Solar Plant Moratorium Lifted

Nathan Smith

Thu Jul 03 15:11:24 -0700 2008

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I wonder if they are still going forward with the environmental impact study.

Solar Plant Moratorium Lifted

Charles E Hill

Thu Jul 03 15:44:33 -0700 2008

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Yes.

stop the presses!

zogger

Thu Jul 03 17:33:03 -0700 2008

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Government bureaucrats decide to just not do anything! Pretty dang funny, I mean just look at it, if a *solar project* is environmentally unsound, egads zooks! They would be saying NOTHING is acceptable anymore. I think some over zealous clueless moron (I have to be kind and not really describe them more accurately than that) who made the decision in the first place must have gotten razzed so bad by his buddies at work that they had to change it.

stop the presses!

Scott Drake

Thu Jul 03 20:23:22 -0700 2008

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Check this picture out: Random google image search

That's 52 000 panels covering 90 acres

Playing the devil's advocate, I submit that this may have some (!) possible environmental impact. There are legitimate concerns about sensitive areas.

I love the solar energy, but I wasn't that worried about waiting a few months for thorough environmental assessments to be done, before completely covering miles of possibly irreplaceable desert.

where should they go

zogger

Thu Jul 03 21:50:14 -0700 2008

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I honestly don't think we are going to be running short of desert on planet earth anytime soon. And the rattle snakes and jackrabbits and coyotes can both move over yonder the other side of the panel farm. Animal life is amazingly robust and adaptable, I have seen it a lot, I've watched moose up in the second largest city in maine stroll down the main drag, just like that opening scene on the old TV series Northern Exposure, I have seen whitetail deer inside the perimeter in Atlanta, and etc. Heck, I had a possum in my basement in Atlanta once. You look at all the protest that went on over the alaskan pipeline, the caribou and stuff..nothing happened, they just walk right by.

With that said, I am a major proponent of DE-centralized energy production,right now this second, zero more any new giant plants of any kind, a complete 180 from business as we know it, a mass switch from here on out to homeowner and individual business/building/you name it energy production, sticking the solar pv panels by the *multi billions*-some big number anyway- up on already existing roofs. Put a few dozen rust belt factories and a few hundred thousand guys back to work making some mass produced Model A solar PV and windchargers, get them out there, cheap. Put another few hundred thousand guys back to work installing them. Another few hundred thousand at the local mom and pop electric vehicle conversion shops. Route around the bottlenecks, route around corporate lunacy and vendor lockin!! The big projects can't ever be as cheap to the end user,never, because they have to pay for shareholder profits continually and forever on top of purchase and maintenance costs, it will just be the same big bill that can never, ever be paid off by the homeowner, same as it is now. It is a big variable, but for just about everyone, right now, who has access to a sunny roof or "good enough" average windspeeds, or both, personal electricity production *can* ultimately be paid off well within useful lifespan of the kit, after that it is a trivial maintenance cost, especially solar, the stuff just doesn't break, no moving parts. That's the difference. I think we have had enough of the ()*&^!!@#$ energy cartels and monopolists and speculator driven price gouging for the last 100 years and change. Personal home solar and windpower is just great to break that cycle. And until such a time as they have completely safe and affordable little backyard nukes, I am not in favor of just building hundreds more of those things either, because, 1) they are woefully unsafe, they have been and will remain just a terrible risk, every single government test using small penetrator teams has been able to enter and theoretically occupy and take over one of those places, meaning eventually some suicidal nutjobs will do it, then downstream from one of those places one million nasty deaths and thousands of square miles of uninhabitable land for the next few millenia. And 2) it will be the same exact price gouging ripoff cartels that run those places as profit from them now, exactly the same doods, which means "no thanks", you as the electricity buyer won't be getting any deals from them, none at all, it just will not happen.

That doesn't leave much more than getting it on with superinsulation, energy efficient appliances, dropping demand in other words, and increasing personal production until those two lines cross, then energy independence! This century's real 4th of july thing, getting out and away from the wallet raping energy cartels!

stop the presses!

Uncle Entity

Thu Jul 03 23:45:20 -0700 2008

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I've driven past that big one out in the Mojave a few times and it really isn't that huge in the grand scheme of things.

No shortage of desert out there.

Isn't 120 acres one square mile or something like that? A section I think they call it back east.

The desert turtles wouldn't even miss that much land...

stop the presses!

wings

Fri Jul 04 06:33:03 -0700 2008

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160 Acres in a square mile. Yes, it's a section.

1 Section := 1 mi^2

wowbagger

Fri Jul 04 06:35:00 -0700 2008

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A section is one square mile, which is 640 acres, so when they talk about a 120 acre solar farm, that is less than one quarter square mile.

Moreover, in the desert, many animals seek out the shade during the day. Panels = shade, so the animals would probably benefit from the panels (e.g. the rattlesnakes would be able to stay at the edge of the shadow of the panels, moving back and forth as needed to maintain thermal regulation.)

And the impact of a bunch of panels is more likely to be a reduction of the temperature, rather than an increase: you are removing power from the sunlight, so power being dissipated by the dessert itself is reduced. If anything, this might actually increase the amount of water available to the desert: at night the panels would cool more rapidly than the surroundings, and might reach dewpoint before the rest of the surroundings, pulling moisture that would otherwise be lost to the atmosphere into condensation.

stop the presses!

duhavid

Fri Jul 04 19:06:36 -0700 2008

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The issue isnt so much that one square mile.  If this succeeds, then what?  They do it again.  And again.  Then it is many square miles.  And as energy usage grows, more and more, more panels are put up, squeezing the desert area more and more.  And then what is the effect?

Further, we have all kinds areas, closer to the points of usage where putting up solar panels would have little or no effect on wildlife.  The roofs of homes and businesses inside the city.  The cynic in me thinks that the main reason there is desire to put panels in the desert, is that there will be no conflict about paying for the energy obtained from the panels.

Solar Plant Moratorium Lifted

Scott Drake

Fri Jul 04 08:20:03 -0700 2008

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zogger: No one wanted to hinder the construction of solar plants. These environmental impact assessments are routine, but there has been such a gold rush in light of gov't subsidies that there has not been enough time to go through all of the processes that are totally normal for large projects in the wilderness. I have a lot of respect for you, zogger, but unless you've been holding out on us, you're not a wildlife biologist specializing in Texas desert habitat. (That said, I tend to agree about decentralization, although I have personal contacts with startups in Austin that have some trouble getting this to work, even with generous subsidies. People here are putting up panels because they care, generally.)

Uncle Entity: The totality of the proposed projects is much bigger than the random google image. Driving through the desert at 80mph does not make you informed on the subject (no offense).

wowbagger: Again, I'm sure you're a smart guy, but desert biology is not your field (please correct me if I am wrong).

Everybody: Environmental impact is not obvious or self-evident. A couple of months to catch up was not a big deal. I'm tickled pink that we can speed the process and do the assessments. However, the implication that these assessments were just bureaucratic waste sticks in my craw, as I'm a desert animal myself. I've seen first-hand what can happen when people take desert ecosystems for granted.

Solar Plant Moratorium Lifted

Charles E Hill

Fri Jul 04 14:20:48 -0700 2008

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In all honesty, I doubt any project will be approved -- much less construction started -- before the study is finished.  The big mistake on the Gov't part was the refusal to accept any more proposals until it was complete.

They could have just been their normal bureaucratic selves, accepted the proposals and dragged their heels on the approval process until the study was done.