LOL... Solar Plant Wants To Burn a Lot More Natural Gas

[Wild Cobra]

http://www.kcet.org/news/rewire/solar/concentrating-solar/ivanpah-solar-plant-owners-want-to-burn-a-lot-more-natural-gas.html


Each of the 4,000-acre facility's three units has gas-fired boilers used to warm up the fluid in the turbines in the early morning, to keep that fluid at an optimum temperature through the night, and to boost production during the day when the sun goes behind a cloud.

Solar Partners says that in order for ISEGS to operate at full efficiency, the plant's gas-fired auxiliary boilers will need to run an average of 4.5 hours a day, rather than the one hour a day originally expected.

I guess solar doesn't work by itself so well.

Billions of dollars wasted, where a natural gas plant would kill far less birds and be less costly.

[DarrinS]

I think solar has it's place, but I'd rather have my own solar to supplement CPS.

[SnakeBoy]

I think solar has it's place, but I'd rather have my own solar to supplement CPS.

Yeah, on our roofs.

[DarrinS]

Yeah, on our roofs.

That's what I mean.


I'd love to build a home completely off the grid, but that's not easy to do. Solar alone won't cut it.

[Agloco]

It's really just a cost of learning how to optimize the efficiency of a new technology. It's not unreasonable to anticipate such an amendment to operating licences from time to time.

That said, the Ivanpah project is impressive in scale, and even more impressive in person.

[DarrinS]

It's really just a cost of learning how to optimize the efficiency of a new technology. It's not unreasonable to anticipate such an amendment to operating licences from time to time.

That said, the Ivanpah project is impressive in scale, and even more impressive in person.


What do you think of this?


https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fi ssion_reactors

[ChumpDumper]

lol Wild Cobra now cares about birds.

[Wild Cobra]

It's really just a cost of learning how to optimize the efficiency of a new technology. It's not unreasonable to anticipate such an amendment to operating licences from time to time.

That said, the Ivanpah project is impressive in scale, and even more impressive in person.

Sure it is, but will it ever have a cost advantage? When will we stop seeing increased costs?

Now on the good side, we see what advantages and disadvantages there are for future products.

I just see it as another engineering task that fails to live up to what was sold.

[Wild Cobra]

lol Wild Cobra now cares about birds.

Please give me a link where I implied any such thing?

I am one who mentioned the death of birds with solar and wind. But then, you never cared for the truth. You just like to be adversarial.

[ChumpDumper]

Please give me a link where I implied any such thing?

I am one who mentioned the death of birds with solar and wind. But then, you never cared for the truth. You just like to be adversarial.So you don't care about birds?

Why mention them?

[Wild Cobra]

So you don't care about birds?

Why mention them?

https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/5240836608/h088B3C90/

[ChumpDumper]

Just say you said it for no reason whatsoever.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

They need something to keep the system primed at night so therefor just scrap it?

No discussion of the amount of fossil fuel energy used as opposed to plant output. Typical WC dimwitted nonsense.

[Wild Cobra]

They need something to keep the system primed at night so therefor just scrap it?

No discussion of the amount of fossil fuel energy used as opposed to plant output. Typical WC dimwitted nonsense.

You are the dimwit if that's how you read it.

[Wild Cobra]

Just say you said it for no reason whatsoever.

No, I said it because I don't like the bird deaths from solar and wind power plants.

[ChumpDumper]

No, I said it because I don't like the bird deaths from solar and wind power plants.Because you care about the birds!

[Wild Cobra]

Yawn...

[boutons_deux]

many 100Ms of birds are killed by domestic and feral cats, and by buildings, every year.

but WC has to mention his hated renewable energy as bird killer

[FuzzyLumpkins]

You are the dimwit if that's how you read it.

There is no real comparison being made here.

How much power is produced by the plant per day as opposed to the gas expenditure stated in the same units.

Your blogger stated things in all types of units including a walk through "a bit of natural gas industry jargon." The only actual comparison is from the gas used by this solar plant to "the amount a typical gas-fired power plant burns in its normal course of operations." Whatever the fuck that is. It leaves out little details like what the output of the solar plant was as opposed to their arbitrary standard.

The article doesn't give you enough information to really make a judgment and then runs a bunch of gas industry jargon and assumptions.

I was curious do you have some more natural gas boiler brochures for us?

[Wild Cobra]

Was that my complaint?

My God.

Will your stupidity ever end?

You are pathetic to argue against points I don't make. I guess if that is the only way you can experience a win, OK.

You win. Now you can go home troll.


I just see it as another engineering task that fails to live up to what was sold.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

ffs, that site is a front made to look like a rural tv network or the like when its just a propaganda front for who the fuck knows what legal entity. The RNC has started using that type of shit too.

Is there a link to the story that isn't from something even more sketchy than the shit boutons posts? At least nakedcapitalism doesn't misrepresent itself.

[Wild Cobra]

http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/07-AFC-05C/TN201928_20140326T164429_Ivanpah_Petition_to_Amend _No_4.pdf

http://docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocuments/Forms/AllItems.aspx?RootFolder=%2fPublicDocuments%2f07-AFC-05C&FolderCTID=0x012000854EBC55F6E2AC47926325FA751AA84 F

[pgardn]

What do you think of this?


https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fi ssion_reactors

http://www.npr.org/2012/05/04/152026805/is-thorium-a-magic-bullet-for-our-energy-problems

These kind of talks scare me personally. You get an energetic personality in front of a lot of people who have no expertise in a cozy auditorium... It's got the Deepak Chopra feel to it. No talk about downsides or problems that need to be overcome.

They put makeup on the kid and hurray he just graduated HS. Got some excitement yet here is what we have to overcome. Bill Gates and, I know all about education because I'm smart. I tend to trust wise people. They have lived long enough to have met failure and realize there is very rarely a magic bullet for problems many people have thought about.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

Was that my complaint?

My God.

Will your stupidity ever end?

You are pathetic to argue against points I don't make. I guess if that is the only way you can experience a win, OK.

You win. Now you can go home troll.

I was discussing the article that you posted. Arguments you don't make? It's your link, dumbfuck.

[CosmicCowboy]

Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume from birds that ignite in midair. Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year reported an average of one "streamer" every two minutes.They’re urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version until the extent of the deaths is assessed. Annual estimates range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.


BrightSource’s partners are NRG Solar of Carlsbad, California, and Google. The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. More than 300,000 mirrors reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers up to 40 stories high. Water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes. The new plant would have towers up to 75 stories high. Federal wildlife officials said Ivanpah’s bright light might be attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds. But Ivanpah officials say at least some of the puffs of smoke mark insects and bits of airborne trash being ignited.

[Agloco]

Sure it is, but will it ever have a cost advantage? When will we stop seeing increased costs?

Now on the good side, we see what advantages and disadvantages there are for future products.

I just see it as another engineering task that fails to live up to what was sold.

Of course it will. In fact we are closest to parity in the southwest now......which is why the Ivanpah project exists.

When will we see less increase in costs? Hard to say, but you knew that already. There are a number of technologies that show promise. The most interesting one (to me), is here:


http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jz500676c


By your metric, it does indeed fall short of what was sold. Does that make it a failure? It's not a black and white picture. As I said, there is a cost associated with learning new technologies. This is one of those costs and it's not an unreasonable one at that. It's a poor decision to simply abandon ship given that the input cost isn't absurd.

[boutons_deux]

Does WC bitch about this kind of burned energy to produce energy:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Pumpstor_racoon_mtn.jpg

Pumped-storage hydroelectricity (PSH) is a type of hydroelectric (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydroelectricity) energy storage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage) used by electric power systems (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_power_system) for load balancing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_balancing_(electrical_power)). The method stores energy in the form of gravitational potential energy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_potential_energy) of water, pumped from a lower elevation reservoir to a higher elevation. Low-cost off-peak electric power is used to run the pumps. During periods of high electrical demand, the stored water is released through turbines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbine) to produce electric power. Although the losses of the pumping process makes the plant a net consumer of energy overall, the system increases revenue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revenue) by selling more electricity during periods of peak demand (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_demand), when electricity prices are highest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity

Or does WC bitch about eROI of tar sands?

[Agloco]

What do you think of this?


https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fi ssion_reactors

I wonder what materials he proposes to use. Corrosion/transmutation are real issues over time. That applies to the surrounding land as well.

There's also the additional issue of what's left after it's life cycle is through. The exact mix of what will go in and what will come out as a result hasn't been fully explained yet.

[boutons_deux]

What do you think of this?


https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_my_radical_plan_for_small_nuclear_fi ssion_reactors

I don't know what's so special about that kid.

LOTS of companies are looking into small reactors

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_modular_reactor

[Wild Cobra]

I was discussing the article that you posted. Arguments you don't make? It's your link, dumbfuck.
So you are stupid enough to assume I agree with 100% of everything in it?

Just how pathetically stupid are you?

[Wild Cobra]

By your metric, it does indeed fall short of what was sold. Does that make it a failure? It's not a black and white picture. As I said, there is a cost associated with learning new technologies. This is one of those costs and it's not an unreasonable one at that. It's a poor decision to simply abandon ship given that the input cost isn't absurd.
Only time will tell as we see the final costs including increased upkeep as it ages.

[pgardn]

I wonder what materials he proposes to use. Corrosion/transmutation are real issues over time. That applies to the surrounding land as well.

There's also the additional issue of what's left after it's life cycle is through. The exact mix of what will go in and what will come out as a result hasn't been fully explained yet.

The NPR show I posted discusses this.

[pgardn]

Of course it will. In fact we are closest to parity in the southwest now......which is why the Ivanpah project exists.

When will we see less increase in costs? Hard to say, but you knew that already. There are a number of technologies that show promise. The most interesting one (to me), is here:


http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/jz500676c


By your metric, it does indeed fall short of what was sold. Does that make it a failure? It's not a black and white picture. As I said, there is a cost associated with learning new technologies. This is one of those costs and it's not an unreasonable one at that. It's a poor decision to simply abandon ship given that the input cost isn't absurd.

WC can't handle this one.
Its a ways off.

Wonders why the government is even funding it...

[Agloco]

The NPR show I posted discusses this.

:tu

I understand. In my first point I was referring to the materials use to make the reactor itself. Admittedly, I wasn't very clear.

As far as whats going into the reactor: I believe our child prodigy was proposing a downblended mix of U235 (that and using Pu239)? That's distinctly different from these thorium cycle reactors. The details of the mix and all of the associated mechanisms involved in moderating the reaction are, as of now, still quite fuzzy. He and his cohorts haven't given many details beyond "using old nuclear weapons", although he did say that he intended for them to be unpressurized (implies no water) and be safe vs. proliferation. If that's the case it needs to be protected from U233 siphoning. To that end, I don't believe that burying them underground will suffice.

The US essentially put a halt to advancing thorium reactors in the 60 and 70s due to proliferation concerns as U233 is a better fissile material in some ways than either U235 or Pu239. It's use in weapons was limited by the fact that it's invariably contaminated with about 0.1% U232, which emits a very energetic gamma. I don't think that stops a group of knuckleheads bent on destruction for destruction's sake though. I'm unsure if they (US) will now suddenly champion their use (thorium series reactors) without at least some reservation.

[Agloco]

Only time will tell as we see the final costs including increased upkeep as it ages.

Fair enough, but it's far too early to LOL about it.

[Wild Cobra]

Fair enough, but it's far too early to LOL about it.

Well, in my prediction, we will be both laughing and crying about it. I honestly feel we are pushing into what will be a good technology, but not yet advanced enough top be cost effective.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

So you are stupid enough to assume I agree with 100% of everything in it?

Just how pathetically stupid are you?


It was an indictment of the entire article. Nice to see that you don't stand behind it at all though. The guy obviously is a or is regurgitating from oilco shills.

[boutons_deux]

where a natural gas plant would kill far less birds and be less costly.

NG, and all carbon energy, is short term.

birds?

Bird Deaths From Solar Plant Exaggerated By Some Media Sources

There seems to be some hysteria online about bird deaths associated with the Ivanpah solar project in California. For example, this news article calls the solar power plant a “death ray (http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/188328-californias-new-solar-power-plant-is-actually-a-death-ray-thats-incinerating-birds-mid-flight)“ as if it is a weapon. The same article says that hundreds of thousands of birds might be dying, or 28,000 or 1,000. That is a very wide range, and at least suggests that no one may have precise numbers.

So is the total 100,000 or 1,000? Brightsource (http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/setting-the-record-straight-solar-flux-and-impact-to-avian-species#.U_aV1qPLvgl) says the number is much lower than 1,000.

What do these numbers mean compared to other sources of bird deaths? Power lines alone might kill up to 175 million birds a year, according to a US Fish and Wildlife Service (http://www.fs.fed.us/psw/publications/documents/psw_gtr191/Asilomar/pdfs/1051-1064.pdf)document. Up to 3.7 billion are killed by cats (http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-mammals-study/1873871/).

Also, the authors of the sensational articles don’t provide information on the hazards of fossil fuels to wildlife to balance their content.

More than one million birds (http://www.audubonmagazine.org/articles/conservation/more-one-million-birds-died-during-deepwater-horizon-disaster) died due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, according to the Audubon Society. The oil industry contributes far more to bird deaths each year than this one solar power plant, so why did the authors not mention this fact?

“Every year an estimated 500,000 to 1 million birds are killed in oilfield production skim pits, reserve pits, and in oilfield wastewater disposal facilities,” explained a document (http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/pressrel/11-64.html) from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Up to 402,000 birds have died due to oil development (http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/13/3448874/tar-sands-development-killing-birds/) in Canada’s tar sands.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/22/bird-deaths-solar-plant-exaggerated-media-sources/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+IM-cleantechnica+%28CleanTechnica%29

[RandomGuy]

Fair enough, but it's far too early to LOL about it.

That won't stop WC from doing it though...

[Wild Cobra]

That won't stop WC from doing it though...

My ears were burning...

I'm laughing at the fact that once again, we have an expensive project that isn't as advertised.

I do hope I'm wrong, but I think the costs of this will be far more than advertised years down the road. It wouldn't surprise me if upkeep is more than double what was promised, a decade from now.

I've seen too many engineering projects in my life, and rarely does something new ever come in close to target costs.