Today is a car maintenance day. Four new tires for the van
at Big O Tire in Boulder City, Nevada.
We avoided Las Vegas and headed south on Interstate 15.
Headed for another hidden American gem, the Mojave National Preserve in
Southern California.
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| Mojave Desert |
But first, we arrive at Primm, UT on the state line. Primm,
an unincorporated community (population 436), boasts three mega-casinos that
attract addicted gamblers coming from Southern California on their way to Las
Vegas, who can’t wait. Primm sits in Invanpah Dry Lake, an actual dry lake bed,
geologically speaking.
Just to the south of Primm, in California we see the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the largest of its kind in the world, situated on four thousand acres of public land that used to be part of the range of the threatened desert tortoise. Before construction started on this facility, teams of wildlife agents removed all the desert tortoises they could find and relocated them. In other words, they evicted the tortoises from their little desert tortoise condominiums. Wildlife biologists say its likely that most of the transplants died.
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| Pretty Much What One Sees for s Hundred Miles |
Just to the south of Primm, in California we see the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the largest of its kind in the world, situated on four thousand acres of public land that used to be part of the range of the threatened desert tortoise. Before construction started on this facility, teams of wildlife agents removed all the desert tortoises they could find and relocated them. In other words, they evicted the tortoises from their little desert tortoise condominiums. Wildlife biologists say its likely that most of the transplants died.
Hold onto your hats you physicists and engineers out there.
The first thing one notices at Ivanpah is the three, 500-foot-tall solar towers, with light so bright you can see it from fifty miles away during the day. The tower light is ‘concentrated’ sunlight. This is no ordinary passive ‘solar panel’ (photovoltaic panel) farm.
Ivanpah generates power by using an array of 173,500 heliostats (each with two mirrors) deployed on the facility site. The heliostats track the sun, concentrates its light (of which there is plenty out here, being a desert and all) and beams it at the three solar towers that are equipped with sophisticated boilers.
The first thing one notices at Ivanpah is the three, 500-foot-tall solar towers, with light so bright you can see it from fifty miles away during the day. The tower light is ‘concentrated’ sunlight. This is no ordinary passive ‘solar panel’ (photovoltaic panel) farm.
Ivanpah generates power by using an array of 173,500 heliostats (each with two mirrors) deployed on the facility site. The heliostats track the sun, concentrates its light (of which there is plenty out here, being a desert and all) and beams it at the three solar towers that are equipped with sophisticated boilers.
Think about the times when you were a kid using a magnifying glass to burn leaves. Same physical principle at work here.
The towers convert the concentrated light (solar thermal energy) to heat in the form of superheated steam at 550 degrees Centigrade. That would be 1,022 degrees Fahrenheit. That steam drives a heat engine (steam turbine) that converts the heat to electricity, which electric utilities ship out to places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, so people can charge and power up their devices, Google the news, watch Netflix and order useless stuff from Amazon.
The facility ‘stores’ heat energy in molten salt for night time electrical production. Even so, the towers do cool as night goes forward so that, close to morning, stoned facility workers from Las Vegas fire up natural gas preheating elements to restart the boilers, to the tune of 525 million cubic feet of gas a year.
The facility cost 2.2 billion dollars. It opened on February 13, 2014. A couple of large energy companies invested a half billion dollars in the venture. Google invested three hundred million. Google has very big servers that need constant cooling. But Google has backed out of financing any more of these kinds of facilities because the cost of photovoltaic cells (solar panels) has come down so far that they predict solar thermal facilities like Ivanpah will not be able to compete with passive solar electrical production.
The United States government provided $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for this facility. That means east coasters like me are subsidizing the construction costs of an already obsolete energy plant that supplies electricity to casinos and brothels in California.
Lots of concentrated light beams traveling around at this facility; intense, concentrated, hot light. Guess what happens when a bird flies through an intense, concentrated, hot light beam. Immediate incineration, that’s what. Estimates vary as to number of birds killed at this plant from as few as 3,500 per year up to about 6,000. Doesn't sound like many but add that to the myriad of other ways we kill birds in America.
It is difficult to get an accurate number of how many birds human activity do kill in a year, given the dynamic nature of bird movement. Its not like counting stink bugs in your house you killed with Raid. People who study such things do estimates based on all manner of sources of information.
They estimate that window strikes alone kill between one hundred million and nine hundred million; communication towers, five to fifty million; high tension lines, up to one hundred and seventy-five million; cars, sixty million; pesticides, seventy-two million; feral cats, five hundred million; communication towers, five million. Fishing bi-catch, lead poisoning, oil spills, electrocutions kill lesser numbers.
That puts the relatively low Ivanpah bird mortality in perspective, although instant incineration can't be any fun. One would think OxyContin overdose would be more humane.
The towers convert the concentrated light (solar thermal energy) to heat in the form of superheated steam at 550 degrees Centigrade. That would be 1,022 degrees Fahrenheit. That steam drives a heat engine (steam turbine) that converts the heat to electricity, which electric utilities ship out to places like San Francisco and Los Angeles, so people can charge and power up their devices, Google the news, watch Netflix and order useless stuff from Amazon.
The facility ‘stores’ heat energy in molten salt for night time electrical production. Even so, the towers do cool as night goes forward so that, close to morning, stoned facility workers from Las Vegas fire up natural gas preheating elements to restart the boilers, to the tune of 525 million cubic feet of gas a year.
The facility cost 2.2 billion dollars. It opened on February 13, 2014. A couple of large energy companies invested a half billion dollars in the venture. Google invested three hundred million. Google has very big servers that need constant cooling. But Google has backed out of financing any more of these kinds of facilities because the cost of photovoltaic cells (solar panels) has come down so far that they predict solar thermal facilities like Ivanpah will not be able to compete with passive solar electrical production.
The United States government provided $1.6 billion in loan guarantees for this facility. That means east coasters like me are subsidizing the construction costs of an already obsolete energy plant that supplies electricity to casinos and brothels in California.
Lots of concentrated light beams traveling around at this facility; intense, concentrated, hot light. Guess what happens when a bird flies through an intense, concentrated, hot light beam. Immediate incineration, that’s what. Estimates vary as to number of birds killed at this plant from as few as 3,500 per year up to about 6,000. Doesn't sound like many but add that to the myriad of other ways we kill birds in America.
It is difficult to get an accurate number of how many birds human activity do kill in a year, given the dynamic nature of bird movement. Its not like counting stink bugs in your house you killed with Raid. People who study such things do estimates based on all manner of sources of information.
They estimate that window strikes alone kill between one hundred million and nine hundred million; communication towers, five to fifty million; high tension lines, up to one hundred and seventy-five million; cars, sixty million; pesticides, seventy-two million; feral cats, five hundred million; communication towers, five million. Fishing bi-catch, lead poisoning, oil spills, electrocutions kill lesser numbers.
That puts the relatively low Ivanpah bird mortality in perspective, although instant incineration can't be any fun. One would think OxyContin overdose would be more humane.
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| That Thing is Eight Feet Tall |
On we go south to Wheaton Springs, CA (population 0) where we entered the Mojave National Preserve, intending to find the Preserve ‘Hole in the Wall’ Campground. After a twenty-five-mile run into the Preserve a washed-out road blocks our way so we backtrack fifty miles to Baker, CA (population 735). Here one finds the world’s biggest thermometer, a one hundred and thirty-four-foot monstrosity that commemorates the hottest temperature even recorded on Earth, 134 degrees F in nearby Death Valley on July 10, 1913. Americans sure are inventive. I wonder if people in other countries do strange stuff like this?
Baker is also home to at least four casino hotels and enough liquor stores to fill a battleship. Not much else in Baker except a few motels, which is exactly what we are looking for, exhausted from a long drive. We pick the Santa Fe. After a systematic and thorough evaluation, we determined that the Santa Fe is a rat hole and decide that Baker itself is a rat hole, so away we go backtracking again to the south for another ninety-miles to finally arrive at Hole in the Wall at 10:30PM.
Baker is also home to at least four casino hotels and enough liquor stores to fill a battleship. Not much else in Baker except a few motels, which is exactly what we are looking for, exhausted from a long drive. We pick the Santa Fe. After a systematic and thorough evaluation, we determined that the Santa Fe is a rat hole and decide that Baker itself is a rat hole, so away we go backtracking again to the south for another ninety-miles to finally arrive at Hole in the Wall at 10:30PM.
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| View From Our Campsite. Hole in the Wall. |
Whew! Long day. But great camp site.
More on the Mojave Preserve tomorrow. Sleep well.
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