This Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year. Here's why that won't change any time soon

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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Mojave solar plant scorching birds in mid-air

Posted August 18, 2014 - 11:33amUpdated August 18, 2014 - 12:17pm

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and JOHN LOCHER

ASSOCIATED PRESS

IVANPAH DRY LAKE, Calif. — Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant’s concentrated sun rays — “streamers,” for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one “streamer” every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator’s application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

The deaths are “alarming. It’s hard to say whether that’s the location or the technology,” said Garry George, renewable-energy director for the California chapter of the Audubon Society. “There needs to be some caution.”

The bird kills mark the latest instance in which the quest for clean energy sometimes has inadvertent environmental harm. Solar farms have been criticized for their impacts on desert tortoises, and wind farms have killed birds, including numerous raptors.

“We take this issue very seriously,” said Jeff Holland, a spokesman for NRG Solar of Carlsbad, California, the second of the three companies behind the plant. The third, Google, deferred comment to its partners.

The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. The operator says it’s the world’s biggest plant to employ so-called power towers.

More than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect solar rays onto three boiler towers each looming up to 40 stories high. The water inside is heated to produce steam, which turns turbines that generate enough electricity for 140,000 homes.

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World's largest solar plant scorching birds in Nevada desert

Posted: Feb 15, 2014 3:19 PM GSTUpdated: Feb 15, 2014 4:25 PM GST

Posted by: Jon Miller, Assignment Editor - email

Feb. 11, 2014: Some of the 300,000 computer-controlled mirrors reflect sunlight to boilers that sit on 459-foot towers. The sun's power is used to heat water in the boilers' tubes & make steam, which drives turbines to create electricity in Primm, Nev.

(FOX) A stretch of the Mojave Desert has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, but the milestone is being met with criticism from environmental groups concerned about the effect of solar energy on desert wildlife. 

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating tortoises to assessing the impact on plants. 

The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc., Google Inc. and BrightSource Energy, can produce nearly 400 megawatts - enough power for 140,000 homes. It began making electricity last year. 

Google announced in 2011 that it would invest $168 million in the project. As part of its financing, BrightSource also lined up $1.6 billion in loans guaranteed by the Department of Energy.

Using technology known as solar-thermal, nearly 350,000 computer-controlled mirrors roughly the size of a garage door reflect sunlight to boilers atop 459-foot towers. The sun's power is used to heat water in the boilers' tubes and make steam, which drives turbines to create electricity.

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