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 ...
Solyndra white courtesy phone, please.
This is the one Google was big into.
One would think the performance of this project could have been predicted to within a few percent, especially given the fact that there have been many projects based on the same principles around the world, as well as in California, back in the 90s.
This was basically a scale-up of an existing technology.
I might be wrong, but I seem to recall reading somewhere that at least part of the shortfall is due to the bigger plant needing to take extra steps regarding the ongoing bird kill and the flight hazard, and those steps are cutting into production capacity.
Some things have an optimal efficiency that doesn’t scale well going up or down.
But if they allowed smaller, efficient solar driven boiler systems then it is too easy for the citizenry to bypass the system devised to tax the energy.
Maybe, and that wouldn't surprise me.
Just the same, they can't very well argue that they didn't know these problems would arise.
What I would believe is that they went over these issues with state and federal regulators, were told not to worry about it, and then - when complaints began to come in from activist groups - the regulators suddenly turned on a dime and started the "I'm shocked" act.
“.... too easy for the citizenry to bypass the system devised to tax the energy.”
Couldn’t have that, now, could we?
I have a 20x20 greenhouse that will, when the sun is shining, heat my entire house in the winter (in Virginia), with only a squirrel-cage fan to push the air around.
The real purpose of projects like this is to funnel large amounts of government taxpayer money to the right people.
Actually building these white elephants with a part of the money is just a necessary part of the deal.
After all - they have something to show to the people to keep them from wondering what happened to the bulk of the money.
A big problem with ‘green’ energy is an inability for people to make realistic estimates of cost/output/maintenance/etc.
The California Energy Commission blames bad output on “clouds, jet contrails and weather”
My first reaction - they didn’t anticipate weather and clouds on the front end?!?!
But why should they, the DOE was handing out money by the truckload.
You got it... money first, due diligence later.
From what I’ve seen, lib-backed projects like this tend to make the same assumption: That every aspect of the project will go Best-Case, from revenue to environmental impact. Then later, when Reality intrudes, everyone involved hems, haws, obfuscates, and generally avoids accountability.
Remember, with any liberal initiative, it’s always the intent that matters, not the result. Most of this project’s champions have long since moved on to other feel-good causes, leaving the mess for “someone else”.
Did they at least predict nightfall?
Lordy. Not just half the output, but also $200 per megawatt hour.
And that’s using Natural Gas as a supplemental fuel source.
And now they’ll have a massive toxic waste fiasco on their hands as they have to safely get rid of materials such as gallium arsenide, copper-indium-gallium-diselenide, and cadmium-telluride. Now these have value, but not enough to make up for the cost of reclaiming them and protecting the environment from them.
Yep, another liberal head-on collision with themselves — similar to the ones seen in the multicultural Native American rights to hunt, vs the rights of cute animals to be protected from hunting.
Well said. Here’s a paper on what that ‘green waste’ can do to the body.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0013935185710626
Exactly. In almost every one of these projects, there is a crony who has inserted him/herself in front of a technology company in order to skim a windfall and get a payback.
Yeah, what a waste of sun light that turned out to be. At taxpayers expense too.
It sickens me when I see these stupid gullible people with a solar array on their roof, especially when the roof does not face due south at 30 degrees.
The other day, I saw a church with a hundred or so solar panels. At least half were fogged meaning the seals broke and they were useless.
In my area, solar efficiency is only about 40% of what it is in the desert.
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