Sometimes, you just can’t make this up – the $2.2 Billion solar electrical plant, station Ivanpah (which needed Federal Govt to waive lots of regulations to get built out there in the Mojave desert) has been in the news for incinerating birds in flight due to it’s process of highly concentrating the sun’s rays to fire a boiler to run the turbines. That would be up to 800 degrees F hot. They call those birds “streamers” – is that ecologically sustainable in killing the local flying fauna? I think that’s the Left hand dope slap to the Green Environ-wackos that believe we can only be “sustainable” by using solar instead of fossil fuels…oh wait!
But here is the Right handed dope slap for them – now they need to burn fossil fuels to meet demand:
Bright Source Energy, the company operating the plant, is petitioning the California government, requesting permission to burn more natural gas and to emit 94,749 more tons of carbon dioxide per year. That’s the equivalent of emissions from about 16,500 automobiles….If the permit is approved, then this “solar” plant will produce about 35 percent of its electricity from fossil fuels.
And this as well – for all of the boosting of solar by the Environmental special interests and the Obama Administration, they still can’t ignore the fundamental Law of Economics (which doesn’t care who is leading the nation):
“The plant cost $2.2 billion and has a ‘gross capacity’ of 392 MW [but may actually perform at a much lower average capacity], thus a minimum cost of $5.64 million per MW capacity. By comparison, a 650MW gas turbine power plant can be built for around
$630 million and run 24/7/365 without requiring fossil-fuel back-up, a cost of $0.97 million per MW or about 6 times less. Since ~35% of the proposed plant output would be from fossil fuels, the solar maximum capacity would be ~255 MW, increasing the cost for the actual solar-derived energy to ~8.6 times higher than a conventional gas turbine power plant [which has much lower greenhouse & particulate emissions than firing boilers in the Ivanpah plant].”
Winners and losers – ask yourself again, should the government be picking who is which? And without subsidies, would this bird killing plant have ever been built that can’t even live up to its operational boasts?
(H/T: The Blaze)
