3/17/16
Daily Caller:
California
regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave
Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to
mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and
incinerating birds.
The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t
give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as
part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Ivanpah,
which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration,
only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it
would. The plant only generated 45 percent of expected power in 2014 and
only 68 percent in 2015, according to government data.
And
it does all this at a cost of $200 per megawatt hour — nearly six times
the cost of electricity from natural gas-fired power plants.
Interestingly enough, Ivanpah uses natural gas to supplement its solar
production.
No surprise; Obama's backing of green projects has always been faith-based. What I want to know is which of Obama's billionaire owners got rich from this.
I commented about this solar plant last year about this time because the report then was it had only produced 25% of projected power due to an over abundance of clouds: And I said, right, too many clouds in the third year of the worst drought in state history. The problem with closing it however is that it was to make up from the lost power from the San Onofre nuke plant. The State is getting itself even beeper in the hole these groups wanted it to fall into. With the high cost of electricity now, plus potential power losses, and just the increased taxes to fund Electric high speed trains and other "green" tech the exodus from California will only get worse. Even Carl's Jr is now moving to Nashville.
ReplyDeleteThe plant is owned by Obama supporting Google.
ReplyDeleteAnother problem is that it is located in a bowl.
ReplyDeleteThere is, on average, 12 hours a day of sunlight anywhere in the world. Of that, perhaps 8-9 hours is useful for solar power generation.
Putting it in a bowl, surrounded by mountains, means that it gets even less useful sunlight.
This assumes there are no clouds. oops. there are clouds.
Dept of Energy ran a research prototype north of Las Vegas for 20 years or so. They never could get it to be feasible.
This was never anything other than a boondoggle.
John Henry