Federal biologists say about 6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers.
Louis Sahagun
A macabre fireworks show unfolds
each day along I-15 west of Las Vegas, as birds fly into
concentrated beams of sunlight and are instantly incinerated, leaving
wisps of white smoke against the blue desert sky.
Workers at the Ivanpah Solar
Plant have a name for the spectacle: “Streamers.”
And the image-conscious owners of
the 390-megawatt plant say they are trying
everything they can think of to stop the slaughter.
Federal biologists say about
6,000 birds die from collisions or immolation annually while chasing
flying insects around the facility’s three 40-story towers, which
catch sunlight from five square miles of garage-door-size mirrors to
drive the plant’s power-producing turbines.
We’re doing everything we can to
reduce the number of birds killed out here— David Knox, spokesman for NRG Energy
Inc., owner of Ivanpah solar plant
In addition, coyotes eat dozens
of road runners trapped along the outside of a perimeter fence that
was designed to prevent federally threatened desert tortoises from wandering
onto the property.
In an interview this week,
David Knox, a spokesman for NRG Energy Inc., said the Ivanpah team has been
testing an ever-changing combination of tactics to minimize bird deaths and
injuries since it began sending power to the grid in 2014. He
acknowledged, however, that the results have been “modest.”
“We’re doing everything we can to
reduce the number of birds killed out here,” Knox said. “If there’s a silver
bullet out there, maybe we’ll find it.”
So far, plant workers have
replaced flood lights with LED bulbs, which attract fewer insects and
birds that eat them.
They have rearranged the mirrors
to reduce birds’ window of exposure.
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