Battle Brewing Over Giant Desert Solar Farm

New York Times ^ | August 5, 2009

[reaganaut1]

The holy trinity of the left -- environmentalists, unions, and lawyers, are going to make energy very expensive.

[Slapshot68]

I love it when environmentalists cannibalize their own.

[boomop1]

Sumtin fishy here.

[Dallas59]

Lol.....Tell the environazis to stop using the web, cars, buses, telephone, TV, hot water....

[agooga]

Hippies idea of solar power is hanging a black pot outside your yurt to make luke warm water to take a sponge bath once a month.

[Uncle Ike]

” Sumtin fishy here. “

[from the article]

” desert tortoise, the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and Nelson’s bighorn sheep “

Nope - don’t see anything about ‘fish’.....

[Wonder Warthog]

"The holy trinity of the left -- environmentalists, unions, and lawyers, are going to make energy very expensive."

The holy trinity of the left -- environmentalists, unions, and lawyers, are going to make have made energy very expensive.

Corrected. And it's the same modus operandus that they used to drive up the cost of nuclear power plants. Eventually, sane people are going to start tarring and feathering these luddites.

[colorado tanker]

This will sure uglify that part of the desert. You know if someone proposed just taking a few of those 8,000 acres for an oil rig the same groups would be going batsh@#t.

[marron]

Tessera Solar plans to plant 34,000 solar dishes — each one 40 feet high and 38 feet wide — on 8,230 acres of the Mojave Desert in Southern California... The solar farm would generate 850 megawatts of electricity...

You could generate as much on a couple hundred acres using any other technology. Nat gas, and you'd have almost zero emissions, nuke and you'd have none at all.

Solar farms are extremely wasteful of land, as are wind farms. Solar's best use is as a niche producer for remote locations and rooftop power generation to take the edge off of peak usage times.

[marron]

You know if someone proposed just taking a few of those 8,000 acres for an oil rig the same groups would be going batsh@#t.

Exactly. How big a working pad did they ask for in ANWR? Just a few acres out of 19 million.

[DYngbld]

Let's just stop allowing the wackos to use electricity. See what happens then.

[listenhillary]

The unions should sue the environmentalists. Look at it as a stimulus program for the lawyers.

[steelyourfaith]

 

Beam me to Planet Gore !

[colorado tanker]

I've seen a couple of pictures of ANWR that somehow got through the media embargo (state run media usually shows a picture of the Brooks Range when discussing ANWR) and it is butt ugly country - makes the Mojave look like paradise.

[chimera]

The solar farm would generate 850 megawatts of electricity for Southern California Edison.

I find this hard to believe. Even in a clear-air desert environment, solar isn't going to do much better than about a 40% capacity factor (night, sun angle, dust, occasional clouds, etc.). My guess is the reporters are being their usual lazy, sloppy selves, reporting nameplate capacity as if it were actual continuous output.

[businessprofessor]

Do not forget maintenance of the 34,000 solar dishes. The maintenance requires lots of labor, cleaning supplies, and probably water. I have a friend is involved in contract negotiations on this project. Apparently maintenance was not budgeted in the original contracts.

[DYngbld]

That is a lot of Windex.

I wonder what the environmental in pact of large amounts of Windex is?

[BigBobber]

Real environmentalists (like me!) have known this was coming. Solar power sounds great at small scale. When it is ramped up to the size needed to really contribute to national energy needs, it looks very ugly indeed. Ditto for wind.

Nuclear energy is the only truly environmentally friendly solution available. Especially looking ahead the huge demand electric vehicles would put on the grid.

[Mogollon]

Talk about trashing the environment, solar panels and wind turbines are huge eyesores whereever they’re installed.

[DYngbld]

I would use solar on my house to augment the power we use, but the cost is WAY to much. It was someplace near 40 years before there would be a return on investment, and that was with "ideal" conditions. Wind was longer due to the lack of 10-15mph wind.

I would say build a nuke plant in the desert, but then you have the cooling issue.

The US Navy has been producing safe Nuke power for years, I see no problem with %100 of the us power coming from nuke plants, we have plenty of trained sailors that would be happy to retire and run a power plant.