiency natural gas generator in a low cost natural gas economy.
Maybe they’re thinking ahead … maybe I give them too much credit … maybe I’m a paranoid nut case.
Finally, solar power has achieved the deadly potential previously only known from wind turbines.
Funny how those Greens protect nature. They manage to get EVERYTHING backwards.
Don’t forget the trees being burned at Drax.
Here’s an idea: Line the perimeter of mirrors with windmills. Use the power from the solar array to power the windmills and blow the birds off course and out of harm’s way. Win, win.
People were saying that PV would be written off.
PV is at or below grid parity with NG now. Individuals can buy panels (UL listed 25 year life) for $0.72 per watt, and ~ $2 a watt for a total system install including panels, mounting, inverters, grid interties, etc. and storage.
And the prices keep dropping.
Their efficiency is only acceptable where the sun shines most of the day at high incidence angles. Then the economics only work-out with taxpayer subsidies or conventional power user subsidization. It’s in the US southwest, and in areas of Spain, or Australia do they get reliably high levels of incident sunlight to amortize the installation cost of solar PV in their 20 yr panel life span before they have to be replaced. Putting PV on structures to “replace” available reliable grid-provided power is simply a farce. It is merely a money-game for installers that feeds off the tax or rate payer subsidization, not any form of economic reality.
Then why the hell are we/they building steam powered generators rather than direct PV?
And how many hours a day of power do you get for your $2 a watt? So it really is not $2 a watt. More like $10 a watt or $24. And on a very cloudy day? Well divide by zero is indeterminate.
That is owner purchase non taxpayer funded solar panels isn’t it ??
I mean if the owner user is not paying for the thing he ordered, then who knows what it really costs.
Can’t you all just try to look on the “bright side.” At least it uses a lot of water in the desert. That saves the US from those extraordinarily water intensive dairy and beef cattle in NV, which provide nothing but unsustainable beef, leather, medication, tire and road additives, strings used in classical music, milk, cheese and ice cream.
And another “brilliant idea” in NV is to build one of the world’s largest pipelines to pipe the water in N Nevada to…wait for it….Las Vegas, where it is needed. The only people really complaining are the Indians and cowboys, who wanted to mine Potash and raise cattle.
Now you should have “a light go on over your head.” What is potash used for? Exactly. Potash is an important input into conventional agriculture, which is also bad for the environment. So this use of water in NV and frying birds is a real “blinding flash” by a lot of dedicated minds in the BLM and environmental science movement to avert all of those terrible methane ghgs from cattle, and nitrous oxide from crops. Remember, co2 is not the only ghg. From the “best and the brightest.”
Why would it use a lot of water? Crescent Dunes uses a dry cooling system to condense the steam.
I think that the mirrors must be cleaned.
The working fluid is molten salt ( Seventy Million Pounds) that took 2 months to melt. — NOT WATER
It will produce energy 24-7 –day and night — because of the massive heat sink that is created by the molten salt.
I’m anticipating “unforeseen” corrosion problems in that cooling system. Corrosion problems the management will be “surprised” at, but that the engineers understand are likely lurking throughout.
The salt is the thermal heat sink — it is separated from the steam cycle loop — and heats the steam through a heat exchanger. Alloys suitable for containing the likely NaNO3/KNO3 (60/40% wt) salt are well known in the literature.
The steam turbine loop system is completely separate — and it is a DRY COOLED system — using air to condense the steam on the downstream side of the turbine; instead of needing cooling water.
You forgot the natural gas firing which need be above the original estimate.
The heat input side fluid is salt and the turbine side (output) of the heat exchanger loop is water/steam. You can’t drive a turbine with vaporized salt.
I presume the “molten” salt just became “molten” by it self? Can you tell me how much energy it takes to melt the salt and how environmentally safe this salt is in case of a spill? No sarc I am interested.
They melted it over the course of 2 months prior to main facility startup — a quick google of Tonopah and the tech behind it is quite informative.
The salt is in a sealed system — it acts as a working fluid for the heat transfer to the closed loop DRY COOLED steam turbine.
It is most likely a combination of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate — as developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratories – http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/57625.pdf
Karl
Did you “count” all that fossil-fueled energy it took to melt the molten-salt in your “energy balance” for this ugly monstrosity against what it supposed to “save” in CO2 reductions?
Did you “count” the fossil-fuel it took to refine, machine, erect and fabricate the steel, concrete and asphalt and gravel roads and foundations, and glass reflectors in your “energy balance” for this monstrosity across the desert?
Did you “count” the fossil fuels that will be needed to wash, to maintain, and to dismantle and dispose of the non-recyclable masses of this monstrous not-too-efficient air-cooled assembly in the desert?
Did you count the excess copper and steel and concrete and roads for the excess transmissions needed to locate this monstrous assembly far out in the desert where there is no “electrical need” save to politician’s donations from enviro’s and their Big Green donor classes to the democrat party?
By the way, how are you going to dispose of the molten (deadly and very reactive!) salts? How are you going to re-melt these salts after every maintenance period? What is the (fossil-fueled) energy coming from to replace the solar-energy lost when the plant is down for maintenance ? Are you going to use even more of the precious water now stored (and evaporating) behind the Hoover Dam? That water is needed as well.
Now, air-cooled steam plants are very, very inefficient compared to water-cooled condensers. More energy lost. And you do, indeed, need a considerable amount of makeup water out in the desert for the steam cycle itself, for washing the reflectors, for pouring the concrete foundations for all and for the maintenance of the plant over its lifetime. A massive waste of time, money, energy, and effort – just to fry birds! And harm the desert tortoise wildlife areas!
Why would you say non recyclable? Every single component of the plant is pretty much recyclable; from the silicon and rare earth metals in the solar panels, to the glass covers, to the aluminium frames, to the wiring to the electronic controls, to the piping, to the blacktop and concrete for the roads — and even the salt — which can be reused as fertilizer and/or a base for firearms and explosives.
As a professional engineer you know all this — yet you are being disingenuous; perhaps you have an irrational bone to pick with new technologies.
As a professional engineer you should also know that radionuclides don’t go away for a long time, and that Nuclear Power has only every really been a viable way to create fissionable daughter products for weapons (else why is Nuclear Power still subsidized cradle to grave 60 years after it’s inception?).
PV will surpass every single other form of electricity production with the possible exception of Wind by 2050.
Concentrated solar thermal has a bit more maturation, but so did every other power generation tech after initial commercialization — including nuclear.
As far as need — Las Vegas is only 190 miles — a veritable small step as far as transmission lines go. Vegas needs every bit of electricity it can get.
Cooling efficiency is not an issue, when the fuel is free (sunlight). What is important is that water is not uselessly wasted to condense the steam.
As well as the mirrors themselves
“”””””…..
RACookPE1978
March 3, 2015 at 11:02 am
Karl
“
They melted it over the course of 2 months prior to main facility startup — a quick google of Tonopah and the tech behind it is quite informative……”””””
RAC, I believe they used the solar array to melt the salt. And if they didn’t they could have. So you run phase change heat pipes from the tower into the salt (come to think of it, that’s exactly what you have to do to run the damn thing.)
So I don’t believe Tonopah uses ANY natural gas. The solar runs the whole thing. It’s actually a damn clever system design; it’s just the numbers that don’t make any sense, and of course the collateral damage as well.
That is a natural for a solar thermal system, you can just gather the heat as it gets made (from solar radiation) ( come rain or shine), and once you get your tub of liquid working fluid, you are off and running. So this thing really is an interesting thermal engine, but of course, you have to plan for the longest inclement weather shut down of solar input so the salt doesn’t freeze again.
It’s like those phase change eggs that you put in your coffee thermos, to cool your MacDonald’s hot coffee (180 F) down to 140, the phase change temperature, in a few minutes while the goop melts, and then it will keep the coffee at 140 F for 4 hours till the goop refreezes.
Too bad it also makes reject Kentucky fried chicken (which tastes just like rattle snake).
No. You can’t do that. The array generates a very focused (literally!) beam of power into the collector. To MUST be cycling molten liquid through the collector BEFORE the sun’s rays hit the collectoer, or the thermal epansion – with no ability to “flow” or move the instantaneously-accumulated heat into the “solid” mass of a frozen collector will bust the collector pipes, screw up the local heat exchanger as it goes from frozen to partially-liquid to – completely-liquid-here-(locally, in one spot)-but-frozen-over-there-(next pipe over). That breaks the pipes, the collector and the joints holding the unit together.
you’ve got to melt the whole liquid metal assembly, run the pumps through the whole assembly and collector before hitting it with the solar collector. To illustrate: How are you ever going to get the not-yet-molten-salts inside the pumps to flow through the still-cold-enough-to-freeze metal of the pipes if you only have heat applied up high in small areas of the collector?
Electric wraps with discrete individual electric controllers for each section of insulated pipe are more effective for heating than a “gas-burning” central furnace that can only heat up a single reactor. You’ve got hundreds of different individual components and pipes to individually heat up and maintain hot while other regions are still frozen. Imported (wasted or parasitic) electric power is the only realistic method.
I am in favor of allowing people in California to bring part of their pay check out to the desert every week and throw it over the mirrors, instead of giving it to Google in a tax-payer-guaranteed loan for sustainable energy first. They can properly dispose of their money that way just as easily.
Gaia giveth. Gaia taketh away. Those desert solar facilities are built on alluvial fans. Absent major structural diversions like levees and channels to keep the flood water away from the mirrors and power towers, they are all subject to being suddenly swept away by alluvial fan flooding. The Ivanpah facility is in eastern San Bernardino County. The following link is to: “Alluvial Fans of San Bernardino County. This video shows the history of flooding in San Bernardino County and the flood control technology that now allows for safe construction on alluvial fans.”
http://tinyurl.com/lcgzv5f
Additional alluvial fan information from NASA (the part of NASA that does space work):
http://tinyurl.com/kgo9hez
It’s Nevada, The energy is sold to NV energy at $0.135 per KWh as part of a 25 year Power Purchase Agreement
The thermal flux at any distance between the mirrors and the ‘boiler’ on the central tower has certainly been calculated for the full range of solar radiance conditions, making the avian ‘fryer’ hazard certainly known and accepted, before the system was ever built. They didn’t just ‘discover’ the problem now!
Exquisite engineering run afoul, in service to the irrational ‘green’ agenda, makes me feel nauseous.
Afowl?
“most of the streamers are floating trash or wayward insects…”
The biologists out there must know that insects are a critical component in the food chain of any healthy desert ecosystem.
And the birds may chase the meal to their death
“…I’ve been from Tucson to Tucumcari
Tehachapi to Tonopah
Spun every wind turbine that ever had a blade
Praised every solar project that had ever been made
And if you give me…
Grants, cash and wine
And you show where to sign
I’ll be willin’
To keep lyin'”
with apologies to the late, great Lowell George and Little Feat.
The song, Willin’ has been one my very favorites for 40 years. I always knew where Tucson and Tucumcari where but didn’t have clue about Tehachapi or Tonopah. Now it seems that Tehachapi is the center of rusting, failed wind projects and Tonopah will soon become the home of failed solar projects. Below is a link to the Commander Cody and His Lost Airmen version of Willin’. See how many analogies you can draw from the original song and the situation today.
Thanks, that made my day. That was a GREAT album as well.
1 buy land surrounding a solar thermal plant.
2. build hotdog stand near employee entrance to the solar plant.
3. build machine to fling hotdogs past the tower of the solar thermal plant and catch them on the other side.
4. $$$$
Some local entrepreneur might want to start a “venison” restaurant, from the sky to the plate!!
Deer don’t fly.
According to the IPCC pigs do… maybe soon??
http://www.justjared.com/2015/02/01/doritos-when-pigs-fly-super-bowl-commercial-2015-video/
Big badminton racket heads on the ends of the turbine blades in the mountains where the deer are… aiming will be a challenge.
@ur momisugly Dr. Dave the uninformed:
The Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm is 30 years old — the fact that any still produce at all is a testament to the engineering efforts of 1980s tech.
Right next to Tehachapi is the Alta Wind Energy Center commissioned in 2010, as of 2013 the LARGEST WIND FARM IN THE WORLD @ur momisugly 1320 MW nameplate.
Development of Alta is scheduled to continue through 2019 with another 400 MW capacity to be installed.
Karl the Informed: Please inform me:
1. How many of the wind mills at Tehachapi are 30 years old? 20+ years old? Can you inform me how long a windmill lasts before a replacement?
2. The “Farm” has a respectable nameplate capacity. What was its utilization (an actually generated power as a percentage of a theoretical 24/7 power at a nameplate capacity) in 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014?
3. How many birds and bats got killed in each of those years?
I couldn’t find info on Tehachapi, but here’s a glowing report on San Gorgonia Pass – http://www.olino.org/us/articles/2009/05/28/1722 : Clearly turbines are being replaced, and clearly they are very inefficient (14%).
Overall N America efficiency of windfarms as at March 2013 was reportedly 24.8% (http://blogs.rrc.ca/business/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/SolarEnergyInNorthAmericaRevised5.pdf).
If you are that interested I suggest you look up the information yourself.
However, as far as ALTA which is in Tehachapi — Every single windmill is 2010 or newer.
Newer windmills will last 25-30 years. And unlike Nuclear Plants they don’t create tons of waste that must be stored onsite and protected lest they be stolen and used by terrorists. Furthermore, livestock and crops do just fine underneath windmills — all over the Western US, Texas, and Midwest.
People on this board scream about solar subsidies yet conveniently IGNORE the fact that the US Nuclear Power industry is subsidized from breaking ground to the fuel itself. Loans are subsidized, production is subsidized, and the manufacture of the fuel itself is subsidized.
Worldwide Wind and PV are growing exponentially and have been for years. PV will eclipse Nuclear in Worldwide energy production no later than 2050 and likely sooner.
West Texas windfarms average 28-30% Nameplate production annually — and wind CAN be used as baseload dependable power. Stanford University did a study regarding the interconnection of wind farms. At 100 meter hub height it is very, very, rarely NOT windy. And it is almost NEVER not windy across a set of multiple farms with thousands of turbines.
More bats were killed by a fungus in the US last year than have been killed since commercial windfarms were started.
Karl says “The Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm is 30 years old — the fact that any still produce at all is a testament to the engineering efforts of 1980s tech.” Now he says that the oldest windmill is 5 years old. That’s definitely a testament – to Karl’s accuracy.
Karl, I sort of like your way of shooting unsupported statements from your hip. YOU can not be bothered to look up the information yourself.
@ur momisugly Curious Goerge
Tehachapi Pass and ALTA are 2 separate wind farms — if you managed to read the thread you would know that.
They are both however, in the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area.
So I was absolutely correct.
Karl – you don’t provide data on Tehachapi. I appreciate your substitution of unrelated data. But two can play a game of unsupported statements. The utilization of Alta is 15% of the nameplate capacity.
Currently The Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm has a nameplate capacity of only 705 MW — mainly because the turbines installed in the 80s, and 90s were KW rated not MW rated. As the turbines are replaced with new tech, the capacity and production will increase.
It is highly probable that the Tehachapi Wind Resource Area will have a working nameplate capacity of 3000MW by 2020.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Well done, Green Movement, well done.
“It’s no secret that solar power is hot right now” (from the top) Sorry, can’t believe no one picked that up.
And the mirrors are flat, focal length infinate, so they could be redirected to other things. But no one would ever do that. As an old timer, I remember Solar One near Barstow. Mirror array to central tower, abandoned because of high operating cost. Then they tried “trench” arrays, long parabolic reflectors with an oil filled pipe at the focal point. Friend of mine wrote the tracking software. Which is what Bright Solar abandoned because of high operating cost …
It just goes to show that birds are expendable when endangered species like CSP solar and DoE grant waste are concerned.
All they need to do is to surround the solar array with wind turbines and they can chop and fry the birds all at the same time.
Fast food oppurtunity!
How long before Ronco has an infomercial for their home version? 😎
(It slices! It dices! It fries without oil!….)
yeah all the birds killed or maimed, along with the solar plants operation on natural gas for 5 hours a day is not considered in the cost benefit analysis, or the CO2 analysis though I am sure they negotiated 100% “carbon offset” credits for the full nameplate capacity of this “clean” and “green” power generator. I wonder at what price point for electricity the “green” folks are going to start to rebel against the insanity and lies of the “green team”? I am sure some folks in the very cold regions are already feeling the pinch on their wallets though I am not sure they will be able to connect the dots between the President’s “energy prices must necessarily sky-rocket..” comment and his policies which are doing just that.
uhg… rant off/
Joe
We need a Rodney King bird on video.