Solar Plant Incinerates 28,000 Birds Every Year:

[accord1999]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

But beyond that, you look up this story on Google and it is popping up all over the place on right wing climate change denying sites. The deniers are LOVING this story.

It's also being used by people who think concentrated solar plants are terrible waste of money and resources and have no meaningful impact on CO2 emission reductions ($2.2 billion, ~120 MW effective electricity production or roughly 0.42% of usage in just California, requiring natural gas to warm boilers, 15 km^2 of land used).

[ken0042]

My question- is this kind of solar plant better in some way over conventional plants? For example on a cloudy day like today, having so many solar panels will still produce a certain amount of power; maybe 25%. With this plant directing the sun's rays to heat water, can it still produce enough heat to turn a turbine?

[photon]

So here's a question, what limits the population of the bird species in the area around the solar plant? What's the total population of birds? I'd guess the limits on population would be related to resources and predators mainly.. too many birds not enough food population decreases.. excess resources population grows until equilibrium. Same with predators.

If the limit is primarily resources, then if a bird dies by the solar plant then that means another bird will not starve due to limited resources, the population shouldn't change.

If it's predator limited, I guess the solar plant would count as a predator and decrease the overall population... which would impact the predator population as well.

But if 28,000 birds is smaller than the year to year noise of the population size, is it worth worrying about?

I guess I'd be interested in seeing a more detailed view of impact rather than just dead bird = bad.

[photon]

Originally Posted by ken0042

My question- is this kind of solar plant better in some way over conventional plants? For example on a cloudy day like today, having so many solar panels will still produce a certain amount of power; maybe 25%. With this plant directing the sun's rays to heat water, can it still produce enough heat to turn a turbine?

I think it's more that solar thermal can be a 24 hour generator, you can heat molten salt or otherwise store the thermal energy during the day and then use it during the night to drive the generators. Photovoltaic cells only generate when there is sunlight so have the be supplemented with other generation techniques.
Or somehow store the electricity, which would usually involve multiple conversions drastically reducing efficiency.

[Teh_Bandwagoner]

No birds or clouds in space!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...says-Nasa.html

[accord1999]

Though in the case of Ivanpah, it has no storage capabilities and requires natural gas to keep the boilers at a warm temperature for the morning.