solar power – Page 4 – Outrun Change

More on the environmental and ecological devastation caused by solar power

I’ve been remiss in my coverage of the damage caused by wind and solar power. Have lot of articles to discuss. Will get started with articles I’ve accumulated on wing toasting solar power.

2/24 – Investors Business Daily – Crispy Critters – Nevada Solar Plant Not For The Birds – The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonapah, Nevada is scheduled to open in March. During a test run, it fried 130 birds. Here is a mental exercise to understand the lack of outrage you have noticed: Continue reading “More on the environmental and ecological devastation caused by solar power”

What energy will provide the power to keep our prosperous lives prosperous? Fossil fuels or wind & solar?

Entertaining contrast of two articles I saw on Friday. Each points to a different future. Which world view will make life better for more people all over the planet? Which energy source will provide prosperity for the most people?

Here’s a hint:

(From Carpe Diem. Used with permission.)

3/13 – Matt Ridley at Wall Street Journal – Fossil Fuels Will Save the World (Really) / There are problems with oil, gas and coal, but their benefits for people—and the planet—are beyond dispute

Article was feature on front page of the Review section on Saturday.

I will talk about this article a lot. In the meantime, here’s my paraphrase of just a few major points: Continue reading “What energy will provide the power to keep our prosperous lives prosperous? Fossil fuels or wind & solar?”

Risk of harm is bad. Certainty of harm is good. The disconnect in assessing risks of getting the energy we need.

Sometimes you just have to scratch your head wondering about the fantasmagorical world inhabited by some regulators. A good dose of ridicule might bring them back to earth, but the chances are small. I’ll give it a try anyway.

1/14 – ReWire – Report: Fracking Imperils Southern California Residents, Wildlife – A report from the California Department of Oil, Gas & Geothermal Resources concluded that any fracking in three specific oil fields in the state would have

“significant and unavoidable” environmental damage”.

There would be significant risk of damage to:

Air quality
Wildlife
Public and worker safety
Increased greenhouse emissions
recreational use of surrounding lands
transportation and traffic problems

This, in a state that is building wind turbines as fast as the rare earth minerals can be mined and the concrete can be poured to get the slice-and-dice blades spinning.

This, in a state that has a huge solar plant that is killing unknown and intentionally undercounted numbers of protected & migratory birds and wants to build many more such wing-toaster facilities.

Continue reading “Risk of harm is bad. Certainty of harm is good. The disconnect in assessing risks of getting the energy we need.”

Wind and solar not viable without massive direct subsidies

The only way that wing-toaster and slice-and-dice power plants are economically viable is with massive federal subsidies. They just can’t proceed without heavy taxpayer funding. Here are a few of the recent articles I’ve seen making that point:

1/23 – ReWire – Developer Won’t Build Controversial Solar Plant Without Tax Incentives–

Continue reading “Wind and solar not viable without massive direct subsidies”

Update on wind and solar plants in California and North Dakota – solar #34

A few updates on a few slice/dice/fry projects, as one observer calls them:

California

11/4 – ReWire – “Dead” Solar Plant May Rise From Grave – The joint owners of the Palen Solar Electric Generating System pulled their plan recently. One of the owners (Abengoa Solar) will buy out the other (Brightstar), revise the design, and resubmit their plan. That is the announced goal. The wing-toasting facility will be redesigned with one tower and the ability to store electricity using molten salt.

This would be Palen plan #3. The first was parabolic solar. The second was 3 warming towers. This will be only one solar collecting tower plus storage capacity.

10/30 – ReWire – Wind Project Pulled from San Bernardino Mountains – Continue reading “Update on wind and solar plants in California and North Dakota – solar #34”

Update on solar and wind power – solar #33

More on the economic, environmental, and ecological devastation caused by solar and wind power. This post discusses flaws in the master plan to develop wind and solar in the California desert.

Update 11/18: Chris Clarke informs us that You Have More Time to Comment on That Desert Energy Plan. The deadline for comment has been extended from January 9 to February 23, which is an additional six weeks. He points out you better get started. At 8,000 pages, you need to get through 800 pages a day to make sure your comment is thorough and responsive enough that the regulators can’t just throw away your letter.

10/23 – ReWire – California’s Renewable Energy Plan Misses the Point of Renewable Energy – Chris Clarke shreds what logic and rational thought went into the plans to develop the California desert into a massive solar and wind farm.

The 6,000+ page Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan is essentially an EIR to develop the desert starting from east of LA and San Diego all the way to the Nevada border. Previously mentioned this plan here.

Mr. Clarke explains the goal of the plan is to develop 20,000 MW of renewable energy in the desert by 2020.

Mr. Clarke says that is equivalent to an additional Continue reading “Update on solar and wind power – solar #33”

Ivanpah update – solar #32

The huge collecting solar power plant in the California desert near the Nevada border, Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, is in distress as an energy producer and as a business deal.

Output in the first eight months of operation is about one-third of what was expected.

Project negotiated a delay of its first two loan payments and is requesting federal grants to pick up the tab for those payments plus one more.

In the accounting world when a borrower doesn’t make payments in accordance with the original loan agreement it is called a troubled debt restructuring. In finance that is called a workout. In banking that is an impaired loan. In politics and the media world we call that a bailout.

9/23 – Wall Street Journal – Ivanpah Solar Project Owners Delay Repaying Loans, Documents Say – NRG, Google, BrightSource Said to Delay Paying Back Loans – Project was built with a $1.6B guaranteed loan as part of the total reported price tag of $2.2B.

Continue reading “Ivanpah update – solar #32”

Update on solar power – #31

(Photo by James Ulvog; one of three towers is in operation.)

Here are a few articles on the down side of solar energy: more categories of environmental damage / bulldozer moving forward a 6,000+ page plan for desert use / late coverage of cancelling another environmental disaster.

9/29 – PA Pundits International – Deroy Murdock – Earth-Friendly Energy Is Anything But – Article surveys the devastation caused by wind and solar power. In addition to many issues I’ve discussed on this blog, the article points out two more.

Continue reading “Update on solar power – #31”

Good news for birds – proposed plan for a more dangerous solar project pulled by owner

The owner of the proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System in the California desert that would have been more damaging to birds that the Ivanpah facility has withdrawn their plans. That according to reporting by Chris Clarke at ReWire: Massive Solar Power Project for California Desert Scrapped.

Continue reading “Good news for birds – proposed plan for a more dangerous solar project pulled by owner”

Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25

(Photo by James Ulvog)

(Update: this is actually solar #27. Oops.)

One of the entertainingly deceptive arguments defending the number of birds killed by wind turbines and solar farms is that cats kill far more birds every year.

Various reports suggest upwards of a billion birds nationwide are taken out by cats each year. The intentionally misleading argument is essentially that the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of birds taken out by renewable energy don’t count because outside cats are responsible for so much more damage in the avian world.

Funding spay & neuter clinics as mitigation for dead migratory birds

So that you don’t think I’m making this up, check out the AP’s Big Story report: Emerging Solar Plants Scorch Birds in Mid-Air.

This major AP report discusses the thousands of birds killed at the Ivanpah facility south of the Nevada-California border on the way to Las Vegas.

Over 300,000 heliostats focus sunlight on three towers 400 feet in the air. The temperature around the towers reportedly hits 700 degrees.

Nobody knows how many birds are killed by the towers and die on site. Current methodology for tallying those fatalities is seriously undercounting the number.

Nobody has the foggiest clue how many birds are mortally wounded and land outside the perimeter of the site since there is zero effort to count them.

Nobody understands the causality of why so many birds are dying.

Scroll down to the last six paragraphs of the article. Some key comments:

Biologists don’t know of any way to reduce the number of birds that get their wings toasted.

The project owner is offering to pay $1.8 million to compensate for the expected bird deaths. The net impact of that settlement would be issuing a kill-all-you-want permit that gets them off the hook for all future birds that die at the site.

The company is also offering to fund projects to spay and neuter domesticated cats.

(Photo by James Ulvog of a threat to pelicans and migratory ducks that is every bit as serious as a couple of heliostats in the desert. Also as much of a threat to the golden eagle and California condor populations as any wind turbine. Check out the vicious eyes, fangs, and claws of a deadly bird killer.)

Continue reading “Saving a few hundred sparrows doesn’t make up for killing a brown pelican. Solar #25”

More data points on building power plants using natural gas and solar

It is far more expensive to build solar or wind plants than natural gas. A few more data points:

8/25 – Million Dollar Way – Power Plant Costs – For the Archives – August 25, 2014; Cost of Renewable Energy – Staggering – Bruce Oksol accumulates some costs for building different kinds of power facilities:

Continue reading “More data points on building power plants using natural gas and solar”

Update on solar power – #26

Here are a few articles on the environmental damage from solar energy: half the Palen plant has been tentatively approved and an AP article that shows how the debate over environmental damage from solar farms has shifted.

9/15 – ReWire – California Set to Approve Controversial Solar Plant – Chris Clarke reports the California Energy Commission let loose an announcement at 4:55 on a Friday that it had tentatively approved half of the Palen Solar Electric Generating System. Late Friday news releases are a tested bureaucratic trick to get news out yet avoid lots of attention.

The tentative plan is expected to be rubber stamped on October 29. The approval is for only one of the two proposed towers.

Continue reading “Update on solar power – #26”

Germany’s plans for renewable energy

(Update: Solar #25)

Germany is in the midst of moving toward getting 40% to 45% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, which is six years from now. The goal for the whole of EU is 35%. By 2050, the German goal is 80% from renewable. They plan to do this with zero reliance on nuclear energy.

Some of the destructive implications are spelled out in detail by the Wall Street Journal article, Germany’s Expensive Gamble on Renewable Energy. The article more explanation than I’ve seen elsewhere.

Here are a few summarized highlights. If you are interested in reading the rest of my article, you will really want to check out the full WSJ article. It is excellent.

Higher costs

Continue reading “Germany’s plans for renewable energy”

Does the Ivanpah solar facility toast 642 or 28,000 birds a year? Solar #24

(Photo by James Ulvog)

Officials from Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System report there were 321 dead birds found on the site in the first six months of operation. Annualizing that would imply 642 birds will die each year at the facility shown above.

Is that the total of birds killed at the site? Let me ask you a few questions.

Is the total number of drunk drivers on the road determined by looking at the official FBI statistics on DUI arrests?
Is the extent of insider trading equal to the number of SEC enforcement actions filed?
Is the total amount of criminal behavior leading up to the 2008 great recession equal to the number of criminal indictments issued by the Justice Department (which is zero if you didn’t know)?

If you answered yes to all of those three questions then you will certainly agree that the grand total of birds killed at Ivanpah is limited to the reported amount of 321 in six months, or around 600 a year.

On the other hand, if you think the number of drunk drivers is greater than the number arrested or if you believe there is actually more insider trading going on than the SEC prosecutes, then the question is to what extent are the toasted wings undercounted at Ivanpah.

Causes of undercount

Continue reading “Does the Ivanpah solar facility toast 642 or 28,000 birds a year? Solar #24”

More research please. Faster too. – solar #23

I see a major downside to the current approach to renewable energy.

Our society is pouring huge amounts of money into projects using current technology. These are inefficient, damaging to the environment in so many dimensions, are viable only because government agencies demand utilities buy their output, and produce very expensive electricity even after massive subsidies. Worse yet, these are locking today’s technology in to many multi-billion dollar megaprojects.

Here is a hint, just a hint, of what could happen if we were to put those billions into research.

8/2 – The Economist – Picking up steam – carbon-based material gives solar steam-power a boost.

Continue reading “More research please. Faster too. – solar #23”