Posted on 08/18/2014 9:08:45 PM PDT by Innovative
Death estimates range from 1,000 to 28,000 per year
The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border.
Unlike many other solar plants, the Ivanpah plant does not generate energy using photovoltaic solar panels. Instead, it has more than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door. Together, they cover 1,416 hectares.
Each mirror collects and reflects solar rays, focusing and concentrating solar energy from their entire surfaces upward onto three boiler towers, each looming up to 40 stories high. The solar energy heats the water inside the towers to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbc.ca ...
It might be simplistic, and I certainly don’t mean it to sound callous to the bird community, but does this mean that they would realize greater efficiency by adjusting something to put this point of doom more toward the middle of the boiler instead of its present location in random space?
It's actually a very large plot, though virtually useless for anything else, maybe 1, 2, or 3 miles square. Thousands and thousands of reflectors, which I concur likely concentrate some serious solar power.
AKA 5 and a half square miles...of course it was dry dusty desert before.
This kind of facility belongs in space or on the moon, or in the middle of the pacific.
problem is that the birds think that the mirror surface is a lake....and get fried flying towards it...
BBQ'd Spotted Owl...yummy.
You want to smell the irony... Put “Ivanpah Dry Lake” into google maps, go to satellite view and back out a bit. Just a mile or so east of this huge plant in the desert you see ... a golf course. This is 20 or 30 miles from nowhere. So in one picture you get to see something the environmentalists and green energy types are no-doubt congratulating themselves on...and a colossal waste of precious water. Hey, don’t worry about the drought, or the falling reservoir levels along the Colorado river...
“How do you operate it at night?”
The Ivanpah website explains that. This type of solar power generates enough heat to continue to produce power for several hours after sunset. I think it might be eight hours.
I’ve driven past this monstrosity a few times. It will definitely blind you! An engineering marvel, but a really dumb idea. It fries birds and blinds pilots and drivers.
And I suspect the actual long-term costs will be a multiple of what its proponents are predicting.
“My only other consideration would be if these plants are actually profitable.
If they can power 100,000 homes with this, I’m okay with it.”
I was thinking it would be better if the power was available at night so people can see in the dark. But I guess candles can be used for that./S
Well see, there you go setting too high of standards. LOL
Had this not been designated politically correct “green energy,”
the greenies would have shut this facility down by now.
I get the idea that the engineers were fully aware of this dynamic long ago, but they had already cashed the check...
Thanks for the insight.
Does each collector cell generate enough energy to zap the birds, or do they have to be in the proximity of the focal point, the master collector?
Not my project, but I read about it in the company's newsletter.
An untrained observer would conclude from our PR materials that this project is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
This is a fund raising opportunity.
Get doves, quails, and pheasants donated from Ducks Unlimited. Bring homeless kids between 4 and 10 years old out there. Give them all nets.
Turn the birds loose, and the kids can catch dinner, already cooked, in their little nets.
The democrats can sign them up to vote as they leave.
Mr. Kilowatt can be out there signing autographs, along with Elmo. Elmo will be in that get up that Hannibal Lecter was in, since he likes them younger than he ought to.
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