From the road to green hell is paved with good intentions (and dead birds) department and MarketWatch comes this unsurprising news:
A federally backed, $2.2 billion solar project in the California desert isn’t producing the electricity it is contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp., which says the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, owned by BrightSource Energy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. NRG, +0.79% and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG, +0.02% GOOGL, +0.15% Google, uses more than 170,000 mirrors mounted to the ground to reflect sunlight to 450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat up to create steam, which in turn is used to generate electricity.
But the unconventional solar-thermal project, financed with $1.5 billion in federal loans, has riled environmentalists by killing thousands of birds, many of which are burned to death — and has so far failed to produce the expected power.
more here
The land of fruits and nuts strikes out again !
I just want to see the KWH per fried bird ratio.
If they put one of those windmill thingies on top, then the birds would be sliced and diced before they hit the focal point.
Instant takeaway!
Winston Smith — certainly cutting edge humor — Eugene WR Gallun
Ivanpah is a “rapid raptor roaster”, not a fryer. Much healthier, though not for the raptors.
Actually they ain’t fried; you need grease for frying.
Basically those birds are sublimated; making an instant transformation to the vapor phase. It’s very efficient, and cleans up its own mess. Don’t even need a garbage can.
And would somebody want to hazard a guess as to why the angel is not sitting right on the water tank, but hanging out there in space to the north of the tower.
Scuse me sir; but do you have a focusing knob on this whimshurst machine ??
The sun is supposed to be shining on the kettle not on some passing airliner !
Lunacy: izzere a solar analog of lunacy ??
G
Ctrl/alt/del/whatever.
I guess the angel is really south of the teapot. Either that or the sun moved around to the north of the tower again. Kevin Trenberth should look into the crazy solar orbit, that this thing was built for.
g
306,000 birds per Kwh. Data Source: Wikipedia Ivanpah Solar Power Facility.
I think these mirrors are contributing to global warming. If they’re frying birds, imagine what it’s doing to the atmosphere.
george e. smith March 18, 2016 at 7:19 am
Actually they ain’t fried; you need grease for frying.
Well, then, how about nuggets? They taste enough like chicken right?
Oh yeah, let’s jump on the ‘global warning’ bandwagon….. get real, there’s no way in hell one little (in the big scheme of the whole wide world) solar plant could contribute to that….. you’ve been listening to the Nature Nazis too much…. get over it, and stay over it!
Well Mario, you are not listening.
I think the birds are not available in nugget form; more like an aroma or boquet if you will (that’s a French word for “smell”).
But I’ll grant you some original thought there, in that they may indeed smell just like fried chicken.
Well rattlesnake does too, and there are enough rattlesnakes involved with this project.
g
What ain’t fruits and nuts is flakes.
george e. smith March 21, 2016 at 1:05 pm
“Well rattlesnake does too, and there are enough rattlesnakes involved with this project.”
+++++
I’ll have to add that Alligator thighs, when fried, taste like chicken too!
Not that I’m keen on this kind of project, but WTF did they use boilers? Something with less thermal inertia, like an Acoustic Stirling Engine, might have helped their energy production.
I did some looking only line. I did find a couple of manufacturers making Sterling engine. Between them, the largest, which that manufacture claims is the largest one made has an output of just 7.8 Killowatts, no where near what would be needed for a grid scale power plant.
Demonstrate that it is even remotely possible to build a 1 megawatt or better Sterling engine and the entire electrical generation industry will beat down your door, particularly if you can prove that it is significantly more efficient than a steam turbine.
If you are right, forget solar, it would be a significant improvement for coal, natural gas and nuclear plants.
MattS
There is a thermoacoustics lab at Los Alamos. They have units well over 100 kW which are about 25 feet long and 1 foot in diameter. Using the same basic Stirling engine design program, which is free for download from their website, one can make refrigerators or generators using heat.
Crispin,
From a grid perspective, 100 KW is nothing. Again, for grid level power production, you need megawatt level units.
Crispin,
Do you have a link to that design program. I couldn’t find it on the Los Alamos National Laboratory web site.
The design includes large thermal reservoirs in order to be able to generate at night (even days when they need natural gas assist).
Ivanpah has an electrical output of 126 MW. I don’t know much about acoustic thermal engines, but you’d have to convert heat to over 126 MW of sound in order for the acoustic Stirling engine to convert that energy into electricity.
Seems a bit far fetched, what did you have in mind for them to do?
Perhaps, they had Twisted Sister moonlighting at the plant.
An error in my comment, Ivanpah doesn’t have the molten salt thermal reservoir I thought it did. The Crescent Dunes plants at Tonopah NV do.
“Ivanpah has an electrical output of 126 MW”
Is that the annualized average continuous power? Or is that a design max? What’s the source of this number and how do we know it’s correct?
Ric, I think the orginal design did have thermal storage which would have made it more efficient and extended the power productions into the evening when it is most needed.
I have been able to find anything about this in a quick search but IIRC this part of project was removed as a cost cutting exercise. Now they are finding out the cost of cost-cutting.
They basically crippled it before it got off the ground.
https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/02/19/largest-solar-thermal-plant-completed-ivanpah
Looks like Bright Source put thermal storage in other bids. I am fairly sure that is was in the orginal proposal for Ivanpah
Some production data up to March 2015 here:
http://breakingenergy.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/06/monthly.jpg
http://breakingenergy.com/2015/06/17/ivanpah-solar-production-up-170-in-2015/
Yes Tonopah is much cleverer by far than Ivanpah. But then look at the dummies that bellied up to the bar for this California green dream. But get used to it; Sunbeam Brown’s train to nowhere is probably programmed to run right through that location. But heck, if you are training from nowhere to nowhere else, why not go through nowhere special while you are at it.
I predict that aliens from outer space, will one day dig up Ivanpah out of the sand, and all be scratching their heads (both of them) trying to figure out what such a confarnation like that would be used for.
g
Talk about a cargo cult. They build a car but left the engine out to save weight. Much more efficient if you don’t have to carry an engine around.
Oh you wanted to have wheels on this vehicle ! Why the hell would you need wheels if it doesn’t use an engine.
Just park it down on third avenue, so someone can sleep in it.
So Giggle Jebs builds a power plant without a fuel tank. What were they thinking. Could have built it much more cheaply if they left out all of those mirrors. Most of them are doing nothing anyhow.
Come to think of it, if the left out the mirrors, they could have put up hundreds of towers in the same space, and just let the sun find all of them.
See if you program the tower heights correctly, then none of those towers will cast a shadow on another tower’s tea kettle, so you don’t need either the mirrors or the steering mechanisms either.
Reminds me of when I was a kid during WW-II, and my Grandfather took me to the Whenuapai aerodrome. I actually got to crawl around inside one of those ‘Hudson Bombers’. Well you see they were all fakes, kluged together out of plywood and other junk timber. Just sitting there parked on the runways, as if they were ready for takeoff. Well they also were only about 2/3rds real size. So the idea was that the Japanese reconnaissance planes if they flew over, would think their altimeters were all screwed up, because those planes down there look small.
Well they would come down to the correct altitude so the planes looked right, and that would bring them within gunnery range better.
Much cheaper if you have a bunch of Lockheed Hudsons with no engines. You can bomb the hell out of those till you run out of ordnance.
I think we should dedicate Ivanpay to Al Gore and Jerry Brown. But flip all the mirrors over so they don’t scare the airlines. They could use it for navigation to check their GPS accuracy.
Can you guys(als) believe we really are in the 21st century ??
g
george e. smith March 18, 2016 at 8:00 am
Can you guys(als) believe we really are in the 21st century ??
g
Gee, George – easily.
Bigger and bolder deceptions all around us. Not better, because they’re blindingly obviously all 8ull-du5t.
Same as the local [UK] watermelons, and their raptor-reducers.
And their solar.
This is England/Great Britain/UK.
The southern part of London’s orbital motorway – the M25 – is about the same latitude as the southernmost part of Hudson Bay.
At high summer, in the very south of England, the Sun is about 61 degrees above the horizon at local noon. In much of Scotland, in winter, it is about 12 degrees above the theoretical horizon; at Noon.
Scotland has (non-transparent) mountains, too – and Ben Nevis is a metre taller this week than last!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35837773 will explain.
Auto
Thanks for the chart, Greg.
https://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2014/02/19/largest-solar-thermal-plant-completed-ivanpah
If I did my math right, I total 525,000 megawatt-hours for the period, which is 10,800 hours, for an average continuous output of about 48 megawatts.
NPR reported it as a 400-megawatt plant:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/276857591/shine-on-world-s-largest-solar-plant-opens-in-nevada
As a science teacher, I get tired of this kind of propaganda. Maybe it’s common to refer to these plants using the maximum possible design output. But the chart shows the best month was June 2014, at 64,000 megawatt-hours, for an average continuous output of 89 megawatts: less than a quarter of what NPR had reported it would be.
You sound like a teacher who gives a hoot.
Suggestion ..
Teach them that the lie runs faster than the truth and in fact, the whole purpose of the lie is to make your adversary waste time trying to defend it while the liar moves onto more delicious targets of desire.
Problem: Some people can get away with lies, because it’s for the Cause.
Solution: Disregard everything people with a Cause (and followers who believe in the Cause so much they would allow people to get away with anything) say!
A 30,000 MWh month produces (at a wholesale cost of $70 / MWh, wholesale) – is $2 million per month, which won’t go far on a $2000 million mortgage and $2 million monthly worker bill + outside maintenance + natural gas costs.
Likely with new tech the maintenance is wildly expensive.
Stirling Energy Systems (SES) had a tracking mirror design they were planning to scale up to utility size. The concept was a field of air cooled 25 KW Stirling engine at the focal point of a 2-axis tracking mirror. They had a pilot plant with several of these installed in Peoria, AZ. The design was modular in that each dish was self contained and they could come on line as they were being planted. The first utility scale farm was to be installed near Yuma, but the whole company folded when a federal judge issued an injunction on the basis that a local reservation was insufficiently consulted. This had the effect of destroying an entire power generation technology. IIRC, the engines were being made by McLaren in MI.
“This had the effect of destroying an entire power generation technology”
I read someplace that they used hydrogen as a transfer medium? Leaking was/is an issue?
The nice thing about the SES design is that you can install a subset of the total project quickly, and determine if you are going to get enough output after all the units are in. There was no way to do that with the zillion mirror/one collector type of solar plant.
Amazing, how many ingenious technologies just won’t work.
Mike March 17, 2016 at 6:43 pm
“Ivanpah has an electrical output of 126 MW”
Is that the annualized average continuous power? Or is that a design max? What’s the source of this number and how do we know it’s correct?
+++++++++++++++
Based on the production data, Greg provided on March 17, 2016 at 10:11 pm; I did a simple calculation on a spreadsheet to find the average output per hour. That is, on average it produced less than 50MWhr per hour throughout the year, with peak months close to 80MWhr/hr. So, it is conceivable that 126MW is peak output around noon when the sun shines the strongest. You get zero at night, I presume.
How much of that output was the Nat gas being burned?
Just another day in the Federally Funded State of Solindryca. Smile when you fill out your federal taxes, you extended billions of bucks in loans to this failure.
Of course What could the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators possibly mean other than more money and/or relaxation of
requirementsexpectations.hahahaha
cut off their natural gas and make ’em use photovoltaics to warm the boilers before they fold, please.
put in another billion and you can really make the most awesome pun on ‘schadenfraude’
Fossil is only evil when YOU burn it.
aw, come on, slowpoke
you might have corrected my deliberate misspelling (that got my comment into moderation) to set me up for the rimshot, like a pal…
make the people who supported this project eat the dead birds
i’m just thinking this, right?
Might as well, they’re already cooked so no additional energy needed there.
Both solar and wind energy generation projects have specially permitted “takes” – meaning they can kill ho-hum, listed, threatened or endangered species without being called to the carpet. I’ve found dead Bald and Golden Eagles, redtail hawks, vultures and numerous less interesting birds on the ground around wind turbines. Sadly, I had to leave them where I found them, Collecting even a single feather from one the eagles (or any other of the raptors) could lead to a $25,000 fine if you are not a member of a federally recognized tribe, though if you have a falconer’s permit you can actually take the live bird, but even then some badged idiot could still cite you if you retained feathers from the bird. In fact in the US by and large you can’t legally possess feathers of any native “migratory” species – even though the bird might be a member of a non-migratory local population. California for example has lots of Canadian geese that have taken up permanent residence. Apparently they regard all that flying as a waste of energy if they can just hangout instead. Introduced species (starlings, English sparrows, pheasants etc.) are fine.
Were the vultures wearing suits and ties and have briefcases with them?
Duster, I think you meant “Canada geese”, not Canadian geese. Just because they have the name Canada goose it doesn’t mean that they have Canadian citizenship.
The right kind of environmentalism: love of wildlife.
“10,000 Miles” — Mary Chapin Carpenter (in “Fly Away Home”)
(youtube)
“Love does no harm to its neighbor.”
{I do not equate animals with people, but, they are, in a very real sense, our “neighbor,” to be cared for with cool-headed discernment and with intelligent limits, but most of all, with love.}
In his book, The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis describes animal pain as one of the hardest things to accept about “the way things are.” {quote from a fave movie, “Babe”} It is one thing to eat animals for food (I do). It is another to raise and or to kill them inhumanely.
And how much worse, to kill them painfully and senselessly.
Pain for no reason at all but to put money into the pockets of Big Wind and Big Solar must end.
Canada geese, not Canadian geese.
The inforcment of these laws and not the elimination of DDT was why bird populations increased. — Eugene WR Gallun
what if the Canada Geese are from Canada, does that make them Canadian?
I’ll have to check my fly tying kit to make sure I don’t have any Bald Eagle feathers. I think most of the feathers I have are just chickens from India.
I know you aren’t allowed to have real Jungle Cock eyes on your Atlantic Salmon flies, unless you can prove (how) you had a legal cape before they became fully protected. I once knew a guy who had a complete Jungle Cock skin, but he couldn’t bring himself to take even one feather off it for a fly. Sure was beautiful though. Well they look really nice through the back end of my ersatz 1200 mm Nikon telephoto lens, if you can snap them before they duck into the bushes to escape the tiger.
g
I’m sure that the local scavengers — vultures, crows, coyotes — are properly thankful for this elaborate free lunch counter and would like to see more, similar, plants constructed.
Only if they are crow.
As I thought, this s@ur momisugly@t aint ready for prime time (or utility-grade service).
How many coal fired stations, producing cheap reliable energy all day long, can be built for $2.2 billion?
And how many birds would they kill?
As always, ‘green energy’ makes so much sense to those who have no sense.
Coal plants used to be very cheap, with all the added antipollution filters, not so much.
(Still cheaper than ecoloonacies, obviously).
Polk Power, a TECO plant, is undergoing a $1.2bb retrofit of 4 gas turbines into a combined cycle steam turbine and through this retrofit are going from being a peaking plant (mostly) to 1300megawatts BASE LOAD! Add a couple hundred million for new transmission lines and all told $1.5bb for 1300mw base load that will never not run.
There is one example for you.
As an engineer, the combined cycle ng plants appeal to me with their 8K heat rates vs. the 12K heat rates of the old coal burners. With ng being as cheap as it is with no major increase in price visible, using ng is not all that bad. Of course, the economics of any of it can be perverted through government regulation, regurgitation and strangulation. The fiasco that was Central Maine Power and the wood cogen comes to mind.
ShrNfr,
There are many “peaking” plants located across the country and as liberals work to reduce our base load capacities by decommissioning coal and nuclear this combined cycle steam plant rework is what we will see happening to cover the gaps
The advanced German Plant at Lunen built in 2008 delivers 750 MW of electricity and delivers district heating for the nearby town. The thermal efficiency is 46% and the cost was 1.4 billion euros. This is a power station built to some of the highest environmental standards in the world and is typical of the plants the Germans are building to provide the real power needed when the wind isn’t blowing. It was built by the municipal authorities to fill the gap in the affordable power market left by the Federal Government’s infatuation with rotating totem poles.
“failed to produce the expected power” seems to be a tag line for these politically connected projects. A geothermal plant in northern Nevada developed by former political aides and strongly supported by Harry Reid also experienced “less-than-expected output.”
http://news.heartland.org/newspaper-article/2011/11/20/nevada-geothermal-poised-follow-solyndra-bankruptcy
Wouldn’t it be great to get free energy from the sun? Really? It would be fantastic. And perpetual motion machines too.
I say, tally up all the costs endured by the tax payer in the name of the green movement.. 1 trillion? and send the bill the democrat party. I say make them pay.
Paul W – to be fair, we get / have obtained a lot of energy from the sun, whether we have solar panels or not (sorry, couldn’t resist). You’re absolutely right about the energy boondoggles, though. A big one in the US is Net Metering, which is nothing more than a handout to ‘green’ ‘businessmen’.
Paul we already get plenty of free energy from the sun. What we eat everyday originates from free sunlight.
Economics have caught up with the plant:
So PV panels are now a cheaper way to generate electricity. Oops.
The plant also uses an untoward amount of natural gas.
Albatross much?
Glad to see Ontario, Canada (The Auditor General found Ontario pays 3 1/2 times the price for solar power than the average in the U.S, and twice as much for wind power) get in on the ground floor of wasting money:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/03/14/nanticoke-solar-plant-ontario_n_9462472.html
I’ve heard one reliable source, (a retired engineer from Bechtel), claim that the true cost of production from Ivanpah is $187 per mwH, compared to about $15-16 per mwH for natural gas.
From http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2015/12/15/nrg-ivanpah-faces-chance-of-default-PGE-contract :
According to data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, PG&E paid an average of $197.33 per megawatt-hour for electricity from Ivanpah Unit 1 in the June-September period this year, and $201.99 for Unit 3 electricity. In contrast, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory reported this year that falling project costs had driven down prices in new photovoltaic power purchase agreements to around $50 per MWh.
BTW, note it’s MWh:
M for Mega (m of milli). Scale units bigger than k are all upper case.
W for Watts. Units named after people are spelled in lower case, abbreviated in upper case.
h for hour. There was no Sir Hour, so lower case.
That’s 5 cents per kWh folks. If I can install PV on my property for anywhere near that, it’s a no-brainer.
Ontario makes a special effort to insure higher costs by posting a Keep Out sign with its domestic content laws for solar PV providers and bidders. India does the same.
A French company is building an 80 hectare solar PV installation over prime farmland near Napanee, Ontario. I complained about it, because they are farming subsidies, not food. Do you mean I was successful?
Here in Ontario there has been significant investment towards reducing CO2 emissions.
It’s an interesting story. Shutting down coal (one third of base-load power), refurbishing old nukes, building new nukes, new gas plants and installing huge wind and solar parks.
Since the plan’s implementation consumer’s electricity bills have doubled, double digit $billions spent and double digit $billions in new debt. IMHO all of it unnecessary.
And nobody of influence is saying anything, if you are not on board with the man-made climate change narrative you are irrelevant.
There are financial institutions with UNEP FI pledges that are involved in financing Ontario renewable energy projects. The money trail leads right to UNEP FI and this can be documented.
This would be a happier story if not for the fact that Ontario has the most incompetent and corrupt government in Canada.
“John Harmsworth March 17, 2016 at 7:15 pm
This would be a happier story if not for the fact that Ontario has the most incompetent and corrupt government in Canada.”
Well, there is hope:
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/quebec-liberals-including-two-former-cabinet-ministers-arrested
According to a Toronto newspaper the Liberal government was originally (before July, 2010) paying some three thousand small solar electricity suppliers (10 kw – under the MicroFIT program) 80¢ per kwh, but lowered it after that date to JUST 58.8¢ per kwh. Ontario’s electricity prices have increased 70% over the last 10 years, and are scheduled (according to the government) to increase another 40% over the next 5 years. Approximately 56% of the rate increases, according to two successive Auditor Generals, is because of “Green” energy – wind and solar. Ontario used to have the least expensive electricity rates in Canada; now it has the most expensive. The province has lost around 300,000 manufacturing jobs over the last 10 years with higher electricity prices cited as the primary reason. Longtime Ontario residents including Kellogg, Heinz and Caterpillar have either left the province or have drastically downsized their operations. The much touted “Green” jobs (50,000 by one estimate) “surprisingly” never materialized. Meanwhile hundreds of families have been experiencing the ill health effects of wind turbines placed too near (550m) their homes, despite a recent study recommending at least a 2.5 km buffer.
“Ontario’s electricity prices have increased 70% over the last 10 years”
Thanks. I’ve always figured rising rates that piss folks off will be one of the 2x4s to the head necessary to shake the collective cognitive dissonance.
Is it working yet ?
If you’d like you can head to:
http://reports.ieso.ca/public/GenOutputCapability/PUB_GenOutputCapability_20160317_v25.xml
And see just how the “renewables” are doing.
At 1PM yesterday (to be fair to solar…because we know the warmunists are always fair):
NUCLEAR Total Capability 11,144
NUCLEAR Total Output 11,048
GAS Total Capability 8,548
GAS Total Output 1,026
HYDRO Total Capability 7,880
HYDRO Total Output 3,775
WIND Total Available Capacity 3,356
WIND Total Forecast 2,795
WIND Total Output 1,497
SOLAR Total Available Capacity 194
SOLAR Total Forecast 186
SOLAR Total Output 191
BIOFUEL Total Capability 200
BIOFUEL Total Output 35
That 191 just sticks out there, doesn’t it (for all the wrong reasons).
Not yet! Ontario electricity prices still have not awakened most of the public enough to do something about the situation.
Fraser Institute, March 15, 2016
‘Energy Costs and Canadian Households: How Much Are We Spending?’
‘Energy Poverty in Canada’
“But energy costs have been rising for Canadians in recent years, potentially placing burdens on Canadian families.”
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/energy-costs-and-canadian-households-how-much-are-we-spending
Fine link Barbara. Thanks
Although intuitive, it is good to be reminded that the poor get poorer as energy becomes more expensive. It’s a pity the word on this doesn’t get out more often.
I suppose if kleptocrats were confronted with this fact, they’d counter by insisting on a selective tax of the upper incomes to offset the burden.
Thanks again for the link.
Ontario Energy Board
‘Ontario Energy Support Program’, began January, 2016 for Low-income people.
http://www.ontarioenergyboard.ca/OEB/Consumers
Click on: “There’s help for low-income households”
For more information on the program and the requirements to be met for participation in this program.
Government help to pay electricity bills for low-income people.
Thus higher taxes to pay for subsidized programs for the poor who would have been less poor from the get go if their rates weren’t already paying for purposely chosen inefficient forms of energy generation.
Kind of mind boggling.
All the generating power in Ontario:
http://www.sygration.com/gendata/today.html
I think the problem in Ontario extends well beyond its borders…lack of knowledge combined with manufactured consent.
I live in Mississauga (a suburban Toronto neighborhood with city status) the home of a 2,000 megawatt scubber outfitted coal-fired power plant (Lakeview) shut down over ten years ago to demonstrate Ontario’s commitment in reducing CO2 emissions.
In its place a new gas plant in Brampton (Goreway) and refurbished nukes at Pickering and Darlington would almost do the job without changing the climate (so the story goes). What we needed to fill the absence of base-load power were a couple of strategically placed “peaker” gas powered plants. No problem right? Think again.
Although we fine folks in Ontario are well educated, we are not well versed in theoretical physics. Not many of us can describe the differences in molecular responses to short and long-wave IR. However, in spite of our gas fired furnaces, we are observant enough to know a local gas plant will reduce our property values….so there.
What a joke.
All I can say is… GOOD! And good riddance.
Based upon the photo with this story, maybe they should have positioned the mirrors so they pointed at the boiler.
I too wondered why the focal point was somewhat off from the tower
There are three towers at Ivanpah. You see #2 in operation. No roasted squabs at #1 today.
Assuming this thing does shut down, is anyone out there in the market for 170,000 mirrors, slightly used? I’ll bet they’ll be willing to sell them to you real cheap.
Try the Kanye/Kardashian residence…
🙂 +++ 😉 Rofl
Do you think it was a DARPA project to produce a death ray masqueraded as a failed green project?
“From the road to green hell is paved with good intentions (and dead birds) department ”
You might want to add “and blind pilots” to the department
http://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-largest-solar-plant-is-blinding-pilots-1543264192
Well I object to it on optical design grounds in addition to all of the other negatives mentioned.
A viewer from outer space, might conclude that earth’s orbit is weird in that in mid latitudes (California) the sun moves from the south of your location to the north of your location over the day, so it goes in a closed path around the central tower.
Of course, it does no such thing. So the sun never gets north of the central tower.
So what ??
Well that means that sunlight coming from the south must reflect off those south side mirrors at a near grazing incidence angle, or put another way, the incoming beam is deflected by the mirror through an angle much less than 90 degrees.
So the intercept area of those south side mirrors, is just a small fraction of the actual sheet area of the mirror. And the effective focal length is a maximum for those outer rim south mirrors, so they form the largest possible image area of the sun at the tower location, so the boiler on the tower only intercepts a fraction of the oversized beam which is formed by a grossly reduced effective mirror area.
The damn thing is optically inefficient beyond all belief.
There should be NO mirrors at all on the south side of the tower.
They would be much better off with two towers, but all of the mirrors north of both towers. During the day, it might actually be more efficient to switch some mirrors from one tower to the other, depending on where the sun is.
But it’s a crappy design no matter how you carve it.
Roland Winston must have flames coming out of his ears every time he sees a picture of that optical monstrosity.
Compared to this thing, the Solyndra laugher was an elegant optical design.
G
Listen to an experienced designer, who just proved that arson is physically impossible.
Hmm, you are right. I hadn’t thought about how inefficient the mirror becomes as it moves south of the focal point. Its essentially the same as if you used smaller mirrors, each is reflecting less light as you move south. A far better design would be a slice of a circle (not even half). But to get the same amount of light many of the mirrors would be further away and you lose efficiency that way. I guess a better design is to use a set of solar towers instead of one… Even better, add more efficient gas fed boilers and remove the mirrors altogether, except for two so that you can still claim its a solar tower array… LOL
I think you miss the main advantage though – its “pretty” – round and symmetrical so it makes prettier pictures on investment flyers to attract money. And to that degree it worked, so SOMEONE made a lot of money on this project, just not the tax payers.
This kind of solar generator seems like a dead end to me. Google was right to stop funding it.
I agree it is a dead end – as a Californian, I even have to pay for it. But remember that in summer, the Sun can be almost overhead in southern California – just 12 degrees short of truly vertical. Mirrors to the south make a lot of sense.
“Well that means that sunlight coming from the south must reflect off those south side mirrors at a near grazing incidence angle, or put another way, the incoming beam is deflected by the mirror through an angle much less than 90 degrees.”
Somewhat, Ivanpah is at 35 degrees North latitude. That means that the sun elevation angle varies from 78 degrees in June — pretty much straight overhead — to 32 degrees in December. Still considerable. And the mirrors on the North side don’t actually get any more sun than those on the South, they just “focus” a bit more tightly. It’s perhaps a bit surprising that the chose to build on a lakebed rather than a South facing embayment in one of the numerous mountain ranges in the region. But it’s probably more costly to install and service mirrors on a hillside than on a lakebed.
You can see the facility quite clearly on Google Maps satellite view BTW
I think we’re looking at the design incorrectly. I have no problem assuming that the engineering is excellent. Problem is, even with great engineering, the project is still a very highly polished turd!
–Somewhat, Ivanpah is at 35 degrees North latitude. That means that the sun elevation angle varies from 78 degrees in June — pretty much straight overhead — to 32 degrees in December. —
And 55 degree at the equinox.
At noon and with 12 hours of daylight. Or from dawn 6 hours to reach 55 degrees and another 6 hours before sunset. To simply average it, rising and falling at 9.16 degree per hour.
Or 3 hours from dawn or 3 hours before sunset the sun is 27.5 degree above the horizon. Or for 1/2 the year it’s below this, and other half of year it’s above 27.5 degree.
Or at December Solstice it’s about 10 hours of daylight, rising or falling at 6.4 degree per hour- 2 hours before and after noon it’s below 20 degrees above horizon.
As simple rule, one can assume that any at time the sun is not higher than 20 degrees above horizon, it’s not generating any electrical power. And if not higher than 30 degrees, it’s not generating much power.
Or somewhere around now, the power plant might begin generate some electrical power and continue until the time of the fall equinox.
I never said anything about the solar insolation being different on the north side.
I’ll give you a 12 degree solar zenith angle at the longest day of the year. But the outer radius of that mirror circle is many times the height of the boiler. A 12 deg. altitude of the boiler, would only consume a 2500 ft radius, less than a half mile. So the south side outer mirrors have at leasta 90 degree included angle from sun direction to tower direction so there’s a 70% mirror foreshortening right there. If you have an optical ray tracing program like I have, then you can set up the optics for Tonopah yourself, just like I have, and then you would be better able to comment on my assertions.
G
PS The world’s leading authority on non-imaging optics (NIO) which is a basic science of optical solar energy gathering ; Prof Roland Winston at UC Merced, probably does not know words in the English language to properly describe his opinion of the Ivanpah or Tonopah optical layout. Well he’s too nice a guy to use the words he does know.
Efficient optical gathering of large amounts of solar radiation is a well developed technology and it is being used in many smaller scale applications around the world.
These desert monstrosities are not among the better designs.
“the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesn’t receive a break Thursday from state regulators.”
Translation: “California taxpayers, BOHICA (bend over, here it comes again).”
yes both California and US Federal tax payers as well as all electrical customers in Cali bend over. Another political project that took everything but actual best engineering practices into consideration. Too bad the stupid is burning innocent birds and not the backers of this monstrosity. Wonder if the mirrors can be focused on moonbeam’s house from there…..
Cheers,
Joe
Electric customers elsewhere, too. The Socialist Republic of Kalifornia sucks a LOT of power out of its somewhat less Marxist neighbor States.
Maybe the good Kalifornians will donate more money, all you have to do is ask in the name of being green.
add to translation: We’ll use less grease this time – you’re getting to like it!
Debbie march 17 12.56. BOHICA, LOL Can I use that?
asybot,
Depends on if you’re the bendover-er or the bendover-ee.
Sure, I didn’t coin the phrase.
It is seen all over and again and again. If you can get anything for free, there is no limit to the investments.
Especially if it is not your own money, and you can look to care for the planet and peoble.
In that way it is strange, that oil wells are not embraced the same way. They work equally, after the investment in the well it is free to pump up the oil.
Interesting observation on solar farms – seems like to produce solar energy requires lots of other resources to be used. In the case of Ivanpah, it’s natural gas. From an article in the Orange County Register:
“David Lamfrom, desert project manager of the National Parks Conservation Association, said information about the amount of natural gas used at Ivanpah shows that the plant is essentially a hybrid operation that requires both fossil fuel and sunshine to make electricity……
It feels like a bait and switch,” Lamfrom said. “This project was held up as a model of innovation. We didn’t sign up for greener energy. We signed up for green energy.”
http://www.ocregister.com/articles/plant-688596-gas-energy.html
On a related note, at another solar site, Crescent Dunes, the resource is water which is precious here in the west. Willis Eschenbach made the following post in September 2015 and discussed Crescent Dunes, noting that it uses 500,000 gallons of water per day.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/09/07/darcy-farrow/
I’ve seen that layout from 30,000 ft on my way to ‘Frisco at least twice. Very impressive. Too bad the economics don’t work.
On a different note, several years ago, probably about 20, I visited a solar powered house in Door County WI. It was built by a guy who was a free lance “Professional Engineer” Off the “Grid” and very impressive. He had a toilet that was like pooping into a bowl of cornflakes. But he told us that his electricity was quite a bit more than what he would have had to pay if he got it off the “Grid” AND he had to do regular maintenance.
Tom Murphy at UCSD has a lot of really interesting articles on his blog http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/ re his experiences with solar PV and currently with a plug-in hybrid. Highly recommended
If there is one practical message that comes through loud and clear it is that BATTERIES SUCK.
Yes, college professors in California are stupid. Before spending more to save money, have some data to show that you will recoup the investment.
As for being green, it is green washing marketing on the part of car companies. Hybrids are an interesting idea but there is no data to support the practical application.
Another article on same (http://www.wsj.com/articles/ivanpah-solar-plant-may-be-forced-to-shut-down-1458170858) notes that although “[m]ore than 2,000 wild birds died at the Ivanpah plant between March and August of 2015,” “birds also fall prey to other renewable-energy projects: Wind turbines kill between 140,000 and 328,000 birds in the U.S. every year, according to a 2013 study by researchers at the Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute.” As megawatts of wind and solar capacity ramp up under the Clean Power Plan and state mandates, the avian death toll will as well.
Climate activists retort that windows in residential buildings and house cats are still the largest “industrial” source of avian mortality in America. A misleading comparison. Nobody ever said windows and house cats are “green.” The relevant comparison is to coal, gas, and nuclear power plants, which typically don’t come equipped with lots of windows and cats.
For wind there is an easy solution: off-shore wind turbines. Nosy ornithologists will not be able to count carcasses.
No but maybe we should be counting whale carcasses instead.
http://www.cfact.org/2016/03/04/are-wind-turbines-killing-whales/
By that logic, hunting endangered birds must be allowed, because cats and windows.
I let my big tomcat out at night. Screw the birds, less cat food I have to buy. Besides it’s more natural that way.
Interesting bit of trivia. Researchers actually did go out and look for dead birds and bats when the first experimental wind turbines were rolled out. They even tried to determine if scavengers might be dragging the corpses off before they got there. Their conclusion: Not much of a problem. But those turbines were much smaller (and blade tip velocities were lower?) than today’s behemoths.
“Climate activists retort that windows in residential buildings and house cats are still the largest “industrial” source of avian mortality in America.”
Well, add this to the lists of things that these big fat lying liars lie about.
Housecats don’t kill large birds of prey like endangered Eagles – wind turbines do.
My cat Orn’ry is scared of pigeons. If she saw an actual Eagle she’d never come out from under the bed again.
Birds that are bigger then you count as modern dinosaurs. ^¿^
If only we could get the cats to run into windows. That would be like killing two birds with one stone!
If only? I assume you’re not a cat owner. I’m just glad mine’s never hit one hard enough to cracked it.
Climate economics strikes again (and reality strikes back).
In any commercial field the engineers would be sued for criminal incompetence .
Engineers are responsible for the safety of the design.
I have yet to see a solar project that is not a scam. If rate payers and tax payers want to pay more, we will provide an expensive but safe power plant.
Producing power is a public service.
Did somebody watch Sahara too many times? Looks like the plant in the movie…except the mirrors in the movie were actually angled to work!
Uses mirrors to reflect light 450 feet up to boliers which make steam to generate electricity.
Are you sure the company’s name isn’t Rube Goldberg power inc?
Or maybe it was designed by The Coyote built with parts from ACME.
How shocking it doesn’t work.
Funniest comment evah…