We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors

Alternative Subsidy 34 Comments

Via WUWT – Crescent Dunes, the world largest concentrated solar power plant featuring 10 hours of molten salt thermal energy storage, just went bust.

The Department of Energy called the vast and expensive solar project a “success story” and “milestone for the country’s energy future.”
 
But you can’t trust what the government says. Crescent Dunes is a flop and taxpayers are set to lose $737 million on it, according to a new Bloomberg report. That is even more than the $535 million taxpayers lost on the corruption‐​soaked Solyndra solar project.
 
With 10,000 mirrors arrayed in the Nevada desert, Crescent Dunes does look cool. But with the much lower costs of solar photovoltaic and natural gas projects, the government’s gamble on this alternative technology was folly. Politicians never apologize for their mistakes, and the main politician responsible for this one, former Senator Harry Reid, has retired and won’t face any tough questions about wasting our money.

h/t Lance

34 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors”

  1. Yep; the truth will always be simple.

    There is more energy available from a handful of U-235, than from a square mile of solar.
    There is more energy available from a truckload of coal, than a square mile of windmills.
    There is more energy available from Hoover Dam, than from the solar or wind energy from the entire area of any state.

    Cheap. Reliable. Plentiful. All three, you are golden. Any one of those under attack, take up arms to protect it.

    1. A kilo of uranium in a light water reactor will supply as much power as 150,000 kilograms of coal. In a breeder reactor that goes up to 1,000,000. The reason why Leftys hate nuclear is that they’re stupid assholes.

      1. The reason why Leftys hate nuclear is that they’re stupid assholes

        The reason why Leftys hate nuclear is that the anti-nuclear movement in the West was 100% created and funded by the Soviets as agitprop.

  3. Crescent Dunes is only one of a number of large scale solar failures. Equally dismal is Ivanpah. Larger than CD, Ivanpah never could work as desired, given the cooldown of the coolant at night. It would take far too long every day to heat up to boiling temperature. So the owners added a huge gas-fired preheater to keep the coolant warm overnight. Hence, Ivanpah is on California’s list of large power generator emitting sources of CO2.

    Time to throw in the towel by these solar fools. Solar thermal doesn’t work.

    1. I wonder what wonder-brains did the engineering for these eco-crap facilities? Obviously nobody’s paying for accurate process modeling or the needs for additional heat input would have been factored into the original plan. All Wind & Solar essentially is VERY EXPENSIVE COGEN. Similar to but not nearly as reliable as scavenging heat from a processing plant to create steam for power generation or whatever. Scavenging is exactly what’s gonna become of the West’s living standard if this energy deficient madness is allowed to persist.

      1. Martin, I have no idea who actually did the engineering for this nonsense. But consider this. I suspect this is much like the first renewable energy programs were in the late 1970s. That is, governments (remember these were the Jimmy Carter/Pierre Trudeau years) throwing a lot of money out to explore concepts like wind generation and solar generation. The resulting facilities didn’t produce much in electricity as they did government grants.

        What may really be going on here is a lot of tax and subsidy farming. Politically it served the purpose of deflecting attention away from governments having to take action on oil embargoes (1973 and 1979) by misdirecting towards non-fossil technologies. Today it may be much the same thing. Handwaving toward renewable energy as a way of deluding the public that government is really doing something about global warming. Remember, we at SDA may not care about AGW, but large masses of voters do. And if voters care then governments have to care.

        1. The day ppl stop caring about AGW is the day when they realize they can’t fill their own pantry anymore. I’ve been told that peak oil’s already here not because of falling demand BUT because it’s been LEGISLATED. Virtue dies pretty quickly when people realize they’ve been had. Personally I think most are supporting this craziness because they think they’ll be eaten last.

  4. I’m not sorry it’s gone (or is it….or just new management?). Bird burner par excellent.

    But I’d rather hear so actual reasons for failure rather than vague terms like “mismanagement”,etc.

    What really happened.

    1. I read somewhere that Ivanpah generated less money from electricity sales than it cost to clean the mirrors. And California dropped the boom on them; Ivanpah was contracted to produce a certain amount of electricity to the State – they never even got close.

      And I was shocked – no, really! (-_-)

  5. I got nothing…Kevin laid it out – Perfectly.

    The West has been blinded by the utter nonsense oF Climate Change – AGW. Done so in order to allow the multitudes of LIBERAL – DEMOCRAT PIGS ensconsed in govt. to once again fill their bank accounts with Billions upon Billions of Tax Dollars while destroying what were perfectly good Energy Supply and Delivery systems.

    One look to Ontario as a Poster Child for this THEFT.

    1. Like the Biblical story of melting your gold to fashion a statue of a false god, the eco-loons will spare no expense for their ill-conceived new religion.

  8. “Politicians never apologize for their mistakes”
    no kidding.
    because bullies never apologize. it spoils the fun.
    who else is a subcategory of bully?
    cops.
    (‘cops are tops’ eh?!)
    because they are bullies. the non-existent apologies for oh, hundreds of years is proof of that.
    and when the do ‘apologize’ it was after SEVERE arm twisting therefore doesnt count.

  9. They all go bust the second they go off the taxpayer teat. Not one KW hour is possible without subsidization.

    These folks are not in the alternative energy business, like Bombardier and French farmers they exist to collect government handouts, subsidies and bribes.

    Nobody actually thinks these “investors” would be stupid enough to use their own money.

  10. I read article after article in Popular Science and ALL the “science” magazines praising the genius of this project. Which pretty well sums up the state of Science journalism. Fantasyland … not much REAL science. Magazines which run cover-to-cover “scientific proofs” of CAGW and the evils of fossil fuels.

    1. That state of Science journalism has been true for decades.
      I subscribed faithfully to Scientific American and National Geographic for years until I finally decided that they have been deteriorated to the point where not just some articles were propaganda, but all the article.
      I think the article in Scientific American that finally did it was on Korea. It had an aerial shot of an empty boulevard in Pyongyang, and a bustling street full of shops, cars, and people in Seoul. The article praised the well managed urban development in North Korea, as opposed to the chaotic overcrowded urban development in South Korea.
      Either just before that, or in the same issue, there was an article by “military experts” on how the “Iran-Iraq war hardened veterans” in Iraq, especially the Republican Guards, were going to cut our hapless conscripts to shreds.
      They were so wrong on both issues that it was totally ludicrous, and yet they just keep going, not owning up to their horrible mistakes.

      1. ah.
        national geographic that fell for the ‘tasaday stone age tribe of mindanao’ in the philipines.
        hey editor in chief, what’s ‘fact checking’?

  11. Funny, just yesterday travelling highway 93 through Nevada I passed a large solar array on a beautiful sunny winter day, and a large windmill forest in a high desert mountain pass, all turning over nicely. I thought well maybe here is a place renewables might possibly work. Apparently not.

    1. Stowaway, there are no such things as renewables. The so called renewables , once more with feeling, CANNOT BE BUILT WITHOUT FOSSIL FUELS. Nothing on the damn planet is renewable except trees. Damn it people are stupid, not necessarily you, but you did say renewable.

    2. Windmills are no more renewable than oil wells.
      If they had been planned better, they might last longer, but there is no planning. The motor in the windmill typically lasts twenty to thirty years, if they did not burn up first. The problem, there are no replacement parts. You cannot just swap out an old motor for a new one. And I think most of the windmills are built so you couldn’t do that anyway.
      So ipso facto, since most oil wells last at least that long before they go dry, to repeat myself, windmills are no more renewable than oil wells.

  13. also, does this mean it is safe to visit the facility with a pickup truck full of rocks for, ummm . . . target practice?

    I love the sound of glass breaking. gives me a visceral rush. something I learned in construction.
    the best jobs were the ones that started by smashing out the old stuff. some of the guys would get a kick out of my enthusiasm, accompanied by political/social/religious/etc commentary.

  14. to me, in all seriousness, after all these innumerable scams, hoaxes, fairy tales and hoodwinking is over, the saddest thing is if, IF a truly revolutionary alternate source of electricity is uncovered, it will NOT gain the funding to be refined and rolled out. the BS mountain will be too high and stinking to overcome.

    damn them. damn all of them and their lies Lies LIES LIES LIES.
    godam%#^%#&^ed fc^&$in AMATEURS.

    1. Driving into work I heard about that. Imagine my surprise to see the wuwt article! Had to send the link to kate!

  17. But that facility does such an excellent job of cooking fowl!!!

    Would you like some spotted owl, with a side of California condor???

    1. I feel bad for the spotted owl, as eco-zealotry turned that poor bird into a hated symbol of destroying jobs for environmental fanaticism…

  18. The problem I have with nuclear is I don’t think we have people capable of running it safely. I base that on what I see every day.

    1. There have been some stupid comments on this board before, Unome comes to mind, but this piece of idiocy from you pretty much takes the cake.

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