A Wee Design Flaw

The BrightSource Energy plant, a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert, works on the principal of focusing sunlight on a bunch of towers full of water until the water boils and drives a series of steam powered generators.  Unfortunately, the reflected sunlight also focuses on the areas around the towers, and when flying animals like insects, bats and birds pass through that area, they spontaneously ignite into "streamers", to use the industry jargon.  Possibly as many as two a minute, or 120 an hour, or 2,880 a day, or 1,051,200 per year. So something's gone all fucked up.

And, if anyone has followed the story of this particular plant, they will know that California abused and/or ignored any number of its own enviro laws to get it up and running.

This is something that must be fixed.  The U.S. media coverage, thus far, can be seen here: Green Power Plant Sends Flaming Avians Falling From Skies!!!  And it will continue, and expand, if for no other reason than interests opposed to renewable energy projects will make sure it does.

That is all.

The Cost Of Solar Power

A nice chart, from here:

The graph above compares the price history of solar energy to conventional energy sources. This is what a disruptive technology looks like. While conventional energy prices remained pretty flat in inflation adjusted terms, the cost of solar is dropping,fast, and is likely to continue doing so as technology and manufacturing processes improve.

That is all.

Controlling The Weather

Scientists have made a breakthrough in man's desire to control the forces of nature – unveiling plans to weaken hurricanes and steer them off course, to prevent tragedies such as Hurricane Katrina

Except that steer 'em in the wrong direction and you will face a mighty wind from the legal community:

But the hurricane modifiers are fighting more than the weather. Lawyers warn that diverting a hurricane from one city to save life and property could result in multi-billion dollar lawsuits from towns that bear the brunt instead. Hurricane Katrina caused about $41 billion in damage to New Orleans.

Although the two schemes under consideration involved dropping dark dust or bits of "tyre" (note: English newspaper, I love how they spell that. And "connexion" as well) into the Hurricane cloud tops and thus heating them up, one nifty variant on the idea would have "Satellites...heat the cloud tops by beaming microwaves from space."

So when these guys were done firing up the grid they could zap storms from their place in geosynchronous orbit.

Solar From Space?

This takes me back to my days as a young hippy reading the Mother Earth News' special technology features, because similar plans have been touted as enviro-cure-alls for at least 30 years. The idea is you build a huge (1 kilometre wide) platform of solar panels in geosynchronous orbit, have it collect solar energy, and then beam this to the ground in the form of microwaves.

The main problem is cost, which will run into the 10s of billions, although that is not nearly as hefty a sum as the cost of some of the wilder geo-engineering proposals now under discussion. One apparent non-issue is the problem of accidentally incinerating anything that gets too close to the vast field of microwave collectors you need at ground level:

The peak density of the beam is likely to be significantly less than noon sunlight,
and at the edge of the rectenna equivalent to the leakage allowed and accepted by
hundreds of millions in their microwave ovens. This low energy density and choice
of wavelength also means that biological effects are likely extremely small, comparable
to the heating one might feel if sitting some distance from a campfire.

Meanwhile, hopefully later today, I'll take a look at some of the actions taking place within the Canadian business community in response to climate change.