“It has been lauded as the world’s largest solar power plant, but the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) could also be called the world’s largest gas-fired power plant (largest in physical size, not gas consumption).”
Chris Clarke continues in his piece, “Ivanpah Solar Plant Owners Want to burn a Lot More Natural Gas” (KCET, March 27, 2014):
Each of the 4,000-acre facility’s three units has gas-fired boilers used to warm up the fluid in the turbines in the early morning, to keep that fluid at an optimum temperature during the night, and to boost production during the day when the sun goes behind a cloud…. Solar Partners says that in order for ISEGS (Ivanpah) to operate at full efficiency, the plant’s gas-fired auxiliary boilers will need to run an average of 4.5 hours a day, rather than the one hour a day originally expected. The plant’s total CO2 footprint from burning natural gas would rise to just above 92,200 tons per year, approximately equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas output of 16,500 average passenger cars.
The newly operational Ivanpah solar thermal electric power megaplant in California’s Mojave Desert was controversial before it was ever built for bird kills, desert tortoise impacts, and a 161% higher cost than coal-fired power plants. Now, with data coming in, it is becoming more controversial. Environmentalists, energy experts, and political decision-makers may soon ask how they were we sold a bad bill of goods.
One month after start up in February 2014, commercial airline pilots started filing complaints with the F.A.A. about the massive glare from Ivanpah’s 173,500 heliostat-mirrors used to radiate heat toward a central tower to drive a steam turbine.
Soon after the initial plant start-up it was also reportedly discovered the so-called clean power plant would emit 55% more greenhouse gases than it claimed in its original operating permit and environmental report, the equivalent of 16,500 cars. And this does not include all of the GHG emissions associated with the plant’s infrastructure and construction.
With a number of other large solar projects queuing up behind Ivanpah to locate nearby, the result could be just exporting Los Angeles’s air pollution to nearby Las Vegas 35-miles away, the Lake Mead Recreation Area, and the Mojave Desert National Reserve.
Ivanpah is unofficially designed to replace so-called “dirty” coal-fired power plants of the Navajo Generating Station in Arizona and the Intermountain Power Plant in Utah that both serve the Los Angeles area.
Although Ivanpah would reduce relative overall regional air pollution, it would just shift some of that pollution from remote areas in Arizona and Utah to the outskirts of the higher-populated area of Las Vegas.
Is it surprising to find that Ivanpah had to increase its emissions to reach maximum productivity?
Ivanpah Surprised by Need for Greater Gas-Fired Power?
The Bechtel Corporation, touts it had 60-years of experience in renewable energy plant engineering design, construction and start-up services, including “deploying concentrated solar thermal (both trough and tower) technology,” before starting up Ivanpah in February 2014. Under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy in the 1990’s, Bechtel was involved in Solar Project Two, a 10 MW, concentrated solar thermal power plant project in California’s Mojave Desert that pilot tested molten nitrate salt technology.
The tower and power plant elements of the previous “Solar One” solar thermal power plant were lost due to a fire on August 31, 1986 when 240,000 gallons of heat transfer oil caught fire (see Howard C. Hayden, A Primer on Renewable Energy Technology, 2009, p. 120). The plant was rebuilt as “Solar Two.”
It is thus surprising that FirstSolar, Ivanpah’s operator, has had to apply to the California Energy Commission and the California Air Resources Board to increase the running time for its gas-fired auxiliary boilers from one-hour to five-hours per day, out of a potential 12-hour period of solar insolation.
In the application for an amendment to air quality conditions, Ivanpah’s operator First Solar states “the only way to fully understand how the systems work has been through the experience of operating power plants. Petitioner first became aware of the need to increased annual fuel use after the completion of construction and commencement of commercial operations, which began in December 2013.”
It is hard to believe that Ivanpah was not aware of the need for greater use of natural gas-fired power to pre-heat up its ancillary boilers before each day, especially given Bechtel’s past experience. The issue of air quality had been raised as far back as 2010.
Air Quality Issue Raised Back in 2010
Back on April 26, 2010, Las Vegas Sun newspaper writer Stephanie Tavares titled her story on the potential degradation of air quality from solar power plants: “New Wave of Solar Plants Could Worsen Air Quality.” Tavares wrote:
“But the most popular type of industrial solar technology (thermal solar) has a dirty little secret: Many of these plants are not emission-free.
Solar thermal plants concentrate the sun’s heat to boil salt water or oil to run a steam turbine. The technology is more popular for large-scale energy generation than photovoltaics, which convert the sun’s rays directly into electricity. Solar thermal creates more electricity for the investment and has the potential to store the heat to create electricity at times when photovoltaic can’t, such as at night or when the sun is blocked by clouds. The problem is some solar thermal power plants release greenhouse gases and particulates into the air.”
In 2010, Ivanpah reported it would only emit 33-tons of carbon dioxide per year according to Tavares’ report. But Ivanpah is now revealing it will emit 92,200 tons of C02 per year. That is 2,794 times what Tavares reported to her Las Vegas area readers.
Tavares cautioned: “But with potentially dozens of solar thermal plants expected to be built across the Southwest in the next few years, the cumulative effects could be problematic.”
Little did she know that in 2011 California Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic-Party controlled state legislature would exempt “cumulative” environmental impacts for consideration of massed solar projects.
Tavares minimized the impact of air pollution emissions from Ivanpah in her 2010 report, saying:
“The 400-megawatt Ivanpah project, for example, is projected to emit 33 tons of carbon monoxide a year. A combined-cycle natural gas plant putting out the same amount of electricity would release 400 tons a year.”
About 60 solar power plants, including solar thermal plants, were reportedly planned for siting on Federal land nearby to Ivanpah in the Southern portion of Nevada in 2010.
However, solar thermal power plants only have a capacity factor of 20 percent, while an Advanced Combined Cycle Natural Gas Plant has an 87 percent capacity according to the U.S. Energy Information Agency. Ivanpah is only able to operate 249 days per year and only during daylight hours.
Would one 400-MW low-polluting combined cycle natural gas power plant have offered greater net environmental and economic benefits than a mass of solar thermal power plants? Massing thermal solar power plants runs counter to Paracelsus’ first principle of toxicology: concentrating anything will make it toxic.
Concentrated Solar Thermal Power: “Dirty Power”
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s policy of designating specific desert areas for mass solar power plants to avoid national conservation areas is in the early stage of backfiring. Not only are mass solar plant areas a public safety hazard to commercial aircraft, but also such massing in the Mojave Desert will result in the potential of smog and greater greenhouse gases than possibly one mere combined cycle natural gas power plant.
The plant’s operators deny any environmental impacts but 92,200 tons of Greenhouse Gas emissions are hard to deny. That is equivalent to 370 tons of GHG emissions for each of the plant’s 249 operating days per year. Mass concentrated solar thermal power plants will now have to be reclassified as “dirty power.”
The moral of the story? Expansive government is good at merely shifting environmental and economic problems around from one political constituency or region to another, while claiming it has solved such problems.
Source: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/04/big-solar-big-gas-ivanpah/
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