The United States Geological Survey (USGS) released the following footage showing flying birds and insects incinerated by the intense heat near the solar towers of the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Facility.
Though USGS claims that “fewer than 15 birds were observed being impacted by the solar flux in more than 700 hours of video”, USGS curiously states, “we are uncertain of the origin of dark trails following the birds.” USGS also fails to quantify what percentage of the 700 hours of footage is duplicative (multiple cameras were utilized) or is of the solar flux when in actually operation (i.e. daytime vs. nighttime — much of the surveillance was nighttime thermal and infrared imaging of birds and bats).
A recent study found Ivanpah killed 6,185 birds in 2015, including about 1,145 that were burned up in the plant’s solar flux. Ivanpah has also been known to blind airline pilots flying over Southern California’s desert.
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Cant anyone put a stop to this?
Keep up the pressure, it’s all we can do.
w.
It would be a different story if it were actually making a contribution to the grid like real power plants, but birds or no birds, this contraption was a huge waste of public money.
Speaking of the birds, I can’t imagine this desert valley south of Vegas has many to begin with (it’s bat country), so more than 6,000+ birds last year are probably mostly migratory, and there were of 83 different species!
This makes me question the accuracy of the numbers they are publicizing. I’m guessing they found that many corpses, but there were probably thousands more (I’ve read up to 20,000-30,000 estimates) that were incinerated over the 6.25 sq mi no-fly zone.
Closest google street view photo of Helios One
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ivanpah+Solar+Electric+Generating+System/@35.552158,-115.457778,3a,75y,283.66h,96.18t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1s-zHsst4F0iBQ%2FVECC6sxqyMI%2FAAAAAAABTgc%2FHhdHaCuKgBAQuzS-xY0Mg8E5h1b4i3KRQCLIB!2e4!3e11!6s%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2F-zHsst4F0iBQ%2FVECC6sxqyMI%2FAAAAAAABTgc%2FHhdHaCuKgBAQuzS-xY0Mg8E5h1b4i3KRQCLIB%2Fw277-h100-n-k-no%2F!7i7680!8i2764!4m5!3m4!1s0x80cf4334ceebc76d:0x81620c57d7b15ade!8m2!3d35.56222!4d-115.472875!6m1!1e1
I’d be a little bit more concerned about the number of innocent civilians getting fried by drone attacks. Just as a reality check.
It was designed to fail. Not including molten salt storage makes produce power at the time when it has the lowerest resale value.
Bats as rule don’t fly during daylight. And, even the desert has more life in it than you may imagine. A climate that supports bats will support insect-eating birds as well. Another project we can thank Gov. Brown for supporting. For a “green” governor he is and always has been an environmental catastrophe.
Omit the qualifiers–Jerry Brown has been a catastrophy.
Very cool picture Rob. I didn’t know there were two towers.
That KFC no fry zone is huge compared to the actual tower target area.
Based on the longest distance from a mirror, I guesstimated that the solar image of that array is about 30 feet in diameter, including both the angular size of the sun (0.5 degrees) plus the penumbral region due to the size of the individual mirrors, which I believe are about 6 meters square.
But the bird habitat in the vapor phase region is many times larger than that.
Those birdaromas don’t look like any sparrow sized object to me.
This contraption gets funnier and funnier, the more we learn about it.
G
In other news of free money wastage; This morning’s Murky News of San Jose reports on its actual one full page business page, that the Icon of Green Enterprise; Tesla Motors, following what Elon Musk described as “production hell ” in June, and reported Earnings somewhat short of Analysts forecasts.
Specifically the profits for the second quarter amounted to minus $293 M, as in millions of dollars.
But don’t worry, there’s a slush fund from taxpayers that can take up the slack.
I also heard from a source that almost accepted a job there, that their temporary workers get $12, $13, $14 per hour depending on the shift, and they do not get choice of shift. Overtime work is mandatory. It sounds like a great company.
No, the almost accepted, decided to decline the job.
Oh, I almost forgot, Tesla purchased Solar City for $2.6B. That’s the slickster outfit, that will use your roof space without paying you any rent, and then sell you your own solar electricity for less than PG&E will.
And you don’t own the solar array so SC gets whatever taxpayer subsidy there still may be.
Of course they get the installation subsidy, even if you don’t actually get any net electricity. SC does not have the best conversion efficiency solar panels.
G
If this were a feature on a few ducks getting their feathers oiled in a Canadian oilsands tailing pond, the media, the naturalists, the SPCA and the greenies would be all over it, but Ivanpah gets a free pass. Such hypocrisy.
EXACTLY… Don’t forget about the 10’s of thousands of lil birdies chopped up by those pesky wind mills… what an abomination our politicians are!
Plus many, Trabla and don’t forget the Exxon Valdez the BP blow out, and you never hear ANY environmentalist talk about natural existing oil. nat gas seepage( and so on). Had a wonderful visit with my grandchildren last week, my daughter and husband , not so much after I showed them this web site and the various threads and commentaries. They left a week ago and I left messages about the subject, so far “crickets” On the other hand they work and in essence ( as they move up the cooperate levels) they are capitalists.
But at 35 years old? They still have the ideology of ignorant students in their early twenties. Oh well the grands are into Kayaking and I leave it at that.
Apologies, Trebla of course.
Can anyone say “Avian Holocaust”?
And I mean that literally
GJ
I – as an individual – would be very leery about the H tri-syllable.
Emotive – and rightly so.
Talking about an avian disaster, or an avian catastrophe – fair do’s.
Auto – also decidedly concerned at the number of our feathered friends – of, I read, 83 species [Robert W Turner; August 3, 2016 at 4:24 pm ] – permanently removed from life.
They eventually put sunshades on the notorious Walkie Talkie building in London!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2786723/London-skyscraper-Walkie-Talkie-melted-cars-reflecting-sunlight-fitted-shading.html
The site is protected by the “look the other way” media management squad.
“we are uncertain of the origin of dark trails following the birds.”
====================
seriously? either the birds are shitting themselves or what you have there is smoke.
Environmentalists do not care what this does to the environment. They care only for their agenda, and they use the excuse of environmental protection to achieve it.
If they actually cared, they would’ve pushed for distributed solar power generation rather than centralized. That is: passive solar panels should have been installed on every roof in southern California. It would have been cheaper and much more efficient. Additionally, there would’ve been no flamed birds, fried insects, or crushed desert tortoises.
So, why didn’t environmentalists go for distributed power generation instead of centralized? Simple. They wouldn’t have as much control over who gets how much power, or what must be paid for it.
“passive solar panels ”
Do you mean smoke emitting diodes? If you have a power plant on the roof, you are at greater risk of a house fire.
Is this even operating yet? Why not give it a chance?
Hmm, only 6,185 birds? Are they sure it is not 6,186? And how about the insect count. As you can probably tell, I have a thing about exact numbers in the news. I guess that comes from being one of last engineers who used a slide rule while getting my degree.
Still have my “slipstick” in the side cabinet in the dining room … and I actually used it in engineering before we got hand held calculators. (Might be a clue to my age there.)
Don’t know what happened to my slide rule. Also, I do remember we had a Monroe crank handle calculating machine at my first job at GSI (Geophysical Services International) after Uni. That makes me about __ years old. Ouch!
Pickett, yellow 10-inch aluminum-bodied, black leather holster with the belt “accesory.” Chemistry, geology, statistics, trigonometry … It was particularly useful in stats. The teacher did not allow electronic calculators – “what if they quit?” he would ask. So, either pencil and paper or a slide rule.
I’ve got a special slide rule for use by an Air Force loadmaster to calculate B-52 CG and payload distributions.
I still have one of the ones we used to use for plotting artillery fire.
May have a few others http://sliderule.ozmanor.com
What was (is) wrong with using log tables?(And the batteries never run out ).
The reason I have changed over to log/Trig tables is because the balls on my abacus have become too worn and shiny!
I have a pretty good idea that Neil Armstrong was close to his slide rule.
Then there are two of at least.
Make that three.
4, and I still have the slide rule I used at the UW.
And the 6,000 + number they post is a MINIMUM. They did NOT have film for ALL daylight hours of operation, the resolution of the video is not sufficient to pick up very small birds and insects, and any bird that was damaged but was able to fly away and die after getting out of range was not counted either.
Yep, you can leave it up to the greens to save the climate while destroying nature at the same time.
I had a 4″ circular slide rule that got me all the way through high school. It fit into my shirt pocket so I didn’t look dorky with some long slipstick on my belt … I attribute my “nose for bad numbers” to having to mentally estimate the location of the decimal point …
w.
I managed to give away my slipsticks just before the value plummeted. I still have a wood one my dad gave me about 1953. I think the value may eventually go back up after whatever we have in lieu of an election this Fall.
Had a leather holstered 6 inch slipstick thru college. Still have it. My first year at HBS was the very first time electronic calculators were allowed in finals exams at Harvard. Unfair advantage on add subtract. But I had learned something from famous economist JKG as an undergrad, that he said he learned while administering the price/rationing commission during WW2. What he said was, he learned how to guestimate a column total sum to within 10% just by eyeball. And if the answer to the question at hand with that column of numbers depended on accuracy better than 10%, then you had the wrong question.
That thought applies to CAGW.
Exactly my experience. First a reality check for the decimal point, then work out the details.
My slide rule was in its case on my belt (or with my books when in uniform) through sophomore year in college.
But I competed in slide rule, math, and science in high school, so I was the ultimate nerd even then. No need to try to hide it – it paid my way through school. And provided beer money for the others as well.
In a truly extreme use of computes, folks have digitized images of a sliderule. By using astounding amounts of computes, you can move the parts and do math on a “virtual sliderule”.
Enjoy…
http://www.antiquark.com/sliderule/sim/n909es/virtual-n909-es.html
Though it doesn’t seem to work on an Android tablet… needs a mouse…
eBay has lots of old sliderules for sale for the nostalgia buffs.
Still have my Picketts… somewhere:) Speaking of decimal points, I still have my first calculator (which, like my Picketts, still work, which is more than I can say for me…, but I digress). It is a Remington Rand, and it had no decimal point. When you did a calc, the digits to the left of the decimal appeared on the screen. To see the digits on the right of the point, you toggled a button and they magically appeared. No birds or insects were harmed in the use of either the Picketts or the calculator…
I still have (and occasionally use) several. I also have an ancient working slide-rule tie-clip.
Paul Coppin: “Still have my Picketts… somewhere:) “
Mine is within arm’s reach of where I’m sitting.
There are still a few of us around who actually used sliderules in engineering. Willis is right about practice with them gives you a feel for magnitudes and even fairly decent estimates of the correct answer
Gary, I had several but my favorite was the Pickett Speed Rule (all metal except the cursor. It is remarkable the number of calculations that could be done on that slide rule.
@ur momisugly Leonard Lane, and the hard drive never chrashed ( Although in my age bracket that could happen anytime, and when I was a lot younger it always seem to “crash” on weekends
Some old school professors still introduce students to older methods, though I’m sure those days are numbered. I graduated in 2009 and know how to map with plane table and alidade.
P.S. Okay it’s worse than I thought, spell check doesn’t even recognize alidade.
If you have slopes to do, I have an old Abney from days gone bye. Or perhaps that old Brunton pocket transit?
Prof Shultz?
Well I certainly used a slide rule to do engineering. I don’t recall ever being aloud to use any sort of artificial calculating contrivance in ANY exam in school. Certainly I used a slide rule during my studies while working on a lab project for example, but it was strictly forbidden to enter any examination room with anything besides a respectable set of clothing.
They provided the exam paper booklet in which to write the answers, and they provided the pencil to write them with. And you better not have anything that remotely looks like paper on your person.
Did I say that when I went to school, we were taught how to do mathematics, including arithmetic, and trigonometry, which as far as I recall is about the limit of what you can do with a slide rule.
I had a four inch diameter circular one, and a six inch and ten inch K&E wood / plastic one.
The 10 inch one had a mechanism for doing a sort of “vernier calculation” tat involved a second manipulation using both sides of the rule, and that gave you one extra digit of resolution; if your rule was made accurately.
I lost the cursor from both the six and ten inch ones so they are now useless.
I still remember how to do the pencil and paper calculations.
I saw a Tee shirt last weekend which said:
“What part of x = -b/2a +/- sqrt (b^2 / 4a^2 – c/a) do you not understand ? ”
So does anybody still know how to derive Cardan’s solution for the roots of the cubic polynomial:
x^3 + px + q = 0 ??
I developed my own derivation of his solution but these days nobody solves such things.
Computers are fast enough to come up with the correct answer just by a random guessing program (eventually).
we also NEVER ever were allowed to sit an exam with an open text book. For some reason, they wanted us to actually learn something, other than where to find it in what text book.
G
So you’re saying my sextant is not out of date?
[The mods look outside. Yes, the stars and sun are still there. 8<) .mod]
Paul,
I ask my OOWs to do sextant calculations – and actual position finding – regularly.
Without GPS, many were ‘blind’, until I instituted this.
Now, I hope that they can navigate.
I see US Navy, also, requires this. Hat tip to them!
RN – I hope – had never varied from this, but very open to education.
Auto – an utterly unreconstructed magnetic compass and sextant guy.
Blimey – when I first went to sea, the Master could order a seafarer to be hung at the yard arm . . . .
[Hadn’t actually happened for yonks & yonks & yonks [1865, maybe].
But – still . . . . . . . .]
My dad majored in math for undergrad. He remembers walking into a building at the start of a semester and seeing dozens of slide rules in the trash cans. He looked at them and could tell there was nothing wrong with them, so he was a bit confused. Turns out personal calculators had become cheap enough and powerful enough that all the math and science majors literally threw their slide rules in the trash.
He also used the school computer that took up one or more rooms. And punch cards. Kids and teens look at me like I am a fossil when I admit to having owned cassettes and using floppy disks that were actually floppy. They must think people his age came from the primordial ooze.
Ally
You got it.
A couple of generations – I computer time – is aeons in perceived time.
Auto
I am presently traveling. In my kit is a circular slide rule. Last used a couple of days ago for MPG calculation…
My retired military and airline pilot buddy loves to show off his venerable round pilot’s pocket slide rule. Does it all.
I was still in college when the first Bowmar “brain” , Sinclair and TI, calculators came out. My first was a TI SR-10 but it had no pi key; I quickly got an SR-50 when it came out.
Back then if anyone asked us “Why do you need a calculator?”, the answer easily included explaining such things as precision, speed, making fewer mistakes, no interpolation, and .. weight savings – elimination of lugging around trig and log tables.
If you ask a high school student that same question today their answer is – “Well DUH! … I need it for math class!”
OMG I love this site! One guy has a web site with info and pictures of hundreds of slide rules. Another posts a link to a site with a virtual slide rule. And dozens claiming they either still have one or more with other telling of their use pre-hand held calculator days. Amazing. You’re all nerds – and I mean that as the highest form of compliment!
I am sure an “environmental impact study” was successfully completed before proceeding. Unintended consequences – Afteral birds and insects, they dont vote or bribe.
Cams probably on the tower itself, not outlier mirrors which injure birds, destroy their survivability. In the desert, killing 6000 birds is like killing 60,000 at the beach, as a gross estimate. That is, it is vastly more proportionally harmful because the desert is so unproductive in the first place. It is like saying the heat only killed 3 tortoises that got among the array from radiant heat. Yeah, but there were only 3 in the first place.
Mosquito magnet – bring it to Rio stat – Zika problem solved.
Wrote about this. The burnt birds are called smokers by the staff. Dark trail origins. Staff reckons better than 1 an hour of daylight operation. So something very off with the USGS statement.
http://www.history-of-american-wars.com/images/800px-105d.jpg
“we are uncertain of the origin of dark trails following the birds.”
Ivanpah stinks! What a waste of money and wild life.
And landscape. Gov. Brown regards the plant as “exporting” pollution to the desert. Presumably the desert must be a good place for greens to dump pollution.
I should say that I truly dislike California for so many reasons, this is just another reason. Not that everyone in California is a hard-left liberal nutter.
John,
Note your qualification –
“Not that everyone in California is a hard-left liberal nutter.”
Agreed.
But – from this side of the pond – it certainly seems that a good few are, indeed, labelable as ‘hard-left liberal nutter’ – as you suggest.
Auto
I think this is horrific. There is NO excuse for this. In the name of “saving the planet” they are doing far, FAR more harm to the planet than ANY clean, quiet nuclear or natural gas fired power plant ever possibly could.
This needs to stop. Take the mirrors away and put them in cubicle farms so leftist narcissists can stare at themselves all day.
Im sure no bleeding heart, but I do have a soft spot for birds.
No No No, we can’t put all those mirrors in the same cubicle farm, heavens NO, if they happen to point at each other accidentally the “back radiation” could cause immense “warming” and the whole Earth could melt…… /sarc off
Yes indeed, fools should not be allowed to “play” with radiation physics, heck they could melt an entire planet or something. Reminds me of a co-worker when we were using a Neodymium Yag laser (about 10 watts) to test some photo sensitive crystals, he had a tie (for younger folks a fabric strip hung around a gentlemans neck and used to convey authority) hanging in the lab with multiple (and I mean multiple) burn holes through the fabric. I guess he was auditioning to be a “streamer”, way back in the 1980’s.
As an “advanced” amateur ornithologist (over 2000 bird species on 6 continents spotted) I find this massacre of birds totally obscene. And the notion that these fools are “saving the planet” is blood boiling.
Cheers, KevinK
Don’t forget the quantity of water to wash the mirrors and the trucks to drive the workers around to do the washing.
Lest we forget; the desert blows around a lot of the same stuff the mirrors are made of. A couple of serious blows could end up causing quite a few mirror replacements. If you were writing this stuff as fiction, you’d go broke. Yet, here we are in (sur)real life.
Beneath it all, code tech, the facility is natural gas anyway. Have to keep the boiler vessel hot overnight don’t you know.
Why in the world would the USGS essentially l1e to keep this failed, money-losing, negative-ROI-but-for-tax-and-rate-surcharges, wildlife slaughtering (for no net benefit), project going?
Commenter Christine exposes the Google, et. al. reason, here: http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2014/11/not-enough-sun-shining-at-ivanpah-solar.html?m=1#.VGq2aWdOXDe
(posted on March 17, 2016 on this WUWT thread: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/17/fail-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-not-producing-enough-electricity-may-be-forced-to-close/#comment-2168457 )
Bottom line: Money.
And, yes, the USGS IS essentially lying:
(Source: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/13/the-2-2-billion-bird-scorching-solar-project-at-californias-ivanpah-plant/ (Wall Street Journal Article))
Where is the wealthy philanthropist who will pay for a first-class documentary exposing this utterly ev1l situation and pay the price for airing it on primetime TV???
Step, up!
Not only does it have a negative ROI, but a massively negative EROI as well!
Good point Janice and just where is the National Audubon Society in all this?
The “green”-back industry and their environmental lobbies are failing to live up to their green pedigree. As if anyone believes that is actually possible. Just the mass ecological disruption, and the destruction of flora and fauna, necessary to host and operate the windmill and solar farms is evidence of the “green”-back blight, with intermittent returns. Save Bambi!
Not to appear helpful to these clueless bureaucrats or anything, but did anyone think of an actual solution to what must have been an obvious problem from the start? For instances, metal screening around the tower, steer birds AWAY from the facility by creating a sanctuary of sorts, or hiring a farmer who could put up a damned scarecrow, at least? LOL
An effigy of Al Gore should do the trick.
An effigy of al-Gore might attract crows trying to peck his eyes out…
That may be a solution to one of their problems. The real problems are the coverup and deception. The fiction that large-scale technologies are ecologically friendly. That the technology is renewable, rather than the driver. That intermittent drivers can be converted to a reliable source of usable energy without buffering. That these technologies are suitable in all contexts. The coverup and deception has caused severe misalignments in technological and economic development.
Ste1hen Abbott
Problem is, the birds are agile, mobile, and hostile. From a distance, the large mirror array looks like a lake, so it attracts birds from a long distance away, and from high altitudes. (Even a 200 foot high fence – “only” twice the height of the golf course nets you may see around driving ranges – is ridiculously expensive and useless against birds flying 800 feet up.) The birds WANT to get in and above the array, then will be flying low to try to “land” (or fish) near the “water” that they’ve aiming at for many minutes.
And right above the array is where they will hit the invisible heat beams going towards the center tower. So, you can’t shield the towers, can’t fence the array.
Must kill birds for CO2 savings to create very, very expensive electricity 9-12 hours a day. (The thing runs a little at night using molten salt, but only at reduced rates part-time.) Right?
The thing runs a little at night using molten salt
======================
nope. that was the plan, but someone got the math wrong. turns out they need natural gas, lots of natural gas, to keep the plant in operation.
which in the end makes perfect economic sense for the owners. what you have here is a solar assisted natural gas drive power plant, selling power to the grid at solar rates. the big loses are of course the public who are forced to pay higher prices for something they could get much cheaper if only the government would stop helping.
This metal screening would be opaque to birds, but optically transmissive to photons.
Do you have in mind a design for such a screen ??
g
Transparent aluminum!
I wonder if mounting a cowling on top of the tower would help mitigate this. It would be cone shaped and extending out and down, such that the it doesn’t block the light reflected back from the mirrors to the collector, but extends down far enough such that it blocks birds flying at or above the collector height. The area closest to the collector is where the beams are most intense, so the cowling would not need to be so big as to significantly block the mirror array from the sun, though of course it would cast a shadow, so some reduction of efficiency would be expected.
The way Ivanpah is designed they have arranged for the sun to move around in the sky during the day, and with the present optical constraints, the shadows also move around, so just where do you put this screening cone, and how would you move it around ??
The focused image of the sun would be around 12 feet in diameter plus the size of the mirrors which I think is about six meters on a side so something like a 30 foot diameter sphere.
G
It would not move around, it would be fixed, like a Chinese straw hat. yes it would cast a shadow, as does the tower itself, but overall a very small percentage of the array would be impacted. It comes down to what % of efficiency loss are birds lives worth? If it was a nuclear plant, one dead bird would shut the whole place down!
I’m not at all concerned about a shadow cast by the tower, or by any conical screen to keep birds away.
But every one of those mirrors is trying to send a solar beam back to that tower; at all times during the sunlit day, and they do so from a 360 degree circle completely surrounding the tower.
So there is no shape for a screen that can keep birds away from the tower, and still allow full illumination by every one of the 37,000 mirrors or whatever the number is.
If the optical design of the mirror array was in any way rational; that is designed by somebody skilled in non imaging optics, then it would not completely surround the tower in the first place. In that case, it would be possible to shield a good part of the tower from birds.
In particular , the number of mirrors on the south side of the tower; that is the side where the sun lies, for 100 percent of the daylit hours, should be reduced.
The appropriate number of mirrors on the south side of the tower is ZERO.
In designing such an array, every single mirror needs to justify (economically and energy efficiency) its very existence. Each added mirror and its associated custom steering mechanics and computer hardware must generate its own energy payback number, or that mirror should not be added to the array.
At least half of those mirrors cannot justify their own existence, on either energy output or economical grounds.
G
george e. I agree with you, half the number of mirrors are needed in static set-up, can even a smaller array on tracks just not follow the sun from dawn to dusk? ( the mirrors could be even larger than the current size to be even more stronger and efficient?)
No wonder why they don’t allow visitors at Ivanpah. 17 birds killed daily is a huge number for a desert eco-system.
But no evidence of dead birds has been found.
Yea…because they are vaporized!
…D’oh !!
No so. Birds with burnt feathers have been shown. It in their eco. impact report.
You can’t make a Socialist omelet without breaking eggs.
But don’t the burning birds release CO2?
I’d BET the EIS didn’t talk about THAT!
Not to mention soot…
Anyone do a calculation of the rate of dead birds per kilowatt hour for Ivanpah v. bird choppers?
No greenies were harmed during the filming , sigh , what a shame .
Once upon a time the greenies would chain themselves to anything that harmed defenceless birds and animals , any chance they could stand on their principles again .
” much of the surveillance was nighttime thermal and infrared imaging of birds and bats).” ??
….Of what use would “night time” images be ?? That is not when it is operating…
Well it cathes fire if you operate it with the sun shining, so they prefer to run it at night, and then switch over to natural gas at sunrise.
G
Utterly evil? Horrific? More likely, overwrought! Somebody needs to take a chill pill. All forms of power production and transmission have negative effects, including on birds. Power lines and my radiator grill have dispatched a number of my feathered friends right in front of me. (The most spectacular was a Canadian Goose that hit the high power lines behind my house. Yow!)
As a skeptic of almost everything, including what I believe, I’m always amused by the hyperbolic certainty of some of those commenting..Oh, to be so sure in this murky world. I guess alarmists come in all flavors..
Perfection is the enemy of good. Reducing risk is usually the most reasonable strategy. This is how new technologies develop. Someday when the oil, gas and coal are gone, the sun will still be shining. Let’s continue the transition. Our descendants will thank us.
Did the Canada goose that hit your local power line actually short across two phases or just go poof! from the impact? Birds can happily hang out on power lines all day.
They can hang out on one medium voltage power line. They don’t hang out on high voltage lines (corona discharge), they generally undergo a steam explosion if they contact two power lines.
Flocks of them use the pond in the park behind my house. Formations of them return from their exploits at twilight. Their honking and the descending “V” against the darkening sky is a real pleasure for us here in suburbia. The crap they leave everywhere, not so much. While this was the first death I experienced, other neighbors say it has happened a number of times. Apparently they weigh enough that when they hit the top wire in flight it bends it close enough to the next wire to cause an arc. It’s pretty spectacular in an automobile-race-crash kind of way. Fortunately, Canadian Geese here in the Bay Area are pest-numerous, many having abandoned their natural migrations due to out temperate climate and tasty grass.
..How do power lines kill birds ?? Even if they did, how do you think the power from these bird fryers get to customers ?? Oh yea…POWER LINES …D’oh !
Well John we agree with you that all forms of power generation have negative effects.
But this gizmo is not a form of power generation so it doesn’t get a free pass on negatives effects.
G
John,
Building “power plants” with negative a EROI does not help our descendants. To the contrary, it assures them a dark, cold future.
Paul,
I remember one of the first digital watches. One of my co-workers at National Semiconductor in the early 70s proudly displayed it to us. He paid $250 for it. Within a decade they were giving them away at gas stations for a full tank of gas. Today’s expensive proto-types are tomorrow’s disposable, mass-produced commodities. That’s the way technology works. Competition and the drive to profit by lowering the cost through innovation are incredibly powerful forces. Complaining about the defects and downfalls of a technology can be useful in guiding their development. I welcome it, Thinking we won’t solve the problems and therefore must stick with the old ways is “buggy whip factory” thinking.
I was a very early adopter of solar power at my offgrid mountain ranch.Having real-life experience with the technology I’ve often been critical of the puffery of advocates and “first adopters” in their economic analyses; online, in letters to the editor, and at cocktail parties. However, my confidence that this is an important part of our energy future is growing,.as many of its negatives are being dealt with.
The horse transportation advocates in the early 1900s cursed the smoking, belching, noisy, dangerous and very expensive early autos. Yet these days, when I jump in my mean machine; fast, quiet, efficient, and powerful to drive wherever I want, whenever I want, I don’t worry much about the 35,000 unfortunates that died last year, except how I can not join them. Some day the internal combustion engine too will be thrown on the horse manure pile of history too. Our descendants will snicker at our quaintly troglodytic love affair with the technology of contained explosions of hydrocarbons. Someday I might be lucky enough to hear, “Is that really true, great-great-great-great grandpa? You blew up stuff to get around? Should I wipe the drool off your chin before you answer?”
John,
The fundamental problem with solar power (besides indeterminacy) is that is is not a dense enough power source at the surface of the Earth. In order to get grid scale power from it you need to collect it over vast areas. No mater how you do it, that requires a lot of materials, and those take energy to produce, transport, and assemble. Not to mention the amount of energy required to maintain these massive structures. Like FTL, there is no technological solution even imagined that does not violate the known laws of physics. So until we discover a way to manufacture and maintain such huge structures at energy costs that are at least 10x less than currently possible, it doesn’t make sense to even attempt to build grid scale solar power plants, any more than FTL drives.
John, I’m very happy that you were an early adopter of Solar (PV ?) at your off grid mountain ranch.
I’m also very happy for another acquaintance of mine who runs his off grid mountain ranch diesel tractor on used donut cooking fat that he gets from his local donut shop.
I live in the heart of Apple’s Silicon Valley, and there aren’t enough donut shops in all of Silicon Valley (I think I know where every one is) to run say a diesel VW for each family in the valley.
I’m less happy that My government raided MY bank account using their tax whip, to get free money to help with your purchase of your early off grid PV solar array. I’d be really cheering if you paid the full cost yourself.
In a free country I like to think anyone can spend THEIR money on anything they choose that is not destructive to others. I would just like to have the same privilege myself, so I could spend MY money on things I would choose to do.
Now Silicon valley sports a whole lot of PV solar arrays on mostly roofs erected specially for that as in parking areas. I’d like to think those were also paid for by those who claim to own them.
Robbing Peter to satisfy Paul’s fetish for early adoption, is not how a free society works.
I’ve spent 56 years helping to develop some of those things that make modern hi tech living economical and energy efficient.
If you were designing and building LED devices and products prior to 1966, then you probably know a whole lot more about them than I do.
A solar PV Expert (a real one) Professor at UC Berkeley, once observed: “To make an efficient solar cell, you first have to make an efficient LED . ” And he can explain why that is.
I use the very same optical principles and methods in the design of efficient solid state lighting, as were earlier used for efficient Solar energy collection. (Both PV and thermal collection). I happen to know the chap who is the world’s leading authority on Non-imaging Optics (he virtually invented the whole subject and technology), and I don’t have the gall to even ask him for his thoughts on Ivanpah.
He’s a very nice and mild mannered chap, not given to outburst of expletives; and I would hate to give him cause to change.
So John; enjoy your early adopted inefficient solar array, but one thing you need to understand.
MOORE’S LAW does not apply to Solar energy collection.
The single biggest advance in semi-conductor technology under Moore’s Law comes from making devices with critical dimensions as small as 20 nm or so, so you can put billions of devices in your shirt pocket.
Solar energy collectors are measured in terms of acres, not nano-meters.
So don’t hold your breath while waiting for the little big breakthrough in solar energy gathering.
G
Camera angles is wot dunnit. If you’ll note, the majority of hits are to the background at 9:00-11:00 o’clock. The birds on the RHS of the video are fried before they can enter the frame. The critters being fried behind the tower that blocks the 2/3 of the frame can’t be seen. I did note one bird that flew into the foreground of the view (last segment was it?) but came from below. It skedaddled as soon as it neared the height of the concentrated solar rays.
Anyhow, that’s how I’m calling it for the posted video.
(N.B. They can’t put a camera on the tower in a better location because it would get fried. A better solution would be telephoto shots from the four sides of the tower with complete coverage of the ‘Colonel Sanders’ zone.
The ‘Colonel Sanders Zone!’ It is of course very sad and upsetting that this is happening but that made me laugh, H.R!
H.R. — “Colonel Sanders’ zone” — too perfect. — Eugene WR Gallun
Why not RADAR?
How would you like this to pass over you while driving ??
https://www.facebook.com/XinhuaNewsAgency/videos/1342644819096292/
..I guess No Lives Matter !
[Not a bad idea. Until a car parks on either of the two rail lines on the road. Or an accident occurs. Better in the Tips Forum though. .mod]
Trucks trying to pass under too low bridges create havoc all the time. This is such an accident waiting to happen.
Eugene WR Gallun
Many of us have been aware of this for nearly a year….. as seen in other videos posted at “SaveTheEagles” etc. This $3.8 billion project was heavily supported by the Obama administration in addition to Google and the State of California. The conventional mirrors in use are semi-transparent for solar IR radiation, i.e., limited to 45% efficiency from the get go. The facility is too far north in latitude to work to the target design efficiency. Last time I drove by the hot solar towers were generating thermals which became dust devils and mild tornadoes dropping sand back on to the mirrors. As mentioned in the above article, the commercial aircraft pilots have issues with solar glare affecting their eyesight at times.
Seems that the Google and Government appointed project managers for this job did not allow Bechtel to perform a proper FEED – Front-Eng Engineering Design study so as to gain a solid understanding of what would likely happen in accordance with the laws of physics etc. Moore’s law does not fit the bill here! 😉
And more recently, due to a computer issue and/or the misalignment of mirrors at one of the three towers, the tower was partially incinerated including the electrical cables……. costing millions and setting back production by another year….
Maybe politicians should stick to what they know and let the Engineer’s do their jobs without overbearing interference. I have also heard that other engineering firms bid extra high as a ways and means to avoid the problems and headaches of working under inexperienced project managers on a massive scope pilot project.
I wonder if the union workers who repair it have a stipulation in their contrac? No work during daylight hours, period.
Can you imagine for a moment the media carry on if 6000+ birds were killed by an oil spill. The hand wringing and empathy would be overflowing, little oily carcasses would be laid out for the media, oil companies would be ranted at and sued. Sacrifice them to the CO2 God and? crickets ….