Unusual Sights

Taking a page from the Grenier family, I, Ken, am providing Even the Sparrow color commentary this week. I will refrain from excessive references to the Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, or the Fantasy Baseball standings.

This week, I had a three-day business trip to Southern California. A window seat on my return flight and clear weather gave me the opportunity for a spectacular coast-to-coast 30,000 foot tour of our great country. The San Gabriel Mountains to the east of Los Angeles were still green. There was even a small amount of snow remaining in the canyon shadows. The lack of vegetation and clear skies made it look very hot in the Mojave Desert even though it was a mild spring day. I enjoyed trying to identify landmarks and watching the traffic on the various highways and roads. The Colorado River and Lake Mohave in the distance reminded me of our 1982 house boating vacation and Grandpa Myers captaining it along the coastline.

Even though Lake Mohave is located in the Mojave Desert, I wonder if it was named by someone that was unfamiliar with the Southwest and the Spanish language.

As we neared the California/Nevada border, I was fascinated by three blinding lights in the distance, each surrounded by a bright reflective area in the shape of slice of pie. While each blinding white light source did not change as we flew closer, the pie shaped area on the far side shifted as our geometry with the sun changed. On occasion, there was a glint from a mirror not in the pie shaped area. I wondered if those were mirrors that were misdirected or not in operation. It gave me the impression of flying through a science fiction movie scene.

This solar power generation facility is called the Ivanpah Solar Energy Project. Built at a cost of $2.2B, it was developed by Brightsource Energy Corporation in partnership with Google, Bechtel Corporation, NRG and the Department of Energy. It is located in the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah Dry Lake Bed, roughly 50 miles northwest of Needles, California. Comprised of three separate power plants built in phases between 2010 and 2013, the facility achieved operational status in February of 2014. Covering an area of roughly 3500 acres, Ivanpah produces a net 377 megawatts of power. This is enough to serve more than 140,000 homes in California during the peak hours of the day.

Ivanpah produces electricity by creating high-temperature steam to turn a conventional turbine. It uses a power-tower solar thermal system developed by Brightsource Energy Corporation to create the high energy steam. Over 175,000 software-controlled mirrors the size of a garage door track the sun in two dimensions and reflect the sunlight to boilers that sit atop three 459 foot tall towers. When this light strikes the boiler's pipes, the water is heated to create superheated steam at a temperature of more than 1000 degrees fahrenheit. This steam is them piped from the boiler to a standard turbine where the electricity is generated.

The light from the mirrors and boilers was much brighter than the reflection off of the ocean or a lake. The boilers are so bright that you cannot see their shape and while the light from the boilers does not change, the reflection from the mirrors "tracks" you as you approach the facility. Pilots have complained about the solar plant glare and I can understand their concern after seeing it myself.

There are some who believe that the technology being used at Ivanpah is already "irrelevant." Warren Buffett recently purchased the world's largest photovoltaic solar power facility for the same cost as Ivanpah. It is also located in the California desert and produces 1.5 times the electricity of Ivanpah. The economics of both is in question.