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Google-Backed Solar Plant Catches on Fire (pv-tech.org)
An anonymous reader writes:"The world's largest solar plant just torched itself," read the headline at Gizmodo, reporting on a fire Thursday at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. Built on 4,000 acres of public land in the Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion plant "has nearly 350,000 computer controlled mirrors -- each roughly the size of a garage door," according to the Associated Press, which reports that misaligned mirrors focused the sunlight on electrical cables, causing them to burst into flames, according to the local fire department. The facility was temporarily shut down, and the fire damaged one of the facility's three towers, according to the Associated Press, while another tower is closed for maintenance, "leaving the sprawling facility on the California-Nevada border operating at only a third of its capacity."
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
HOLY FUCK!
The "invested $168 in the facility" link's URL is fucked up.
It is currently:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/05/21/236254/green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort
When it should obviously be:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort
And it's not "$168", for crying out loud. The article clearly states (emphasis added),
Google still has invested $168 million in the venture
I don't expect a lot from the editors here, but holy fucking moley, this is just inexcusably bad! Fix the goddamn link URL! Fix the goddamn amount of money!
If it had anywhere near the potential for disaster as nuclear, it almost certainly WOULD be as heavily regulated.
=Smidge=
Having a fire break out in a concentrator tower is not the plant 'torching itself'. To get a usable Carnot temperature differential.for power generation, the temperature on the heated end of the tower has to be high, so that's where the excessive temperature risk is concentrated. But when journalism is being practiced by scribes who nothing about science, every error condition has to treated as an apocalypse. Welcome to our world, solar developers.
I work in a factory and stuff is occasionally installed wrong or fails in such a way that stuff breaks, sometimes by melting or having smoke come out of it. Nobody was injured and the result of the problem didn't cascade and create other problems (at least nothing serious apparently) which means it's not a huge deal. Replace the cables, align the mirrors properly this time, update the process for mirror alignment and verification and get on with life.
I seriously wonder what kind of sheltered life people must be living to not have experienced stuff breaking down and having to repair it. Have you not owned a car? A washing machine or dishwasher? A computer with a hard drive? I've twice been in the vicinity of electrical transformers that exploded rather spectacularly, both of which due to high winds. They're up on a pole so nobody got hurt. They were fixed within a matter of hours. Seriously, stuff breaks down, usually for quite run-of-the-mill reasons, often due to human error, and it has to be fixed. Why the shock and mock outrage?
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
With the many green companies failing I'm surprised if this would be the first.
Evergreen Solar
SpectraWatt
Solyndra
Beacon Power
Nevada Geothermal
SunPower
First Solar
Babcock and Brown
EnerDel’s subsidiary Ener1
Amonix
Fisker Automotive
Abound Solar
A123 Systems
Willard and Kelsey Solar Group
Johnson Controls
Schneider Electric
Brightsource
ECOtality
Raser Technologies
Energy Conversion Devices
Mountain Plaza, Inc.
Olsen’s Crop Service and Olsen’s Mills Acquisition Company
Range Fuels
Thompson River Power
Stirling Energy Systems
Azure Dynamics
GreenVolts
Vestas
LG Chem’s subsidiary Compact Power
Nordic Windpower
Navistar
Satcon
Konarka Technologies Inc.
Mascoma Corp.
The investors are irrelevant, the government support is something worth mentioning, as this is a plant that is woefully underperfoming to start with, has not fulfilled its contractual obligations for power delivery after it was operational, and is at risk of being shut down if the power contract is cancelled. This is just another setback that is going to make it that much harder for the plant to continue.
crashes with cars and trucks kill as many as **340 MILLION** birds on U.S. roads every year — a much higher toll than bird deaths from many other human activities. If alternate energy naysayers wanted to save birds they could just stop driving.
You may wish to rethink your offer — you and I have already sunk much more into this failed enterprise. The submitter's write-up and TFA both concentrate on Google's puny $168 (million), for which Google would've gotten a solid return, had the project worked, while strangely omitting the $1,600 million, which Obama's DOE gave them in loan-guarantees without any hope of earning a profit.
Think of what useful things could've been funded with the money, had it been done the fair — Capitalist — way. You know, when the people making investments a) dispense their own monies, rather than those of captive taxpayers; b) face personal losses from failures and rewards from successes...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And cats kill billions of birds a year.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
The three idiots replying to you didn't bother to read what you linked to...
The California regulators may end up forcing the plant to shut down, thus triggering the loan guarantee...
Worse, even if it keeps running, it is producing power for 6 times the cost of a natural gas fired plant.
No, wait, it gets better!
"Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar production."
You just can't make this stuff up...
You sir don't know how to calculate basic math.
The plant cost $2.2B and has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts, therefore the build capacity cost were $5.6/W. The DOE EIA shows coal averages $4.4/W but can be as high as $6.6/W for cleaner plants, and nuclear built costs at a similar $5.5/W. So it was built for a very conventional cost.
But that is just build cost. Then comes the fixed and variable O & M costs for which solar is very low. Half of coal, and a third of nuclear. And that is with coat and nuclear getting all sorts of governmental freebees on the external costs of environmental, health & security impact.
We describe the combination of capital and O&M as LCOE (levelized cost of energy). For which the plant it is a quoted at a LCOE of $0.146/kWh. NOT $200/kWh. Which is competitive which a number of conventional fuel sources like natural gas (wikipedia). PV still ranks cheaper, but there have been few bigger thermal projects to drive down these costs. You might notice that the DOE only quotes the LCOE of theoretical nuclear projects to be delivered in 10 years or fully capitalized 40 year old plants, because the last nuclear plants to be built in the USA had terrifyingly bad economics, and even then don't include their obvious myriad of externalities.
And this is (partially) why in the free market, wind, solar, and decentralized gas-turnbines are killing it. In the last 10 years solar+wind have been leading new capacity installation world wide. by the end of this year solar will have reached 321GW of worldwide capacity, Wind 517GW... most of which was installed in the last 10 years period. Whereas worldwide nuclear capacity declined from 375GW to 372GW in the same period.
I keep forgetitng, you're not from here, so you've missed out on many of the biggest projects the fed has accomplished, because rather than learn history, you've latched on to some comckamamey ideology that you've confused with libertarianism. too much rand, not enough reality.
3 billion?
thats cute.
the WPA and CCC building the nation's first national highways, parks, dams, and other infrastructure.
the interstate system.
the water distribution and irrigation system of california
the entire space program
as well as most of the advances in aeronautics from the 1920 through the 1990s
medical breakthroughs at universities funded by federal grants...or did you forget that fully 90% of all research money spent in this country comes from the fed?
computers, robotics and ai?
seriously solyndra?
actually son the typical venture capitalist firm does just fine with a solyndra or two. after all, the typical investment success rate to be a successful firm is only ~33%. 2 out of 3 projects can fail, and they still regain enough to cover losses and make a profit.
as for the DOE bureaucrats you disdain so much...so far their loan program is rocking a 97% success rate. so point to solyndra all you want, cause the DOE is outperforming the typical market by over 300%. lose their jobs? hah. the private investors wish they could be that successful with their money.
proving once again that you dont have a single fucking clue what you're talking about.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.