
Mojave Desert solar plant kills 6,000 birds a year - slackpad
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-solar-bird-deaths-20160831-snap-story.html
======
matt_wulfeck
Not that I don't think 6k birds isn't an unfortunate number, but even if we
built 1,000 more of these power plants they'd only kill about 0.20% of the
amount of birds killed by cats in the US every year [0].

[0] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-
wi...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/29/cats-wild-birds-
mammals-study/1873871/)

~~~
akg_67
You are comparing an artificial man-made killing machine with natural
predator. With your logic, one day robots will be able to justify killing
their human overlords.

~~~
nommm-nommm
House cats are not indigenous to the majority of the world and certainly not
to North America. The robots comment doesn't follow.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Cats are indigenous to every continent save Antarctica. One of the most
widespread, adaptable creatures in the world. Housecats are not genetically
different from wild cats - they can interbreed and often do.

~~~
sliverstorm
Mountain lions and lynx are indigenous to North America, neither hunt
songbirds. House cats are from the Near East.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Bobcat?

~~~
sliverstorm
Yes, there's those too. Same group as the Lynx. But neither Lynx, Bobcat, nor
Mountain Lion are decimating bird populations.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Hm. Cats come from the Fertile Crescent but that was 10,000 years ago. Since
then they've gone everywhere. I wonder when they first came to North America?
Was it just hundreds of years ago, or thousands?

~~~
maxerickson
Domestic cats come from the Fertile Crescent.

The animals they were domesticated from have been present in much of Africa,
Asia and Europe for a couple million years.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcat)

------
keepper
"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."

Well, nice to hear the ACME(tm) solar plant trap finally did the trick for
Wile E. Coyote...

~~~
whoopdedo
Clearly the solution is to paint a black half-circle on the fence that looks
like a tunnel. The roadrunners will be able to pass through but not the
hapless coyote.

------
thoughtsimple
That's 16 birds a day. Unless the birds are endangered, that seems like a
relatively small number for 390 MW of mostly green power.

~~~
beefman
74 MW of solar power in 2015 (up by a factor of about 1.4 from 2014 but still
only about 2/3 the planned output). At the cost of $2.2B, and 3500 acres (14
km^2) of steel and precision-ground glass and wilderness.

~~~
beefman
Update: The 74 MW figure is given by EIA as "net solar generation". The plant
also burns natural gas, and made slightly more power in total (which still
rounds to 74 MW on average for the year). In particular, it burned 564,814 mcf
of natgas, which is worth 9 MW in our existing fleet of combined-cycle power
plants. But Ivanpah made < 1 MW out of it, according to EIA.

It's unclear how EIA is partitioning the plant's output. If we use the total
generation and subtract the potential (or CO2-equivalent) value of the natgas,
it made only 66 MW from the sun.

~~~
dahart
Wikipedia cites 652,375 MWh of "solar only" production in 2015, with natural
gas consumption listed separately. That works out to an average 74.4 MW output
from the sun alone.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#I...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivanpah_Solar_Power_Facility#Ivanpah_Total)

Out of curiosity, why did you subtract the potential natgas from the actual
solar output, instead of the actual gas output you just cited?

~~~
beefman
It's not clear how the natgas output is being measured. It's used to bring the
working fluid up to temperature. Either the true solar output is lower than
stated or the plant is using natgas extremely inefficiently (getting 0.9
instead of 9 MW of it). In the latter case, it's still a cost of obtaining the
solar energy that should be accounted for.

Wikipedia has the total and solar-only figures switched, as can be seen by
visiting the citations given. The solar-only figure is 644,506 MWh.

------
ch4s3
I wonder how many birds are killed by coal and natural gas to produce 390 MW

~~~
beefman
I don't have any estimates for coal handy, but here are some other numbers for
reference:

Syncrude says their tar sand surface mining operations (the most extensive
form of oil mining in wide practice) kill 2.5 birds/PJ.

For wind power, estimates of annual bird deaths for the U.S. circa 2013
include 234,000[1], 440,000[2], and 573,000 (including 83,000 raptors and not
including 888,000 bats)[3]. EIA says wind made 507 PJ in 2012[4]. So it's
something like 800/PJ.

For the U.S., a 2014 meta-analysis[5] gives 600 million[6] fatal collisions
with buildings each year. A 2013 study says, "free-ranging domestic cats kill
1.3–4.0 billion birds and 6.3–22.3 billion mammals annually".[7]

Ivanpah made 74 MW of solar electricity in 2015 (644,506 MWh, according to
EIA). So 2600/PJ.

[1]
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2013.10.007](http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2013.10.007)

[2] [http://1.usa.gov/IhyaHv](http://1.usa.gov/IhyaHv) p.188

[3] [http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wsb.260](http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/wsb.260)

[4]
[http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_03_01_b.html](http://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_03_01_b.html)

[5]
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1](http://dx.doi.org/10.1650/CONDOR-13-090.1)

[6] They give a range from 365-988 and a median of 599. Gotta love that kind
of precision!

[7]
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms2380)

~~~
ch4s3
>Syncrude says their tar sand surface mining operations (the most extensive
form of oil mining in wide practice) kill 2.5 birds/PJ.

That seems way too low. I feel like I've read about huge bird kills from
migratory birds landing in the containment ponds.

~~~
beefman
It may be. Oil has a really high energy density though.

Overall, surface mining of tar sands has to be one of the worst ways to get
energy (in situ extraction techniques like SAGD do somewhat better).

~~~
ch4s3
That's true. I hadn't considered energy density.

------
davesque
Call me a jerk, but what is the real problem here? Can someone bother to
actually quantify the risk to the ecosystem? There are plenty of unfortunate
ways that different critters die all the time whether natural or unnatural.
However, the mere fact that it is sad to think about means nothing.

------
gohwell
"coyotes eat dozens of road runners trapped along the outside of a perimeter
fence" i've heard that before...

~~~
georgemcbay
The coyotes in the Mojave buy their traps on Amazon instead of relying on the
Acme Corporation.

------
mabramo
I wonder if they have tried or are considering spreading a scented substance
(a powder?) in the immediate area. It wouldn't stop birds from flying into the
solar plant, but it might condition the roadrunners such that they know not to
run in that direction when fleeing a coyote.

It could be costly anywhere else, but in the mojave desert, scent probably
lingers for a much longer period of time. That's my guess, anyway.

~~~
ars
I don't know roadrunners specifically, but in general birds don't have a great
sense of smell, and don't much use it day to day.

A visual warning would work better for birds. I wonder if there is something
about the fence that makes it "invisible" to roadrunners.

~~~
logfromblammo
Methyl anthranilate [0], commonly used as artificial grape flavoring and
naturally found in Concord grapes, is a bird repellent. They can certainly
smell it, if not other odors.

If you want to keep birds out of your strawberry patch, for instance, you can
sprinkle packets of grape Kool-Aid over it.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_anthranilate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_anthranilate)

------
strommen
Ivanpah is a black mark on renewable energy. Its price was ridiculously
expensive, and it has failed to perform to expectations.

The good news is that the industry has learned from it. Almost nobody is doing
concentrated solar thermal anymore - photovoltaics are better in nearly every
way.

~~~
appleflaxen
What are the numbers behind your statement? Price info is easy enough to find,
but what's the conversion rate from KW of solar energy to KW of electrical
energy for concentrated solar thermal vs. PV? And is that the right metric to
use?

~~~
strommen
The right metric is probably cost per annual kWh.

1 kW of photovoltaic (PV) will generate about 1,800 kWh per year over its
lifetime, and costs probably about $1,800 to build at utility scale. So $1 per
annual kWh.

Things are more complicated for CSP, because it usually has thermal storage
built in. This allows it to generate more kWh of energy per kW of max power.
For example Crescent Dunes generates is 110 MW, and generates 501 GWh per
year: 4,500 kWh per kW. But it cost $1 billion to build, so it's about $2 per
annual kWh.

Ivanpah does not have storage. Its cost per annual kWh is over $3.

(I am glossing over the fact that PV lasts for "just" 25-30 years and CSP
lasts longer. Revenue generated 30 years from now is not worth very much.)

EDIT: to answer your question about "conversion rate from KW of solar energy
to KW of electrical energy" \- this does not matter, at least here in the US.
We have way, way, way more solar energy hitting the ground than we will ever
need. Converting it efficiently just doesn't matter.

------
transfire
In the U.S. we eat over 20 million birds __every day __. Not saying they
shouldn 't make some effort to reduce the number of unintended bird deaths.
But give me a break!

------
stuaxo
Would be amazing if there was some futuristic tracking of the birds, then
obscure the relevant part of the mirrors with lcds so they can fly without
being cooked.

------
finid
6000 birds/years in one location is a very big deal.

> But company officials suggest that estimates of the number of birds killed
> annually at the site are exaggerated, and federal wildlife authorities
> believe they are too low.

In practically all cases like these, "company officials" always say things are
exaggerated. Whether it's about the effects of smoking, pesticide residues in
foods, etc.

------
Eridrus
I was sort of hoping they'd have a video...

~~~
t3f
Here is one.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6s2zu4_2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY6s2zu4_2U)

------
codecamper
It would be interesting to compare how many birds are killed by flying into
the windows of glass skyscrapers.

Anyhow, it's good that solar thermal will soon not be cost competitive vs
solar PV + battery.

------
tn13
What is the alternative ? Building a nuclear power plant ? the same newspaper
will come up with a story of how nuclear waste is going to kill babies with
cancer. We need to calm.

~~~
paulddraper
We should all kill ourselves and let nature return to unmolested beauty.

I think.

------
cbhl
What if they ran a ring of flood lights (to attract insects) to create a fence
around the solar plant, so birds wouldn't enter the plant area itself?

~~~
Namrog84
But wouldn't increased insects cause the solar panels needing to be cleaned a
lot more and cause reduced efficiency?

------
cp9
and fossil fuels are directly responsible for the largest ecological disasters
the planet has ever seen, so...

------
ajuc
kfc kills more

------
antisthenes
Flagged because this is an attempt to turn non-news into something clickbaity.

