The Ivanpah debacle

Three reports:

February 18, 2014

Horror at the world's largest solar farm days after it opens as it is revealed panels are SCORCHING birds that fly over them

Environmentalists have hit out at a giant new solar farm in the Mojave Desert as mounting evidence reveals birds flying through the extremely hot 'thermal flux' surrounding the towers are being scorched.

After years of regulatory tangles around the impact on desert wildlife, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened on Thursday but environmental groups say the nearly 350,000 gigantic mirrors are generating 1000 degree Fahrenheit temperatures which are killing and singeing birds.

According to compliance documents released by developer BrightSource Energy last year, dozens of birds were found injured at the site during the building stage.

State and federal regulators are currently conducting a two-year study of the Ivanpah plant's effects on birds, with environmental groups questioning the the value of cleaner power when native wildlife is being killed or injured.

Ivanpah, a joint project uniting NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy, can produce enough electricity to power 140,000 homes.

Larger projects are on the way, but for now, Ivanpah is being described as a marker for the United States' emerging solar industry.

While solar power accounts for less than one per cent of the nation's power output, thousands of projects from large, utility-scale plants to small production sites are under construction or being planned, particularly across the sun-drenched Southwest.

'The opening of Ivanpah is a dawn of a new era in power generation in the United States,' said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. 'We are going to be a global leader in solar generation.'

The plant's dedication comes as government continues to push for development of greener, cleaner power.

President Barack Obama has mounted a second-term drive to combat climate change, proposing first-ever limits on carbon pollution from new and existing power plants.

His plan aims to help move the U.S. from a coal-dependent past into a future fired by wind and solar power, nuclear energy and natural gas.

According to U.S. Energy Information Administration data, the cost of building and operating a new solar thermal power plant over its lifetime is greater than generating natural gas, coal or nuclear power.

It costs a conventional coal plant $100, on average, to produce a megawatt-hour of power, but that figure is $261 for solar thermal power, according to 2011 estimates.

The figures do not account for incentives such as state or federal tax credits that can impact the cost.

Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the solar association, said in a statement that solar systems have seen 'dramatic price declines' in the last few years.

That's good for utilities in California, which must obtain a third of their electricity from solar and other renewable sources by 2020.

The Ivanpah site, about 45 miles southwest of Las Vegas, has virtually unbroken sunshine most of the year and is near transmission lines that carry power to consumers.

Using technology known as solar-thermal, more than 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors roughly the size of a garage door reflect sunlight to boilers atop 459-foot towers. The sun's power is used to heat water in the boilers' tubes and make steam, which drives turbines to create electricity.

While many people are familiar with rooftop solar, or photovoltaic panels, 'these are a little bit different. This takes the sun's rays and reflects them onto towers,' said NRG spokesman Jeff Holland.

The plant can be a startling sight for drivers heading toward Las Vegas along busy Interstate 15. Amid miles of rock and scrub, its vast array of 7-by-10-foot mirrors creates the image of an ethereal lake shimmering atop the desert floor. In fact, it's built on a dry lakebed.

Google announced in 2011 that it would invest $168million in the project. As part of its financing, BrightSource also lined up $1.6billion in loans guaranteed by the U.S. Energy Department.

Ivanpah can be seen as a success story and a cautionary tale, highlighting the inevitable trade-offs between the need for cleaner power and the loss of fragile, open land. The California Energy Commission concluded that while the solar plant would impose 'significant impacts on the environment ... the benefits the project would provide override those impacts.'

Such disputes are likely to continue for years as more companies seek to develop solar, wind and geothermal plants on land treasured by environmentalists who also support the growth of renewable energy. At issue is what is worth preserving and at what cost, as California pushes to generate more electricity from renewable sources.

In 2012, the federal government established 17 'solar energy zones' in an attempt to direct development to land it has identified as having fewer wildlife and natural-resource obstacles. The zones comprise about 450 square miles in six states — California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.

The Western Watershed Project is continuing to push a lawsuit against federal agencies that reviewed the Ivanpah project. Its California director, Michael J. Connor, said alternatives to the site were not considered and serious environmental impacts, including fragmenting the tortoise population, were ignored.

'Do we really need to have these giant plants first, or is it better to generate solar power on people's roofs, the place it's going to be used?' Connor asked.  NRG did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.

Resch said a key issue for the industry will be maintaining government policies that encourage development, including tax credits for solar projects that are set to expire in 2016 and government loan guarantees. 'The direct result of these policies is projects like Ivanpah,' he said.

According to statistics compiled by the Energy Department, the solar industry employs more than 140,000 Americans at about 6,100 companies, with employment increasing nearly 20 percent since the fall of 2012.

SOURCE




December 02, 2014

More on the Ivanpah boondoggle

Overlooked:  Deserts have lots of sand

Dr Klaus L.E. Kaiser

In California’s sunny south is the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility (ISPF). It’s a massive structure in the Mojave Desert that was supposed to deliver an energy output of approximately 1.7 million MWh (megawatt-hours) of electric energy annually. ivanpah The ISPF uses 173,500 heliostats (adjustable mirrors to follow the sun) that reflect the sunshine onto boilers located on centralized power towers.

The facility covers 4,000 acres (1,600 ha) of public land and received $1,600 million in government-backed loan guarantees. Another $600 million came from private investors with nearly one third of that from Google.

This super-duper solar power plant was to be THE solar power plant, not just in the USA but in the entire world. (Source of photo) As it turns out though, the grand hopes for “alternative energy” were premature. There ought to be at least one lesson from this project: the desert environment is simply not quite as benign and suitable to solar power generation systems as many people hope.

Undesirable Effects

To begin with, ten square kilometers of room-size individual mirrors do not all reflect the sunshine to one point, even with the best intentions and computer control of the mirrors’ angles. There are always some parts of the associated machinery that do not function due to grit in the gears and on the mirrors. As a result, sunlight is reflected into many directions causing birds flying across the field to become disoriented. Others that get into the main path of light have their feathers singed or they get fried. Even airline pilots high above the ground have complained about glare from the mirrors.

Low Power Output

However, the power facility has another even bigger problem: its power output is nowhere near the design value and that’s not because of a lack of sunshine since the facility began operating in December 2013.

Obviously, the power output of the plant varies with the seasons and number of daylight hours at the site. In the eight-month period of January-August, 2014, it produced only 250,000 MWh of energy, roughly one quarter of the expected output. Even in the high irradiance and long-day four-month period of May-August, 2014, it delivered less than 200,000 MWh of electric energy – less than one half of the design value. As there was no particular lack of sunshine that underperformance could not possibly be blamed on unusual natural conditions.

One can only speculate as to the reason for the lower than expected power output at this time but there is at least one obvious cause—namely sand and dust. A decade or so ago the Siemens company installed solar (photovoltaic) power panels in the Mexican sierra that got sand-blasted into oblivion in short order. In any event, in order to salvage the plant the ISPF owners decided on a two-pronged approach: borrow more money and use more natural gas.

Borrow More

The first approach of borrowing more funds is still under consideration. It’s commonly known as the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul principle and is frequently to be found in government circles.

Pete Danko of Breaking Energy reports that the Platts trade newsletter Megawatt Dailydiscussed Ivanpah’s status. It noted that the trio of Ivanpah owners had sought extensions on repaying their current loans as they waited to receive a hoped-for cash grant from the U.S. Treasury worth 30 percent of the Ivanpah plant’s total cost of $2.2 billion to repay the current part of the (California) loan guarantee.

Use More Natural Gas

The second approach to ISPF’s problems is even more insidious in terms of the underlying idea of “green” power generation.

In March of this year the ISPF’s owners decided to apply to the California Energy Resources Conservation and Development Commission for permission to “upgrade” the system by doubling the amount of natural gas usage permitted for “preheating” of the solar towers. This request was approved in August 2014 and the ISPF can now use up to 525 million standard cubic feet of natural gas per year for that purpose. It is important to put that amount of natural gas into perspective vis-à-vis the overall energy generation by the facility.

Fudging the Numbers

To investigate the real contribution of natural gas to the plant’s output, one has to ask how much electric energy a regular power plant delivers with the consumption of 525 MCFT of NG. Using a heat-energy to electric-energy conversion rate of 60%, or 0.2 kWh/cft of NG, that amount of NG alone produces roughly 100 million MWh of electricity.

In terms of ISPF’s design output, these 100 million MWh of NG-sourced energy appear small; however, it really ought to be compared the amount of true “solar” energy produced.

To do that one also has to deduct the energy amount of the already used NG of roughly 30 million KWh (up to end of August 2014). That would leave then only in the order of 250 million MWh for the entire January to September period or somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% of the entire ISPF output. Therefore, doubling the amount of natural gas use will make the total “solar” energy output appear to be yet larger than it really is. It will be easy to fall for such claims – unless you know how numbers can be fudged.

Look for the Spin

Undoubtedly the solar power industry, many politicians and, I guess, most certainly all anti-carbon activists will try to spin this anticipated increase of the ISPF power output as a great success story of solar power generation in general and the Ivanpah plant in particular. In the end though, I surmise it will all be in vain and Ivanpah will eventually become another giant “green energy” boondoggle.

SOURCE




August 18, 2016

Consumers Pay Because Regulators Allow Natural Gas Use at This Solar Plant

Ivanpah is just an expensive toy for a few rich people

An immensely wealthy consortium owns the plant. Government regulators approved a contract forcing consumers to pay four to five times the going rate for electricity produced by the plant.

And the energy, because of an inordinate use of gas, turns out to be nowhere as "green" as folks thought they'd get.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is one of the largest solar projects in the country.

Ivanpah has an impressive pedigree: It is owned by NRG Energy, BrightSource Energy, and Google Inc. BrightSource itself is owned by a consortium including Google, General Electric Corp., Chevron Corp., BP Alternative Energy, and Morgan Stanley.

Together, these companies command market capitalization in excess of $1 trillion. One would think that with such enormous capital and financial sophistication, Ivanpah's owners could have undertaken this project without government support.

Unfortunately, that's not how today's green energy market works.

The owners of the Ivanpah solar power facility received a federal loan guarantee of $1.6 billion, a tax credit in excess of $500 million, and contracts to sell power at four to five times the market rate of electricity. All predicated on the production of solar power.

But Ivanpah is not just a solar power plant. Many solar plants use solar cells to convert the sunlight directly into electricity.

Ivanpah is different. It uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight for generating steam that then drives turbines. These turbines produce energy in a similar fashion to that of traditional coal, natural gas, or nuclear power plants.

However, Ivanpah has a problem those technologies don't: intermittency. Meaning the sun doesn't always shine.

For Ivanpah, this is an even bigger problem than it is for plants that use solar cells, because at night the temperature in the desert falls dramatically and the water cools down.

So, the water must be reheated the next morning before power production can resume. Instead of relying on the sun to reheat the water, the Ivanpah plant burns natural gas.

A true description of Ivanpah, then, is that it is a hybrid solar-natural gas power plant. The electricity is not entirely solar produced, yet it is sold at the higher prices regulators allow for solar power, a benefit worth millions of dollars per year to Ivanpah's owners.

Ivanpah is abetted in this mischaracterization by the California Energy Commission, whose strained interpretation of the rules allows Ivanpah to ignore gas used to heat the water, unless the "generator breaker is closed." This means that none of the gas burned at night to reheat the water is counted toward the caps placed by government on natural gas use in generating power.

Those caps require natural gas to be responsible for less than 5 percent of the overall generation of power, with 95 percent coming from solar. In reality, the California Energy Commission's own data show Ivanpah's gas use is responsible for closer to 30 percent of its output than it is to 5 percent.

That's how Ivanpah hits the "bad policy" trifecta that is all too common in today's heavily subsidized renewable energy markets:

Rich consortium gets huge subsidies from taxpayers to build a plant. Check.  Regulators OK a contract that forces consumers to pay four to five times the going rate for its product. Check. And the product actually is nowhere near as "green" as people thought it'd be. Check.

The inconvenient truth is that Ivanpah uses a lot of natural gas to generate "solar" electricity, and neither the California Energy Commission nor the U.S. Department of Energy seems to care enough to come clean about it.

SOURCE