Posted on 02/14/2014 8:11:25 AM PST by lbryce
The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind.
It could also be the last.
Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new projects have been coming online in recent months — many in the last quarter of 2013 — experts say fewer are beginning construction and not all of those under development will be completed.
“I don’t think that we’re going to see large-scale solar thermal plants popping up, five at a time, every year in the U.S. in the long-term — it’s just not the way it’s going to work,” said Matthew Feinstein, a senior analyst at Lux Research.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh come on now - you can figure that out.
This is what happens when elite liberal “climate scientists” run the DOE. Another $1.6 billion cluster-blank.
“These damn fools.”
Government subsidy, government guaranteed loan, high salaries. You buy and pay for your nice house, buy gold, get a really nice car, then when the project goes bankrupt, which it will if they set things up correctly, the folks at the top keep the car, house, gold, land, personal investments.
Maybe not set for life, but very comfortable after only a few years work.
Rest assured that the guys at Solyndra and A123 Batteries are not working at Wal Mart to make ends meet.
Looking at the construction cost and expected power output, I doubt they’ll power at any commercially acceptable rate, which is the bankruptcy guarantee.
It was positively mind-boggling! The size of the facility, the enormous acreage that it covers in which every available bit of space is covered with solar panels in two separate enormous circular configurations, with the control operations in the center of the circles is indeed jaw dropping, a facility that must be seen to be believed, especially as you drop in on it from the very edges of the atmosphere.
I want to express my utmost appreciation for having informed us of it because it is like nothing ever seen. Thanks again very much.
If a bird is killed in flight and plummets crashing into one of the mirrors, how much will it cost? How often will this happen?
Meanwhile here in Cow Hampshire we have a fight going on to bring Hydro Electric power down from Quebec into NH and southern New England. It is billion dollar project that will create hundreds of jobs called the Northern Pass. The power comes from the dams on the St. Lawrence seaway and other hydro electric projects in Quebec. It does not add any CO2 to the atmosphere and can be produced 24/7 for about $.001/KW. However, because the people up in northern NH do not want high tension power lines in their backyard(I can’t blame them)the project has been a big fight backed by the environmental groups. They will probably have to bury some of the lines to get it approved. There is only about 30 miles of right of way they are fighting over. In most of the state it will travel over existing right of ways. Also, there are absolutely no endangered birds, frogs, bats, grasshoppers or fish that will be hurt in any way.
Environmentalists protest anything that impedes the flow of Arab oil.
“Hey, you’re quite good at figurin’ all that stuff out. You do that all by yourself?”
Naw. I got a herd of Lesbian Dance Theorists to do the calculations for me.
No gubbamint program is ever a failure-it’s just ‘underfunded’ !
“it would take a mere 3400 hundred such plants, covering 17,000 square miles”
Probably increase by 50% if all transportation were to be converted to electric.
I have the feeling that if solar power has a future it will not be in the form of these huge plants, but more likely via solar panels installed in individual buildings. Even then, it might only be supplementary power that needs to be augmented by traditional power sources. Maybe somebody here knows what the life-cycle cost of such an arrangement would be compared to current practice. So far, many of the highly-touted experimental “green” buildings are enormously expensive.
You mentioned above ground versus buried power lines. I never could understand why in areas that are prone to strong winds and tornadoes etc., why they persisted in having above ground lines that had to be continuously replaced after bad weather. My neighbor who was an engineer for the power company told me the cost of continuously replacing downed above ground power lines was much cheaper on a 10-20 year expense basis than to bury the lines. Result is, the users are inconvenienced by a power outage for days because the power companies save money by not burying the lines. Same old story...”FOLLOW THE MONEY”. I guess I am just cynical.
Godzilla movies would not be the same if they had underground cables. Gamera movies, too.
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