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posted by LaminatorX on Thursday August 21 2014, @10:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the Archemedes-Mirror dept.

AP reports that wildlife investigators who watched as birds burn and fell at the Ivanpah Dry Lake Solar Tower Plant are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand "streamers" by the plant operator to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group. Those statistics haven’t curbed the enthusiasm of the Obama administration for the solar-power plant, which granted Ivanpah a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. The deaths are "alarming. It's hard to say whether that's the location or the technology," says Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. "There needs to be some caution." Federal wildlife officials say the plant might act as a "mega-trap" for wildlife, with the bright light of the plant attracting insects, which in turn attract insect-eating birds that fly to their death in the intensely focused light rays.

The $2.2 billion plant at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border is the world's biggest plant to employ so-called power towers. More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes. While biologists say there is no known feasible way to curb the number of birds killed, the companies behind the projects say they are hoping to find one — studying whether lights, sounds or some other technology would scare them away, says Joseph Desmond, senior vice president at BrightSource Energy. Power-tower proponents are fighting to keep the deaths from forcing a pause in the building of new plants when they see the technology on the verge of becoming more affordable and accessible (PDF). When it comes to powering the country's grids, "diversity of technology ... is critical," says Thomas Conroy, a renewable-energy expert. "Nobody should be arguing let's be all coal, all solar," all wind, or all nuclear. "And every one of those technologies has a long list of pros and cons."

 
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  • (Score: 2) by geb on Thursday August 21 2014, @12:02PM

    by geb (529) on Thursday August 21 2014, @12:02PM (#83892)

    Ironically, you'd get fewer bird deaths if you were delivering space based solar power down to the ground via "death ray" microwave beam.

    All the proposals I've seen for microwave power transmission have relatively low, thus safe, power density down at ground level.

    Shame it would be so ludicrously expensive.

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  • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @12:38PM

    by Vanderhoth (61) on Thursday August 21 2014, @12:38PM (#83899)

    I agree. It's a really interesting concept.

    On the other hand I don't know if we need more crap floating around over our heads that could get knocked out of orbit by some rouge Russian satellite. I'm only picking on the Russia here because it actually happened a couple years ago (Nasa alert as Russian and US satellites crash in space [theguardian.com]). I was working on a project that used Iridium satellites to track beacons planted ice flows in the arctic when one of the Iridiums were taken out by a defunct Russian satellite. Made a mess the Iridium network for several weeks. It seems most countries have big plans to put stuff up there, but they really never think about how they'd get it back down or out of orbit when it reached end of life. Now cleaning up the junk up there is a huge issue, but instead of focusing on cleaning it up governments just want to keep putting more up there, making the problem even hard to solve.

    --
    "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
    • (Score: 2) by geb on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:20PM

      by geb (529) on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:20PM (#83920)

      A power sat would have to be in geostationary orbit, which is a lot higher than most of the junk. It's better maintained, partly because it's more expensive to get there, partly because everything's going in the same direction, and partly just because it's so irreplaceably useful. The Iridium constellation are in low orbit, right in the middle of the floating scrapheap nearer Earth.

      A big construction project like a multipart solar power facility in geostationary orbit would almost certainly contribute some junk, which would annoy a lot of people, but it would also mean we had the infrastructure for a cleanup project. With everything in more or less the same orbit, relative velocities are low, so cleaning geostationary would be much cheaper than collecting all the crap in LEO.

      • (Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:34PM

        by Vanderhoth (61) on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:34PM (#83925)

        I still agree.

        What I'd like to see though is a requirement for anything, no matter how big or small or where it sits in orbit, to have a plan to bring it back or get rid of it at end of life. Nothing should just be left to float around to reek havoc on other objects. Of course there would also need to be an option open to have the life expectancy incrementally extended if an object is well maintained and/or can be shown to be in good working order.

        --
        "Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:13PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:13PM (#83964)

          "reek havoc", "rouge satellite" -- the fuck? :)

          • (Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Friday August 22 2014, @02:09AM

            by Appalbarry (66) on Friday August 22 2014, @02:09AM (#84185) Journal

            Truly. Did our SoyOverlords quietly install a last generation auto-correct during the last big code upgrade?

            Or has the site finally reached the tipping point where all of the illiterate people arrive and take over?

            Pro Tip For New Soylentils; If you see a squiggly red line under a word, it probably means you should check the spelling. And even if you don't, it's worth taking time to check out your grammar.

      • (Score: 1) by subs on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:24PM

        by subs (4485) on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:24PM (#83947)

        With everything in more or less the same orbit, relative velocities are low, so cleaning geostationary would be much cheaper than collecting all the crap in LEO.

        OTOH, it takes a lot more energy to get to GEO, so that would work to offset most, if not all of these savings. Also, GEO is *a lot* bigger, so stuff, including junk, is much further apart, requiring a completely different collection method. Once collected, getting it back down again also takes a lot more energy. One of the easiest methods of getting a cloud of small debris to reenter would be to blow gas at it and slow it down just enough so that orbital decay due to atmospheric drag does the rest over the course of a few (tens of) years. This approach would obviously not work in GEO, simply because the objects of interest are much further apart and at best you'd impart a little bit eccentricity to the objects (which arguably makes the danger posed by these objects worse, not better).
        Contrary to the common image of satellites lingering around once they're past their lifetime, the usual approach is to move them to a permanent disposal orbit, just far enough so that they don't endanger the functioning constellation. This gets a bit more difficult in near-Earth orbits because of fewer places to go and satellites usually lacking significant thruster capability for large orbital changes, but it is still far preferable to just leaving them where they are. For really LEO (<500km) satellites, they can either lower their perigee to have atmospheric drag take care of the rest, or often even without an orbital change, residual atmospheric drag and orbital perturbations will take care of the job (over some considerable length of time, of course).

      • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 21 2014, @08:21PM

        by evilviper (1760) on Thursday August 21 2014, @08:21PM (#84080) Homepage Journal

        A power sat would have to be in geostationary orbit, which is a lot higher than most of the junk.

        GEO has plenty of junk, more than enough to be likely to take down orbital power panels. In fact the problem is worse, in part because the junk just doesn't get brought down by the atmosphere in short order as it would in LEO.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_junk#Debris_at_higher_altitudes [wikipedia.org]

        --
        Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 21 2014, @08:10PM

      by evilviper (1760) on Thursday August 21 2014, @08:10PM (#84074) Homepage Journal

      some rouge Russian satellite

      Does it have-to be red? Maybe the Russians wouldn't mind using some other color of makeup, if we ask nicely.

      --
      Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.