Posted on 02/09/2015 3:26:24 PM PST by Olog-hai
One of the nation’s largest solar projects was dedicated Monday in the Riverside County desert, as California rushes to expand its use of green power to meet the state’s renewable energy requirements.
The dedication of the Desert Sunlight Solar Farm comes about a month after Gov. Jerry Brown called on the state to increase renewable electricity use to 50 percent by 2030, up from the current goal of 33 percent by 2020. […]
The plant, which uses photovoltaic panels, is expected to produce enough power for about 160,000 homes. Constructed on about 4,000 acres of federal land, it is owned by NextEra Energy Resources, GE Energy Financial Services and Sumitomo Corporation of America. First Solar is building and operating the plant, the California Energy Commission said. …
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Another big waste of money
Who gets subsidized for this?
I understand that you can get freshly incinerated endangered and protected migratory fowl in the gift shop.
So if the taxpayers fund it, electricity costs should drop dramatically once the initial construction costs are paid off right?.../s
This is the bird killing plant, isn’t it?
Hopefully, citizens will be allowed to keep any roasted birds that fall into their yards.
I love the smell of boondoggle in the morning...
If this thing goes belly up, we taxpayers are on the hook.
Prices should be lower—in the daytime /S
Reason did an amazing expose of the incredible regulatory and law-enforcement pressures being brought to bear on those independence-minded desert dwellers out there.
Ya know, the people with cheap houses with a beat-up freezer out back, and a chevy up on blocks..?
The code-enforcement cops show up, all nice at first, and then they CONDEMN the property for any measure of silly code violations they conjure up —could be ANYTHING.
Some kind of spooky project to kick people off their property, a lot like the cattle-ranch fiasco in Southern Nevada about a year ago.
Really amazing Big Brother shenanigans.
People think it has something to do with the stupid Bullet-Train project, maybe.
But I see maybe it has more to do with Big Bro & the Commie Chinese.
According to the agency, the Bureau of Land Management worked with Desert Sunlight and other groups to reduce the project's size from a proposed 19,000 acres. The agency said it required Desert Sunlight to provide funds for more than 7,500 acres of habitat for desert tortoises and other sensitive species to help offset the effect on the environment.
Say what you want about the viability of this plant, it is just amazing how much havoc government agencies inflict on businesses. From an 19,000 acre plan, only 4,000 acres wound up being incorporated into the business plan.
You can kill a bunch of birds for solar energy, but you can’t kill one smelt to irrigate farm land.
These are solar cells. These are not mirrors directed at a central collector. You’re referencing another project mentioned in the report.
This isn’t it.
Well, let’s see: if we build these plants all over and put all the homes underground underneath them, we can convert to get a substantial portion of our power with solar — maybe as much as 10%. But where will we put the windfarms in order to kill the birds that don’t get roasted? And where will the children play? Cue Mustapha Cat Stevens.
Look at it on the bright (sic) side.
Israel will get to sell the plant a pile of robotic window washers to keep those panels clean.
And China gets to export a boat load of these solar collectors.
Housing units in CA in 2013 = 13,791,262
Solar Plants (160k houses per) needed = 86.2
Acreage per plant = 4000
Total acreage needed for all residences = 344,781.6
Square miles of desert habitat destroyed = 538.7
An amount of land almost equal to Marin County just North of S.F. needs to be destroyed in order to power residences and that’s not including manufacturing, industrial, office, etc. bldgs.
Also, expect air quality to take a direct hit as not one of the solar facilities in our area engages in any form of dust abatement...bastards.
One freak hail storm could wipe that place out. Hehehe.
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