Birds Set Aflame in Midair: The Disturbing Downside of Solar Energy

[Judi Lynn]

Birds Set Aflame in Midair: The Disturbing Downside of Solar Energy

A tragedy in the move to renewables.

By Mike Heuer / Environmental Law Review

March 15, 2016

A Nevada solar energy project focused light so intensely it incinerated 115 birds in flight, and though the company says it's fixed the problem, the Department of the Interior refuses to release information on it, environmentalists claim in court.

Basin & Range Watch sued the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of the Interior on Feb. 26 in Federal Court. Its FOIA complaint seeks documents on testing and operations at the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah.
The solar energy project started commercial operation in February. It aims 17,500 mirrors at a 540-foot-high solar energy tower containing molten salt, which produces steam and generates 110 megawatts of electricity, according to the complaint.

Basin & Range Watch posted a video it says shows birds flying into the solar beams and "incinerating in the intense reflected heat" during a Jan. 14, 2015 test of the solar array's standby system. About 115 birds were set aflame that way, the group says. The video shows them "being burned and literally turning to smoke as they fly through the concentrated solar rays," Basin & Range says in the complaint.

Biologists calls these bird deaths "streamers," due to the smoke they give off as their feathers catch fire and the birds fall to the ground in the 900-degree beam, the Las Vegas Review Journal reported in March last year.

More:
http://www.alternet.org/environment/flying-birds-set-aflame-midair-disturbing-downside-solar-energy

This is not acceptable, not here or anywhere.

[Lodestar]

1. I'm confused about this story. Is this intense heat typical of

all large centralized solar array sites or were they experimenting with
them for some other use that is not typically for solar collection?

[kristopher]

4. This is a solar thermal array not a photovoltaic (PV) panel farm

Mirrors reflect and concentrate light/heat and focus it on a collector that transfers the energy to a liquid storage medium that carries it to a steam unit driving a generator.

You probably won't see very many more of these projects because the price of PV has plummeted in recent years. Everyone I know of that was in planning but not under construction at the time of the major price drop has been cancelled.

There are some reasons that utilities might want to take them up again sometime in the future, but it's not too likely IMO. More probably the utilities will transition to a different business model that focuses less on generation and more on linking distributed energy resources.

[kristopher]

2. Why is it "not acceptable"? Are you prepared to live in a tent?

Avian mortality is a fact of life in virtually everything we do. Highways, power lines, buildings, cats and a thousand other human related causes kill billions of birds each year. In the scheme of things, renewable energy is worth doing as it is replacing carbon emitting sources of energy and almost certainly producing a net reduction in mortality.

Windows may kill up to 988 million birds a year in the United States
Single-family homes and low-rise buildings do much more damage than skyscrapers

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/windows-may-kill-988-million-birds-year-united-states

[Judi Lynn]

5. Meaning "not acceptable" to people like me. I am aware I have no choice, thank you.

It would be my hope the engineering can be re-configured to allow the birds to live around these installations.

That has little to do with the other ways we should be glad to see birds slaughtered as if they never mattered at all.

[kristopher]

6. I'm pointing out that proportionality is a healthy part of life.

Knee jerk reactions are far less productive than understanding, no matter what your goal.

And one more thang - you can take your moral superiority act and stick it. As I explained, the transition to renewable energy is certainly going to reduce avian mortality. If you don't like that then frankly, your values are twisted. We can always improve our ecological footprint but it isn't as easy as just having an emotion, it takes work.

[PaulaFarrell]

3. seems the ptoblem is as already solved?

I looked at the website of Basin and Range Watch and it seems they ate opposed to all renewable energy projects in the desert.

[progressoid]

7. I'm trying to think of a means of energy production that doesn't affect wildlife somehow.

And I know it's not a popular idea but if we want safety: nuclear.

[DetlefK]

8. Solution: Audio-record of a bird-of-prey gets played every few hours.

The birds will be afraid to go near the installation. Problem solved.

[MisterP]

9. are these the plants that they're gonna shut down 'cos they don't actually work?