Posted on 03/18/2016 6:07:19 AM PDT by C19fan
California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycaller.com ...
Wow! I knew these were bad news; but the paper you posted says it’s worse than I thought. Thanks, nice post!
Frankenstein’s monster stuff.
Even when engineering and basic physics predict the outcome of renewable energy plants failing, the environmental fascists just double down. How much money has been poured down the rathole by Obama on this stuff in the last 8 years?
"We don't just flash-burn birds out of the sky and increase your power bills by 600%"
"Now the high-tech toxic waste from our useless plants - demolished on the taxpayer dime - will make you drown in your own lung-fluids!"
Liberals. They give and give and give.
According to plan re soebarkah.
I worked for the company that built this project.
Although I was on another project, I received the intracompany propaganda about this project - they put out glossy newsletters and stuff like that.
It was apparent that this concept was iffy from the get go.
The company made a lot of $$$ building it.
That’s how it always goes, isn’t it.
I listened to Sarah Palin’s 2011 speech, in the rain, in a hilly field in Iowa, thinking she might declare for the 2012 prez race. She didn’t; but she schooled me, and anyone who would listen, on crony capitalism, and pounded away, 5 years ago at that whole concept and at many of the other issues on which Trump is resonating — the Washington elites, the establishment, crony capitalism, lobbyists — all of it.
Your example is an aspect of how things are done, and of our present attempts to overturn it. May God grant us the perseverance and strength to see it through. For, as we can see today, it is an upstream swim against enormous forces, both foreign and domestic, democrat and republican.
nightfall?
That would be Bush’s fault.
Predicted to improve when bo elected.
Sunshine all day, every day, Doo Dah, Doo Dah.
You just need to put panels up correctly.
Some on the South for daytime, and some on the North for nighttime.
If you house is not efficient, we need to come back and retrofit the North side.
Not really a ‘white elephant’. Here’s the problem. You cannot satisfy environmentalists. First, they condemn energy A. We replace A with a more expensive B. Now, the environmentalists condemn energy source B. Bottom line: the environmentalists cannot be satisfied with any energy source since they all, to a certain extent, pollute.
The only environmentalist I ever saw who was satisfied suggested that a power program instituted in Nepal was a good example for the first world. This program placed a small photovoltaic cell on the room of the one room huts providing sufficient power to run a small hot plate and a radio. The environmentalist consider that to be an adequate living standard.
As I recall, Harry Reid’s son make millions on this boondoggle.
Spit.
This plant fit right in with Obama’s plan to raise the cost of electricity. Wasting our tax dollars to do it just made it a win-win for him.
It would be interesting to see if the private investors managed to come out ahead on the deal. I’d bet that their “investment” was completely covered by various tax credits and expense write-offs, etc.
When birds hit the beams they VAPORIZE in a puff of steam and smoke. And no real serious estimates are done as to just how many birds they kill. There best guess is hundreds. They estimate based on the puffs of steam they see. If you, a citizen, went out and randomly shot hundreds of birds in a year you would be in PRISON.
It does not just cook them. They EXPLODE in a cloud of steam.
I just realized that this is a mirror plant, not one with acres of actual solar cells. I don’t think this design uses acres of toxic coatings.
OH! On further review, you are right; so this is one of those with boilers on towers.
So, they have to supplement output by using natural gas? Guffaw. I wonder if that is so they can have output at night? That is the inherent weakness of solar/wind juice; sometimes, like once a day, hours at a time, the natural source doesn’t cooperate.
What seems to be missing in this story (unless I missed it) are some actual numbers of how bad this really is. What was it supposed to produce versus what it actually is producing?
What was it supposed to produce versus what it actually is producing?.....Solar or wind CAN’T produce enough to matter, under ANY circumstance. This is ANOTHER instance of crony capitalism.
Even crony capitalism projects have expectations.... even if they are wildly inflated and unrealistic.
So is it a technical problem that the plant supply is so low? Or is it because it being limited to those production levels because their costs are so high and they can find cheaper power elsewhere that still meets their arbitrary percent renewable criteria?
The design criteria for the plant is apparently 940,000 MWhrs per year. The electrical production was supposed to ramp up over a 4 year period to hit its design in 2018. Something tells me that all of this has to do with costs, not capacity.... California hit its peak electrical load in 2006 and there is more than adequate generation capacity in the state. This is all about minimizing the amount taken from the high cost producers.... to the extent that they can get away with contractually so that the can buy from the lower cost producers. Since there is that much spread in prices and they have oversupply, shutting it down makes more than enough sense. In fact, it was just plain stupid that this monstrosity was ever built.
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