MOJAVE DESERT: Solar project would disturb thousands of tortoises

Let me throw some numbers at you, and if these are wrong someone please correct. The US uses about 4 million GWh of electricity a year. If you want to hit 10% that is 400,000 GWh of solar. If you get 1500 GWh per year out of 1 GW of solar PV, and each GW costs $5B the cost is about $1.3 Trillion. At the current federal subsidy of 30% its $400B. Now you want to increase this cost by taxing non-homeowners to lease roof space of those with homes and to help get 'er done. I'm sure well before we get to 2% those government subsidies will get cut. You could pay to replace all the coal power plants with wind for less subsidy money.

The way we get earned income is that the government takes a loss and gives the home owner and installer company cash. The silicon likely comes from china. Why is this better than natural gas and wind? Let's subsidize some solar, but germany and spain have already found too much is very expensive.

Here is the problem, that subsidy won't get rid of one drop of foreign oil. The electrification tax credit which will cost about $5B will help remove it. Notice how this is much less money and may address the problem of getting electrified car technology affordable.

It was senator feinstein that got a bill to protect the turtles. Brightsource rushed an estimate, and the current estimate violates the new law. I think we can protect the turtles and have solar. I don't think we need to destroy the environment to save it.

 

i agree that solar is expensive (or is now. what would it be if demand increased 1000%?) but it does work but only in conjunction with everything else you have mentioned.

replacing foreign oil need is an all encompassing project and the #1 step is CONSERVATION, not new sources of energy, but that is going to go over much worse than paying to cover every roof, that i can guarantee you!!

try to tell some one in Southern Cal that he is no longer allowed to drive greater than 60 mph and see what happens. trust me, paying trillions for solar will be a walk in the park!

 

If we diverted fossil fuel subsidies to renewables, we'd make a lot of good progress in a decade. If we took just 25% of the defense budget and used that in addition, we'd really be on our way.

 

about 10% (maybe more now) of the defense budget is for fuel. that expense is not counted towards domestic foreign oil bill

 

If the tortoises are on the endangered list, this suggests areas exist that can accommodate more life than is currently present. The argument of "kill them all," or "kill the plant" is a false choice fallacy. Also, OP's quote made me wonder if most of the problem is the construction rather than the finished farm.

 

The 'huge upfront cost' of PV is an argument of the rationalizing ignorant, at least in the case of well situated homes in the sunbelt. One of our local homebuilders has caught on, and is now putting PV on the roof when the house is built.

Rather simple calculations show that huge numbers of homeowners in the sunbelt can save utility costs of about $250 a year* per installed STC kw. A 5% apr loan to capitalize the entire $4/watt project costs $318/year amortized over 20 years. This calc is without any tax subsidy, without any utility subsidy, and ignores the homeowner benefit of rising electricity cost.

PV today is in the same situation as the Prus -- it makes an excellent financial investment *today*, but adoption is hampered by a longer horizon outlook and requirement that people be able to use a financial calculator.

I have calculated that a $10k investment** will supply all the power I need for my *total* EV and home energy use. All of it. People spend that much in a decade on fancier trims on their cars. The problem is not cost, it is priority.

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* 2 kwh/watt*year STC, 12.5 cents a kwh utility rate.

** Conservation first, of course.

 

60 Minutes says 50% of the cost of modern warfare is for fuel.

 

Rocket fuel and jet fuel is more expensive than our 85 octane petrol.

 

JP-8 is used for all kinds of stuff in the military. There aren't a lot of "botique" fuels because it's a logistical nightmare and an operational vulnerability.

 

Thanks to Rybold for posting. This technology sounds very interesting. Love the idea: giant mirrors heating the water in the sunny desert back-40. But unless someone has built one of these plants already, Austin is correct, 390-MW is just absolutely humongous for new technology. This is my long-standing complaint with utilities and also, to be honest, trash disposal. This could be the same faulty logic how Japan ended up with with nearly 10000-MW nukes (includes the 2 planned future reactors) in one spot on the map. Everyone feels there needs be an "away" where we build huge dumps and power plants. I feel smaller decentralized facilities is better. Maybe not as small as roof-top, but I would not rule it out. Of course, my feelings come from once living in a place that everyone thought was the perfect "away" to dump everything, as well as build nukes and coal plants. So I sympathize with the turtles plight.

 

Dave- Thank you for the blog example, I would very much like to visit your blog. I am struggling with this issue though. Keep in mind we refine here in the USA all/most of that oil, so that's an important aspect of our national security and let's face it many many jobs and taxes paid. But even T. Boone Pickens says oil imports are the death of us, which gives me a clue that something else (profit motive) may be kicking in here. In other words, America is starting to realize that we have the internal natural resources and green technologies make make a go of this energy thing by ourselves. So everyone may be sort-of over-emphasizing the negatives (of imports) in hopes of getting some action on domestic energy self-sufficiency, whereas USA self-sufficiency did not really seem practical until recently (re: recent nat gas supply discoveries and wind power developments)(and Prius).

 

http://priuschat.com/forums/nissan-hybrids-evs/90736-nissan-leaf-blog.html

this is link to post of blogs. i am a bit behind. have 17 entries (or so) this links about a dozen, but any will take u there and u can nav from there.

as far as eliminating any multi billion dollar industry, yes it will be painful, expensive and require a HUGE realignment of brain cells.

but, i dont see that we have a choice. its not oil i am against, its foreign oil. we have too much money leaving this country. i would do oil as long as we did not have to buy it from another country. see, its not really oil, its trade. we need to start trading amongst ourselves.

then we start trading, buying and selling with American dollars. when money stays in this country, its spent over and over and over. when it leaves, its not gone, we simply borrow it from some other country. so now, two countries have benefited from our inability to become self sufficient.

our inability to be self sufficient stems from our way of life. that is a HUGE undertaking that will be met with massive resistance at every single step.

#1 step is conservation. that will be the hardest step. changing our wasteful way of life. no more watering the lawn at 2 PM. i had posted pics about 5-6 years ago on this site of all the public sprinklers running at 3 pm. i later found out that the automatic watering system was not sufficient enough to water what it needed to at night. the watering ran 24/7. so, instead of passing a bond for an $800,000 watering system improvement project, we wasted who knows how much water.

but that is an easy one. the real challenge is moving us from those god da*** Chevy commercials!! i am simply appalled in this day of $4 gas that we still accept burnouts, smoke and burnt rubber as being cool.

our speed limits should be dropped and massive enforcement of the limits imposed (they are actually going up. a Texas Freeway is now up to like 85 MPH??)

our life of excess and standard of living that is head and shoulders above most of the world is crashing down around us and we are completely blind to it.

P.S. the defense oil thing. that is from 2003. told u it might be higher now!!

 

It's not new tech. there's already 354 MW of CSP in the mojave that's been there since 1980.

 

Australia and Spain have smaller setups in the 100-150 MW range. with all the desert space available, seems like a compromise of footprint, environment and location can be found.

but this is huge potential and i fail to understand why we have not moved much more into this area. maybe the Government should either give up some of that super secret Nevada desert or build their own power plant to fuel EVERY AFB. as it is now, Nellis AFB has a huge solar output for their needs. we can boost that.

 

Nope. Most things are on the endangered species list because of habitat destruction.

 

This is a very well proven technology. It needs to be large to justify even building the plant. The following link shows the prototype plant that was built to validate this specific design:

BrightSource Energy | SEDC

Energy is needed in low density for most consumer energy, and decentralized capabilities are ripe for much further development. However, some high capacity plants are needed for industrial needs, like reverse osmosis water plants and aluminum refining. The "issue" with the ground tortoises has all indications of being a proxy for anti-plant issues. The plant is very large. The Mojave is vastly larger.

PS-I'm fully for the 100% most intense actions to minimize tortoise habitat destruction. I've seen the results of many efforts of both plant owners and wildlife experts to make very sensible solutions. This situation looks clearly like this could be accomplished and should be required. However, if the argument is that the only solution is not to build anything, we all lose.

 

Alrighty then, I may need to get one of those plants near me. Thank you. No desert here though.

I amend my prior remarks, I do think roof-top solar makes good sense for hot water. I will definitely look into this if I buy a newly constructed house.

 

the best situation for solar water heating is to have it installed when the house is being built. the most expensive aspect of most installs is, I think, the labour required to shoehorn the system into a house that wasn't really designed with it in mind.

 

OK looks good FL. They always say it has to be huge to pay out for them, but I will take your word on it.