This is what these solar farms do >
http://www.thewildlifenews.com/2014/08/24/ivanpah-thermal-solar-power-plant-produces-death-rays-torching-many-birds/
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/26/solyndra-misled-government-get-535-million-solar-p/
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Ivanpah thermal solar power plant produces “death rays” torching many birds
By Ralph Maughan On August 24, 2014
In B.L.M., Desert Tortoise, Energy, Public Lands, Solar Roast bird record at Mojave solar plant even worse than predicted?
Plant workers call them “streamers.” Birds that fly through the beams of concentrated sunlight at the massive Ivanpah solar plant near Primm, Nevada catch fire and fall from the sky, leaving a smoky trail as they burn and die.
This solar plant is not the typical solar plant made of photovoltaic cells.
Photovoltaics are thought usually harmless to wildlife except for the cleared land. Photovoltaics are very scalable — they can be built in all sizes, shapes, and put on the ground, rooftops, parking lots, platforms at sea, etc.
The Ivanpah style plant instead uses many thousands of large mirrors (300,000 at Ivanpah). They concentrate reflected sunlight into powerful beams aimed at “power towers” — boilers that use the steam to turn turbines and generate electricity in the old fashioned way. Photovoltaics produce electricity directly.
The Ivanpah plant has been controversial from the start. At first it was because the land selected in the Ivanpah Valley was splendid habitat for many hundreds of desert tortoises. The land was also very near to the Mojave National Preserve.
It is also on public (BLM) lands covering about 6 square miles from which all vegetation has been removed and the desert soil covered over.
As time went by it occurred to people that the solar beams with their temperatures up to 800º F would be dangerous to anything that passed through them. In addition the flashes from the mirrors could carry a long way and be a danger to pilots.
Now it is thought that the rows of mirrors reflecting light look like desert lakes to birds. Moreover, the light from the mirrors attracts insects too, further attracting birds.
One formally reported incident of “flash glare” was reported in March this year. Extremely bright flash-glare from the mirror fields around the towers briefly blinded the pilots flying a corporate light 2 turbojet. It had passengers aboard.
There is no agreement how many birds are roasted, but a recent study made public by the California Energy Commission by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) indicates that the number is high.
The report says “It appears that Ivanpah may act as a “mega-trap,” attracting insects which in turn attract insect-eating birds, which are incapacitated by solar flux injury, thus attracting predators and creating an entire food chain vulnerable to injury and death.”
Unlike wind farms which seem to preferentially kill certain kind of birds, Ivanpah was “equal opportunity.”
The remains of 71 species were identified, representing a broad range of ecological types. In body size, these ranged from hummingbirds to pelicans; in ecological type from strictly aerial feeders (swallows) to strictly aquatic feeders (grebes) to ground feeders (roadrunners) to raptors (hawks and owls).
The species identified were equally divided among resident and non-resident species, and nocturnal as well as diurnal species were represented. Although not analyzed in detail, there was also significant bat and insect mortality at the Ivanpah site, including monarch butterflies.
Collecting birds on the ground does not give a full accounting of bird death because not all “streamers” fall and die on sight. Birds were observed to fly through, catch fire and then perch, only to make a erratic flight off to die somewhere else. CBD estimated that perhaps 28,000 birds die from what happens at the site each year.
BrightSource Energy runs the place. They estimate about a thousand birds a year dead, but last year federal investigators report they saw “streamers” about every 2 minutes during their visit to Ivanpah.
Right wing fossil fuel advocates are criticizing environmentalists using Ivanpah as an example of what alternative energy, which they misleadingly call “green energy,” is like. It is not green, and Ivanpah was opposed by a number of environmental groups from the start, including CBD and Western Watersheds Project, who sued to try to stop it.
Back in 2011, we ran a number of stories in the Wildlife News about WWPs efforts to stop it. Excellent updates with photos on the project and other controversial solar projects can be found at http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/
Below are select articles from the News.
* Last Spring at Ivanpah ? April 12, 2009
* Ivanpah Power Plant – Not Clean Not Green. Oct. 5, 2010
* WWP Sues to Stop Fast Tracked Ivanpah Power Plant in California. Jan. 17, 2011
* BLM halts some construction at Ivanpah Power Plant. April 19, 2011
Despite the controversy over Ivanpah, BrightSource has applied to build another such plant in the middle of an important flyway where much larger birds, and larger numbers of birds are at risk. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is reported to be trying to stop this project. This would be a 75-story power tower and mirrors. The tower would rise above the sand dunes and creek washes the run between Joshua Tree National Park and the California-Arizona border. The flyway is between the Colorado River and the Salton Sea.
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Bright Source Energy/Solyndra/SolarReach
https://twitter.com/BrightSource
Israel is building the world's tallest solar tower, with 50,000 mirrors #solar #Ashalim #CSP -
https://twitter.com/BrightSource/status/852931455424626689
BrightSource Energy @BrightSource
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[DELIBERATE RENEGADE TACTIC]
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Energy Department loan office under scrutiny
Risk division understaffed for months
By Jim McElhatton - The Washington Times - Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The Energy Department’s loan office — which came under fire for its handling of failed solar panel maker Solyndra — left a key oversight office understaffed for nearly a year, according to a recent government audit.
Launched in February 2012 following the Solyndra failure, the risk management division of the department’s loan office left 11 of its 16 positions unstaffed until late 2013, and operated without a director for much of last year, according to a Government Accountability Office report released this month.
The GAO’s findings of staffing shortfalls in the risk-management office happened despite the headline-making loan program failures that had embarrassed the Obama administration.
The loan office is tasked with evaluating risk for a program that had seen three of its loan recipients file for bankruptcy and others require restructuring deals. Even as some companies’ finances worsened, staffing troubles in the loan office resulted in a failure to prepare dozens of credit reports mostly in 2011, according to the GAO.
The congressional watchdog office also said “inconsistent adherence to policies and incomplete staffing” had limited the Energy Department’s ability to assure the public that it’s been effective in managing tens of billions of dollars in loans.
In a less critical report, the Energy Department’s inspector general said officials have made “substantial progress” in implementing recommendations from a White House ordered review issued in January 2012.
Still, despite the inspector general’s “generally favorable findings,” auditors found the loan office still hadn’t implemented eight of 12 recommendations from the 2012 review, such as improved public reporting, restructured internal oversight and establishing an external oversight board.
A department spokeswoman defended the loan office Wednesday.
“The department takes its responsibility to the American taxpayer very seriously. As noted in a previous GAO report, as well as in independent reports, the department’s due diligence is as rigorous — or more so — than that performed in the private sector,” spokeswoman Dawn Selak wrote in an email.
“In addition, this week’s IG report shows that the department’s Loan Programs Office has taken the Allison report seriously and addressed its recommendations.”
Another concern raised by auditors revealed a lack of a formal process to settle differences between the risk management division and other agency offices on loan deals.
After the 2012 collapse of Solyndra, the California solar panel maker that received a half-billion dollar federal loan and whose factory President Obama once toured, emails surfaced revealing red flags about the company’s finances long before it went broke.
Other documents revealed concerns about the company from inside the Office of Management and Budget as early as 2010.
While a grand jury was formed to investigate the company, no charges against Solyndra officials were ever filed.
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So Obongo gutted The Department of Energy to make sure the loans got through.
This went to a grand Jury, but nothing happened APPARENTLY.
We'll see. <
GRAND JURY...?
D5
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