Post-modern temples to the Sun God
By Jo Nova
It was supposed to last 50 years...
The PR writers want us to believe the legendary Ivanpah has been beaten out by better cheap solar, and that this is somehow a “success”. But the truth is, it’s been killed by the same subsidies and crooked market that birthed it.
The Big Government Blob distorted the free market, and created a boom in solar power. But the business case was not that good, there was no miracle in the storage of electricity, nobody wanted fried birds, and the subsidies kept forcing more solar power generation in at the same useless time of day.
Since there were too many generators at lunchtime and not enough customers, the last surviving part of the free market has solved the imbalance.
Just another artificial boom and bust
In 2014, the project cost $2.2 billion dollars. Ivanpah has 173.000 heliostats, and theoretically could make 390 megawatts in a perfect moment. But no one in their right mind would have spent so much to get so little, so the government spent $1.6 billion taxpayer dollars as a “loan guarantee”.
I wonder how that is working out for the taxpayers, especially now that the capital depreciation has shifted from 50 years to 11.
11 years after a celebrated opening, massive solar plant faces a bleak future in the Mojave Desert
LOS ANGELES (AP) — What was once the world’s largest solar power plant of its type appears headed for closure just 11 years after opening, under pressure from cheaper green energy sources. Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises.
The Ivanpah solar power plant formally opened in 2014 on roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border. Though it was hailed at the time as a breakthrough moment for clean energy, its power has been struggling to compete with cheaper solar technologies.
So it was struggling to compete with cheaper solar technologies, and yet, in a market where customers keep paying more and more all the time, it still couldn’t make money?
Even the Sierra Club didn’t like it:
“The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster,” Julia Dowell of the Sierra Club said in an email.
“Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project’s construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species,” Dowell said. “While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal.”
Apparently the plant would sometimes blind drivers too. It certainly blinded investors.
The company did not reply to AP questions about what would happen to the giant industrial wreckage.
h/t To Willie Soon!
Ivanpah Photo by Cliff Ho. – U.S. Department of Energy from United States
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By the time this monstrosity was completed, solar panel costs had come down to the point where it was cheaper.
Also, Ivanpah needed to burn a few truckloads of LPG just to keep steam up until the sunrise each day.
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So it wasn’t so pure after all? I wonder who will pull it down and pack it away. Could it be used in the border wall? I was out around Wellington recently and saw several hundred acres covered in glass. Where will it end up ? And to think one coal plant could replace the whole thing and provide real power. Let’s hope Dutton has the courage to build one while we wait for a nuke or maybe we just build more coal and forget the nukes.
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I’m proud to have earned a red tick, it says that I’ve upset another green loon somewhere.
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Unless they had to create a closure plan as part of a permitting process, such as typical power plants are required to do, the facility will likely be abandoned. This has happened with the previous generation’s wind farms. If the facility represents a hazard, it will have to be demolished. With public money. It would be interesting to see if it is designated a RCRCA superfund site. Then, there would at least be an existing remediation process to follow.
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At the very least, the mirrors will represent hazards due to the possibility of blinding pilots and drivers and will have to be removed.
This remediation work will be a work opportunity for all those woke Leftists doing useless or destructive “green” and other woke jobs who now find their useless jobs cancelled. They can work at minimum wage to help pay off their debt to society.
Incidentally Ivanpah does not use molten sodium but other CSP’s do.
When others shut down, the sodium, which is extremely hazardous, will need to be removed. It’s a nightmare to handle, especially in the vast quantities used, so will also be very expensive.
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Maybe, David, all those green jobs we keep being promised will be in restoration work on old wind and solar factory sites. Bowen and Bandt were right after all.
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What laughable lunacy that any child could understand, but not the so called scientists or stupid investors or pollies and all of the delusional idiots who couldn’t care less about the environment.
They should demand that they clean up the TOXIC mess and they should be taken to court ASAP.
They should have used reliable, base-load gas in the first place and saved the then pristine environment for the future. What a toxic disaster.
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The failure of projects like this means Australia will.be even more determined to go ahead with similar projects.
Australia loves spending taxpayer money on failed technologies and harvesting taxpayer subsidies.
SEE LINK FOR REST
Also see additional propaganda at:
https://arena.gov.au/blog/commercial-concentrated-solar-one-step-closer/
It gets even worse because they want to make “green” hydrogen and methanol as well.
And ARENA uses the US as an example, but these prijects are shutting down as per Jo’s article. They simply can’t survive without subsidies from the hard working people Donald Trump represents:
About Ivanpah’s subsidies:
And if Goolag, one of the richest companies in the world, is a co-owner of Ivanpah, why do they need loan guarantees and other subsidies?
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That solar concentrator at Pt Augusta supplies power to that big greenhouse tomato farm that supply to Coles, they use the waste heat to make desal water to grow veges and provide heat in winter to the greenhouse.
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Goolag AI says this about the Spanish concentrated solar power projects:
It must be bad if even fully woke Goolag AI doesn’t give it a glowing review.
Another failure.
More motivation for Australia and our leading chief “scientist” and “engineer” Chrissy “the simpleton” Bowen to throw more taxpayer money at failed technologies.
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As it happens I took a road trip across the USA just a few months ago and saw the Ivanpah Solar plant from the highway on the last day, between Las Vegas (Sin City) and the city of Angels,
Fortunately there were no birds flying by at the time!
Ivanpah has been in trouble since its inception. This article confirms all that Jo has published here and it was published in 2016!
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/03/17/fail-ivanpah-solar-power-plant-not-producing-enough-electricity-may-be-forced-to-close/
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We went past there on a coach trip including Vegas back in 2016, over on the right, you could see the sunbeams leading up to the tower, the tour director mentioned how expensive it was, how much trouble it was in, the hazard to birds, even lowflying Cessnas and the constant battle with dust settling on all the mirrors.
All three units were online back then.
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A Solar Power Plant lasting 50 years? They are having a larf’. It would have probably needed replacement after 20 or so years. Was that cost factored in?
Meanwhile, a well built modern HELE Coal Fired Power Plant or a modern Nuclear Energy Power Plant will last a lot longer than 50 years, all things being equal.
Peter Dutton, you need to follow the lead of the QLD State Guv’ment who intend to keep all of their Coal Fired Power Plants.
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Here is a video showing how the Ivanpah facility fried birds and insects. It was enormously destructive of both aerial and ground wildlife, including the threatened desert tortoise (Gopherus agassizii).
Thankfully the facility has ended operations now.
https://youtu.be/ICLXQN_lURk
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And this is how the environmentalists save the planet? I think the planet would be far better off if those puffs of smoke were the loony environmentalists like Bill 350 or Al of the big house.
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Just WOW, it’s like the worlds biggest bug zapper except some of those zapped birds looked like hawks and eagles.
The mirrors must be slathered in dried blood and bird guts and bones.
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I’m not sure how it happened.
Most political opinions are industrial products.
(It’s the reason something like 7 of the 10 wealthiest counties in the US surround Washington DC.)
But ‘environmentalism’ got hijacked by ‘climate’.
The ‘decarbonize’ scam was able to disguise itself as ‘environmentalism’.
Really basic provocateurism to sabotage grassroots popular political power so the establishment faces no viable opposition.
Similar to if you argue for vaccine safety, you’re labeled anti-vax.
A really terrible period of political history.
Maybe it’s turning, but the place is ransacked.
People should go to jail.
But they won’t.
We can wave at them as they pass by on the way to the bank.
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I remember at one point pictures of sea fowl covered in oil were used as the posterchild to turn everyone against fossil fuels.
I wonder if we can use pictures of fried birds and tortoises as a postershild against solar farms?
This is a marvelous display of the hyprocisy, outright lies and total disregard of the environment of the greens and far left. How do people still fall for their rubbish???
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The hypocrisy of the Left is due to doublethink.
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Hopefully when this appalling waste of taxes is shut down, it will be a win for commonsense and wildlife safety.
Contrast this bird frying abortion with ducks swimming on power station cooling water lakes.
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In Australia the Hazelwood power station was maliciously destroyed by the Andrews regime. Its cooling water pond contained introduced tropical fish and introduced barramundi (for fishing) and was a year-round refuge for humans and animals seeking warmth.
Just before the communist Dictator Dan of Victoriastan destroyed it I went there specifically to have a last swim in it.
The water was a constant 22C (71.6F).
When Dan turned the power station off the water temperature dropped and all the fish died or were killed.
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Just imagine being able to go barra fishing in Victoria, but sadly no more.
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Shortly before the Andrews regime vandalised Hazelwood Power Station they spent $150,000 of taxpayer money stocking it with barramundi.
SEE LINK FOR REST
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When will people start talking about coal power? Thirty seven years of ‘dirty’ coal and no one in the West wants coal.
In the UK, the government is sealing the existing gas fracking wells with concrete, to make sure no one ever uses them again. They used a fake earthquake scare for Theresa May to turn them off. Liz Truss tried to turn them on again but Rishi Sunak reversed it. So the UK is importing gas when it has plenty.
It’s the same with coal power stations around the world being blown up, dismantled, buried, covered. Again to make sure that no matter how desperate people are, they have to use expensive power which doesn’t work.
And all the money flows to China which is using its cheap massive coal power to take over the manufacturing world.
Why do our politicians all seem to work for China?
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“Why do our politicians all seem to work for China?”
Just follow the money.
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All politicians should have to wear jackets with all their ‘sponsors’ names on them, you know, like the Nascar drivers, just so we can see who owns them.
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Indeed. Even “opposition” “leader” Dutton has gone soft on China.
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Sad to report there is a twin to this green abortion called Tonopah and is about 196 miles NW of Las Vegas.
Hopefully it is in a similar death spiral.
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It’s called Crescent Dunes.
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I am making guesstimate of 500GWh/yr average output over 11 years to total 5.5TWh. Amortising the capital of $2.2bn over that output gives $400/MWh. And that is just the capital. No O&M, no lost opportunity of the money, no repairs, no compensation for the environmental destruction and no removal cost.
Anyone want a used 15m^2 mirror or hundreds of thousands of them? Make good tilting garage doors that could be arranged to blind drivers of passing cars.
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In a few thousand years we’ll scratch our heads at that site and conclude the remains are obviously connected to the Nazca Lines in South America.
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I wonder when the Sierra Club started to not like it … was that after the collapse started??? Just asking.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windorah_Solar_Farm
QLD is proud to announce that not to be outdone by the yanks, we also have our own failed concentrated solar array out in the desert which failed spectacularly years ago after relieving the taxpayer of at least $4,500,000.
It died because of lack of maintenance, being so far from the bright lights that no one with the expertise wanted anything to do with it, plus desert dust and wildlife did it in.
It was projected to save the longsuffering taxpayer the cost of 500,000 litres of diesel per year.
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