Obama-Backed Solar Plant Could Be Shut Down For Not Producing Enough Energy

[healthmyths]

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.
The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would. The plant only generated 45 percent of expected power in 2014 and only 68 percent in 2015, according to government data.

And it does all this at a cost of $200 per megawatt hour — nearly six times the cost of electricity from natural gas-fired power plants.
Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar production.
Obama-Backed Solar Plant Could Be Shut Down For Not Producing Enough Energy

 

[Freewill]

1.6 billion? Come back when there is real money at stake.

 

[Iceweasel]

It's a microcosm of what's wrong with liberalism. Leap before you look, it's the thought that counts, all for the greater good, etc. Results are trumped by good intentions.

 

[Silhouette]

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.

Yes and that's because it was designed to fail with help from the BigOil money funding it...to be sure it failed. It consists of a central tower holding essentially a big water tank with flat (non-concentrating) mirrors place facing it from up to a mile away. These mirrors are so vast and many that they cannot possibly be cleaned of dust that is common in dust storms in the desert. So they become even less and less efficient with time.

In contrast, if the LINEAR concave parabolic solar thermal plants had been built with the same money (probably three for every one of the failure types), then the return on the investment would be nearly immediate:

Here's the difference between the two:

1. The "Engineered to Fail" plant in the Mojave:

Linear Solar Thermal SUCCESS:

 

[Freewill]

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.

Yes and that's because it was designed to fail with help from the BigOil money funding it...to be sure it failed. It consists of a central tower holding essentially a big water tank with flat (non-concentrating) mirrors place facing it from up to a mile away. These mirrors are so vast and many that they cannot possibly be cleaned of dust that is common in dust storms in the desert. So they become even less and less efficient with time.

In contrast, if the LINEAR concave parabolic solar thermal plants had been built with the same money (probably three for every one of the failure types), then the return on the investment would be nearly immediate:

Here's the difference between the two:

1. The "Engineered to Fail" plant in the Mojave:

Linear Solar Thermal SUCCESS:

What part did oil play in this design? Are they causing the dust storms? Did they aimed the mirrors wrong? Are they the ones that decided to build the thing?

 

[Silhouette]

What part did oil play in this design? Are they causing the dust storms? Did they aimed the mirrors wrong? Are they the ones that decided to build the thing?

The prototype for it that was pushed on Obama as "the thing!" was funded by Chevron 2009. ie: Chevron was involved in pushing the ludicrous flat-mirror debacle as "legitimate viable technology". You'd need an army of full time employees just cleaning the flat mirrors which barely warm up the tower's water tank:

BrightSource Energy has landed its first-ever project to use its solar thermal technology for steam generation.

The Oakland, Calif.-based startup said Friday it has been tapped by Chevron to build a 29-megawatt thermal plant at Chevron's oil field in central California, said Keely Wachs, a spokesman for BrightSource. BrightSource Snags Chevron Deal in Stealthy Move Into Solar Steam

Meanwhile PARABOLIC LINEAR solar thermal heats the high temperature oil in the long pipes up to 300 degrees Celsius very rapidly. It's because a parabolic mirror concentrates the solar energy instead of merely reflecting it. The distant flat mirrors "concentrate" the solar energy on one point, but they don't amplify it themselves. A concave mirror DOES amplify solar energy. Try using a car headlight reflector pointed at the sun with a piece of dry wood in the middle. Don't look directly at it and wear protective glasses. Be sure to have something to put out fire nearby.