Apparently, not that green at all. Good day all, for years we have been annoyed by the holier than thou twerps from the Environmental groups saying that solar power is the wave of the future. It would be cheap, abundant, virtually free and most importantly, carbon free.
Guess what? None of their claims is in the slightest way true, including being a carbon free source of energy. Here are some of the carbon rich details from Fox News:
Even as the Obama administration announces another $120 million in grants to boost solar energy, new reports indicate a centerpiece of the administration’s green-energy effort is actually a carbon polluter.
A carbon polluter? How can that be? Solar power is emissions free, isn’t it?
Located in Southern California’s Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System benefited from a $1.6 billion Energy Department loan guarantee, and a $539 million Treasury Department stimulus grant to help pay off the loan.
Why do I see another Solyndra here?
Yet it is producing carbon emissions at nearly twice the amount that compels power plants and companies to participate in the state’s cap-and-trade program.
WTF, Over?
That’s because the plant relies on natural gas as a supplementary fuel.
According to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the plant burned enough natural gas in 2014 to emit 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. But Ivanpah, while in the cap-and-trade program, is still considered a renewable energy source because it technically produces most its energy from solar.
Now, why would a solar plant be using natural gas you might ask? The reason is both simple and complex. Solar power is dependent on sunshine, (obviously), and it doesn’t work if there is no sun, such as on a cloudy day, or at night. Because of the way energy is transmitted, it has to be kept at a constant rate.
Think of it as pushing down on a car accelerator. If you need to travel at 55 miles per hour, you have to hold the pedal down at a specific level. If you take your foot off the gas, the engine doesn’t get any gas and you come to a stop. One of the dirty little secrets about green energy, is that they need to have standby generators running constantly, what they call “No Load generators,” ready to take up the slack when the solar cells stop generating electricity. If they didn’t have these generators, the power levels would drop and you get voltage levels becoming unstable. This is bad for things like appliances, computers and lights. They tend to burn out.
Oops!
There are a few other issues as well, all leading back to the Greenies ignoring things like logic and facts.
“If it were any other energy industry besides solar, the plant never would not have been built,” said David Lamfrom, director of California desert and national wildlife programs at the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA). Lamfrom said that “political pressure pushed this project through without proper input from the taxpayers and without them being adequately informed of exactly what kind of project this was.”
And this surprises you why? This is a classic case of crony capitalism mixed in with Progressive Liberal “Feel Goodism.”
He said officials “generated enough momentum to make this project happen in order to meet the [deadlines for] the stimulus funding.”
So there was also a good deal of “Show me the money!” as well.
According to Lamfrom, designers also erred in placing Ivanpah between the tallest mountains in the Mojave where there is significant cloud cover and dust which would interfere with the sunlight.
Burnett noted that low sunlight only increases the use of natural gas: “You can make solar power as cheap as you want. If the sun is not shining, or it is cloudy or rainy, it will require natural gas to ramp up [the plant] quickly when solar power goes offline. They say it is green, but that assumes that there is a power source without any environmental impact.”
That big yellow ball in the sky is rather important, and if it isn’t around, well, solar power cells tend not to work very well. However, the powerplant still has contractual obligations for power generation so what can they do but fire up the old fashioned carbon emitting, not so green at all, means of electrical power generation.
Facts are a terrible thing for Progressives. They have a nasty habit of getting in the way of their desire to “feel good.”
Thatisall
~The Angry Webmaster~
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