Posted on 03/20/2016 5:49:47 PM PDT by Lorianne
A federally backed, $2.2 billion solar project in the California desert isnt producing the electricity it is contractually required to deliver to PG&E Corp., which says the solar plant may be forced to shut down if it doesnt receive a break Thursday from state regulators.
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, owned by BrightSource Energy Inc., NRG Energy Inc. NRG, +0.79% and Alphabet Inc.s GOOG, +0.02% GOOGL, +0.15% Google, uses more than 170,000 mirrors mounted to the ground to reflect sunlight to 450-foot-high towers topped by boilers that heat up to create steam, which in turn is used to generate electricity.
But the unconventional solar-thermal project, financed with $1.5 billion in federal loans, has riled environmentalists by killing thousands of birds, many of which are burned to death and has so far failed to produce the expected power.
(Excerpt) Read more at wattsupwiththat.com ...
They should have bought panels from Solyndra.
oh wait, no, oh well
darn, it happened again.
Next time the bampster will get it right.
Or not. Hey, he was well intentioned,
that’s what matters.
How does an ignorant, uncapitalized serf get in on this scam ? I will guarantee a trillion kilowatts per whatever unit of time you need for a guaranteed loan of only 500 million dollars in small unserialized twenty dollar bills. I will contribute 1/5 of this loan to whatever campaign/charity/PAC/whatever is required. Thanks.
It’s actually a new type of cremation oven for pro-life Christians.
The plant was obsolete when it was built. This is always the problem with rapidly advancing technology. Because if the investors wait for technology to plateau, nothing ever gets built.
All it does is heat water to spin the turbine, so mornings and clouds cause problems, but they will continue to improve the operations and expand output as time goes by. In the meantime they use nat gas to supplement the solar.
Crescent Dunes solar plant heats the molten salts, which can heat the water or be stored as heat.
Solana solar plant heats the DowTherm oil which can heat the water to generate and/or heat the molten salts to store the heat.
Antelope Valley is a photovoltaic solar plant.
Thank you Ben. I understand your thoughts on this. I appreciate it.
Awesome!
That’s right. Which is why I asked the rhetorical question, to make that point.
Solyndra is just the first of several Obama campaign funding operations by Board of Directors of crony capitalist/government loan backed “new energy” companies.
Keep the faith, DoughtyOne.
I appreciate the point. Thank you.
You too...
please let it be so!
Likewise. I'm not the smartest tool in the toolshed, but I know the sun shines best at mid-day, and best in summer, on days when the sun is not obscured by clouds. And it takes energy to redirect the mirror positioning for less than ideal sunlight at the 7 hours that are not mid-day. At least with coal or natural gas, you can generate energy 24 hours a day - reliably. So this solar power plant naturally allows the boilers to cool off when the sun is not shining, and they need to be reheated daily to a boil by burning fossil fuels. Not so smart engineering.
If it were only the one plant. Seems to be a systemic issue with solar thermal. In general, industrial solar optimum locations are removed geographically from the end user, requiring substantial super-voltage transmission lines to reach a customer.
http://watchdog.org/250161/solyndra-loans-abengoa-2/
https://www.iea.org/publications/freepublications/publication/csp_roadmap.pdf
But NO ONE will be held accountable for this FU. It’s only the people’s money that got wasted and that is always justified ever after taxation was instituted.
“All it does is heat water to spin the turbine, so mornings and clouds cause problems, but they will continue to improve the operations and expand output as time goes by. “
So, they’ll fix the cloud problem, the morning problem, the night time problem, the dust on the 170,000 mirrors problem and the motors breaking on the 170,000 mirrors as time goes by?
There is a very good reason private investors didn’t build these green plants THEY DON”T WORK.
Can you post the google earth link ?
Let there be darkness.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.