Posted on 02/15/2014 10:11:56 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Ivanpah solar-power facility is controversial because it “costs about four times as much as a conventional natural-gas–fired plant but will produce far less electricity.” Once that electricity goes online, customers can expect to pay twice as much for it, if not more. No one knows for sure, because the utilities and state regulators involved haven’t disclosed that information.
Oh yeah, and the plant is apparently scorching a bunch of birds to death.
Over the past several months, one of the companies behind the Ivanpah plant, BrightSource Energy, has been finding “dozens” of dead birds in the area — falcons, hawks, warblers, sparrows, grebes — some of which have suffered burns to their feathers.
That was just during the testing and construction phase. State regulators had expected a fair number of birds to die once Ivanpah became fully operational, but the deaths so far came as something of a surprise. The birds appear to have been scorched by the intense heat (up to 1,000° F) created by sunlight reflecting off the facility’s nearly 350,000 giant mirrors.
Government biologists have, ironically enough, raised concerns about the environmental impact of massive green-energy projects such as Ivanpah, noting that protected species such as golden eagles could be at risk. They think the birds may be drawn to the solar mirrors because their reflection resembles that of a lake.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups have complained that in the federal government’s rush to build massive green-energy projects with taxpayer dollars, it has bypassed or ignored longstanding regulations meant to protect wildlife as well as cultural artifacts. In some cases, local Indian tribes have urged the Obama administration to end its “frantic pursuit” of solar projects in the Mojave Desert that have encroached on ancient burial grounds.
In 2012, construction on the Genesis Solar Energy Project in Riverside Valley, Calif., ran into trouble when a number of kit foxes — a protected species under state law — died after developing distemper. Biologists suspected that stress brought on by the disturbance in their natural habitat had made the foxes susceptible to the disease. It was the first known outbreak of its kind. Genesis had been the recipient of an $852 million taxpayer-backed loan.
Thanks to the proliferation of wind farms in California, golden eagles have been dropping like flies — chopped out of the sky by giant turbine blades spinning as fast as 200 miles per hour. Bald eagles have also died. Although it’s technically illegal to kill these birds, the Obama administration has assured wind-power companies, many of which are recipients of federal grants or loans, that they won’t face prosecution. And the slaughter continues.
— Andrew Stiles is a political reporter for National Review Online.
Once a couple of homosexuals climb up on this thing and get scorched to death, they’ll close the joint down.
What happens when the “green jobs of the future” get translated from the liberal fantasy of frolicking unicorns in golden fountains to cold hard reality.
Earth Stewards From HeLL!!
Lies , deceptions, carcasses, more hooey than you can shake a hockey stick at ala Michael Mann.
Mindless robots supporting the death and destruction of God’s creatures, all for their personal agenda advancements.
In another article they state that to build it cost 2.2 billion dollars and that they were excited to say it covered over 140,000 customers.
Well, I’m excited to say that cost each customer over 1,571,428 each to have their “green” power. That’s not counting yearly maintenance and overhead of the power plant.
Add that to the bill too each month. WHAT A SAVINGS? /SARC
In The Silent Spring, you can hear the whirr of windmills.
Mirrors in the desert? What are deserts know for having lots of? Heat and dust.
For those mirrors to be efficient they will have to be washed frequently; most likely at least weekly. They will also have to be washed carefully because scratches will cause a loss of reflective efficiency.
What do you wash mirrors with to remove lots of gritty dust? Typically soap and water.
What are deserts known for having little of? Water.
Speaking of water; this solar plant is a boiler steam plant that boils water to make steam to turn a turbine, that means it takes water to make this power plant work. Water is scarce in deserts, that means expensive.
Steam plants also have to deal with waste heat. That usually requires one of two things; either a large body of water to dump warm water in to (which I don’t think you will find in a desert) or evaporative heat exchangers that use cooling towers to dump the waste heat in to the atmosphere.
So on the whole this power plant makes no sense to me at all because it seems to me to be designed not to produce electric power at a profit but to waste money on a gigantic scale.
1,571,428 cents, or $15,714.28 per customer.
New LIB-moron theme: Kill all animals as they shade the mirrors.
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