Nobody Asked Me…

California has taken nuclear power plants offline while increasing mandates for wind and solar, resulting in statewide power shortages and power outages. Nuclear power is clean and reliable; wind and solar power, while “clean,” are unreliable, significantly more expensive, and emit the dreaded greenhouse gases (but don’t tell anyone that part).

There have been power outages since the 2006 California Global Warming Solutions Act, AB 32, was passed by the Legislature and signed into law. The California Public Utilities Commission has rejected previous attempts, but following the deadly 2018 fires, allowed power shutoffs under the guise of protecting public safety.

And now, one of the largest solar projects and bird killers is quietly shutting down. The $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Project in the Mohave Desert, which received $1.6 billion dollars in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration, is shutting down. Larger than the Obama Solyndra solar scandal, the Ivanpah project is another California boondoggle that harmed the environment more than it provided much needed electricity to the state’s 40 million residents.

And Ivanpah incinerates more than 6,000 birds a year.

Full article, HERE from California Globe and HERE from NY Post.

This is another one of those projects that NEVER should have been built. Some of our power generation folks looked at this back in the 2000s and said it was ‘old’ tech. The project had to use natural gas to heat the boilers before the sun’s rays would actually make the turbines spin. Photovoltaic systems were already being manufactured and distributed (like the panels on houses).

And it never made the amount of power it was supposed to. Various reports said the ‘best’ it ever did was 70% of output, others said it ‘averaged’ 43% of output when it worked.

Ivanpah was touted as a replacement for San Onofre which was shut down in 2013 over the issues with replacement steam generators that had been installed in 2010 and 2011, with Barbara Boxer leading the move to close it ‘due to the significant’ regulatory and ‘administrative processes and appeals’ (read lawsuits), that would delay any restart of the plant.

And the loss of the nuclear plant, coupled with the lack of production from Ivanpah increased the already problematic brownouts and power outages that plague California even today.

Funny thing… California organizations own approximately 25% of Palo Verde nuclear power plant in Arizona… But they don’t get ‘free’ power from it, they have to pay market rate. The Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA) holds a 230 MW share of the plant’s electricity, but if they need more to handle high loads, that cost goes up significantly.

I’ve always found this interesting, since a lot of California folks say they won’t own ANY nuclear plants as soon as they can shut down Diablo Canyon, which was originally scheduled to close in 2025. Now California has extended the license to 2030 for ‘stability’. The NRC authorized them out to 2045, but the California Coastal Commission and econazis have sued to close the plant anyway… That would take down 7-9% of California’s power generation…

Sooooo, in summary, California wasted $2.1 billion on a failed attempt for ‘green’ energy, screwed up the local environment, and killed a bunch of birds every year. While that would not buy a nuclear plant, it would probably have paid for at least 1/3 to 1/4 of one which would last 50 years of clean, stable ‘green’ energy…

Sigh…