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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."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by acid andy on Thursday August 21 2014, @12:54PM
Just encase the entire plant in plexiglass (or just glass?). The light will still reach the mirrors, but the birds won't reach the focal point of the light. In fact there may just be a comparatively small danger zone around that focal point that would need blocking off. They might need to subtly alter the shape of the mirrors to correct for refraction by the plexiglass but I can't imagine it would make much difference. I'd be interested to hear if there are any other technical reasons why this wouldn't work.
Of course they'll never do this for the same reason they'll never put protective cages around wind turbines and ships propellers: profit is infinitely more important to these amoral assholes than the lives of anything that isn't human. Actually, anything that won't sue them!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @01:18PM
If the light ray is strong enough to set a bird on fire as it flies through, I imagine it would instantly melt the plexiglass. On top of that, birds flying into houses, and other buildings kills 25 million birds a year. So I'm not sure if encasing the focal point or entire complex (over 14,000 hectares) in a nearly invisible barrier would help much.
On the plus side they do get pretty hefty fines for killing wild life, all energy sector supposedly do, not just solar. I think if the solution was that easy they'd do it.
It's actually kind of funny because when you Google "fines bird deaths energy" you're presented with a list almost exclusively about wind and solar companies getting $1 million fines, when you Google "oil fines bird deaths energy" you get a bunch of links to blogs and articles about how oil industry has been fined $15,000, but those rotten renewable industry clowns, killing 400,000 birds a year, have yet to have a single fine leveraged against them...
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by Boxzy on Thursday August 21 2014, @02:01PM
You wouldn't put the glass in the focal point, you would surround the focal point with glass. It would not get hot.
Go green, Go Soylent.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by deimtee on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:18PM
Why bother with glass or plexiglass. Cheap wire netting would work fine, probably block less energy than the glass would reflect, and wouldn't be anywhere near as big a problem in high winds.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 1) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:10PM
Mmmm, melted metal.
Either way, ecologists should then go, if they want, hire scienist, come up with a solution, crowd fund it (please hands off from my wallet. stop grabbing my asswallet ecopervs) and do it.
Actually I might even donate to such a thing in my area if I care about given e.g. birds (like them or what ever), and if there exists actual viable not moronic solution that doesn't cost x10 more then say saving birds in other way and does very little while ignoring bigger problems for birds or other animals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:24PM
Yup, good ole' mosquito netting should do the trick.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:11PM
The challenge is scale.
You're talking about completely enclosing an area that's considerably bigger than a sports stadium (which is about as large as "enclosed open strucutres" get today). Even using incredibly lightweight materials, and using efficient shapes like a geodesic dome, we're talking an unprecedented feat of engineering to make something large enough to enclose the entire mirror array. Maybe an active structure (like the Metrodome's "it was great while it lasted" inflatable bubble) would ease the materials need, but you're still talking something crazy huge.
And then you potentially have the issue of birds flying into the dome itself (like a giant french door), which may or may not be a bigger hazard to birds.
Also, you need to keep it clean somehow to keep the power plant efficient, which even in a desert is not a job for the faint hearted.
A potentially better idea is NOT to enclose the plant, but rather enclose the pathways between the focusing mirrors and the boilers (e.g. with a several-foot-in-diameter lightweight pipe). The mirrors need to move to find the sun, but the path between (optical center of the mirror) and (optical center of the boiler) will by design be fixed, and (again by design) be relatively narrow. The pipes wouldn't even need to be transparent - they're enclosing a beam of focused light, so they don't "block" anything, so you can avoid the "fly into it" risk that a transparent pipw or dome has.
The issue with this approach is shadows - the pipes at various times of day are casting shadows on the other mirrors, so you reduce efficiency (you have this regardless of whether the pipe is opaque or transparent - even a transparent pipe will act as a prism and distort the light into something other than the perfectly parallel rays the sun usually provides). How BIG a problem this would be is left as an exercise to the reader.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday August 21 2014, @03:43PM
The path from a single mirror to the tower would be a beam and could be focused through a single tube. The issue with this method is it doesn't scale. The mirrors surround the tower, all 300,000 of them, and none of the beams follow the exact same path since they're coming from 300,000 slightly different points. So you'd need some 300,000 tubes, that all merge at very specific angles, at some point to make that feasible. Giant cones would probably be a better solution, but as you said then the tubing, or cones, becomes a problem because it'll basically blot out the sun by casting a huge shadow on the mirrors.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: -1, Troll) by rfree on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:07PM
Something is not perfect in the world... I know... YOU GO FIX IT!
Lol.
Ok listen here young leftist(meaning the socialist who forces others to do the good deeds), if you want this done, go to school, become investor or director of a power plant (or advisor to one) and make it happen. Or *you* go build the plexiglas things... into which birds will crash.. uh. Well either way, you have some not realistic solution to problems, you go do them.
Next, go teach foxes to stop hunting game in forests.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 21 2014, @04:59PM
I don't think I'd ever refer to myself as left wing or socialist and as another soylentil mentioned the concepts of left and right wing are a simplification that can get distracting.
On the whole I don't think other people should be forced to do good deeds. I don't think, in general people should be forced to do things. I do however think other people should avoid doing bad deeds if the end doesn't justify the means. Of course the judgement of whether something is morally justifiable is very subjective. The point is though that if someone does something (or reveals plans to do something) that they know is morally questionable, it's perfectly reasonable to expect other people to judge them and apply pressure.
To get back on topic for a moment, it's hard for me to say whether these power plants are justifiable according to my own moral standards, but that's largely irrelevant. They will face intense protest from other people either way. I was just trying to illustrate that there may be ways around it and pointing out that these compromises will likely be left out due to the desire to maximize profit.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 21 2014, @05:18PM
Ok listen here young fascist (meaning the extreme right winger who seeks to silence peaceful protest), if you want to stop the crazy greens, go to school, start your own private security firm and offer your services to the power plant, or start your own political party, run for office to try to ban environmentalism.
What's that? You don't want to? You were just casually debating a topic for the sake of intellectual discussion? lol So was I. : )
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 21 2014, @05:19PM
> Ok listen here young leftist
Being concerned about externalities doesn't make one a leftist.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Thursday August 21 2014, @06:24PM
Actually, in the current environment, it kinda does, unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Thursday August 21 2014, @08:06PM
No.
1) That would be ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. You're talking about a field of mirrors larger than some cities.
2) Glazing rejects about 40% of incoming light. This has long been a limitation for rooftop solar hot-water heating systems.
3) Birds aren't going to pull an Ocean's 11 type heist, TRYING to break-in to an area that will kill them... A few vertical walls of chain-link fence, or even finer mesh like chicken-wire, should be able to greatly discourage birds from flying through the most dangerous spots and probably get the death-toll down to more reasonable figures.
4) If you're going to require ridiculously expensive counter-measures to save a few (non-endangered) desert birds, companies will simply not build power plants of that type, ever again. PV is already more popular than solar-thermal, so more of those will likely be bought from China. Alternatively, those still interested in the benefits of solar-thermal power may have to switch to a design like "parabolic trough" like SEGS Kramer Junction.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday August 22 2014, @06:42AM
You don't need to encase the whole thing. You just need to keep birds out of a radius around the focal point. First, check to see what the smallest possible bird is. Next, build a wire mesh around the radius. It's actually not a complete sphere, since the beams are reflected up to a tower. A hemisphere seems like the obvious, shape but perhaps not practical. Maybe a cylinder is best, but anyway; it could be simple wire mesh. Yes, there would be some power loss but it might not be too bad. It may or may not be cost effective to make the mesh harvest some power, since it would harvest it much less efficiently than the highly concentrated area near the center.
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