Being self-reliant depends on supplying our own electrical power, is solar the answer, this is my opinion what's yours?

  It's been raining this late winter/early spring in California, mudslides have returned, high winds, and canceled airplane flights. It seems in San Francisco when it begins to rain the flight cancelations begin as well, so my wife and I canceled our flight to and from Las Vegas. We are not really Vegas people, we do like the shows but living close to the City we can always go there for a top rated one. I'm not a gambler, my dad told me early in life don't bet any more money than you can afford to lose, so I don't gamble. Our youngest daughters wedding was last weekend. We decided to drive, actually, my wife does all of the driving, I can no longer drive, my legs don't co-operate with the rest of the world any longer, canes, scooters, and wheelchairs are my world now. It's OK, I do a lot of other stuff, besides my wife needs my help driving, no more comments on that, she reads the blog. The trip went well, it was raining most of the way there, windy, rainy, and low visibility. It took us 10 hours to get there, total, we stopped in Mojave for the night then drove just over 3 hours the next day. Las Vegas has grown big time, in 1990 there were about 350,000+ residents, today there is over 2,000,000, and a lot of construction. If you need a job and you are in the construction or Casino industry's, Vegas may just be the spot for you.

I took this photo from the car window at 75 mph, the tower is over
400 feet high, 173,500 mirrors supply the heat. 

  I'm an old dinosaur of the electric generating industry, I spent 20 years total working at several different plants. I worked in two biomass plants, one in the California desert near the town of Mecca, it's just north of the Salton Sea. The second wood burner I worked at was in the town of Tracy, about 50 miles east of San Francisco. I worked at 9 different gas turbine generators, "combined cycles", jet engines are the heat source, some spun a "free" turbine which drives a generator, others merely made steam to drive a steam turbine. The free turbine is classified as a "combined" cycle, it made steam to drive a steam turbine as well as the free turbine. The Gas Turbine plants are fueled with natural gas, a greenhouse contributing fuel. The biomass plants emissions were greenhouse contributors as well, however, they had different issues also, the environmental impact was large, partly made up by burning wood waste that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill. The biomass plants generate an extreme amount of wood ash, which is a toxic waste due to the structure of the ash particles. The fuel delivery systems and the ash systems create an unbelievable amount of maintenance, first-year growth in wood contains a lot of silica, acting like a sandblaster in the fireboxes (commonly known as a "boiler"). The silica tears up the boiler tubes, (water wall), in a fluidized circulating bed combustor the steel tubes look like a garden rake was taken to them causing deep gouges that need to be repaired in most plants twice a year. In a fluidized bed combustor, the damage is mostly realized in the air delivery system on the bottom of the fire box. Coal and Petroleum Coke (think of it as synthetic coal) plants suffer an immense amount of maintenance needs in the fuel delivery systems as well, it is also very abrasive. Gas turbine plants have no such demands, all of the fuel is delivered via high-pressure natural gas pipes that criss-cross the country. The number of fans, pumps, valves, emission controls and electronic monitoring systems exerts their muscle as well, requiring expensive yearly rebuilds.
  Such is the main subject of this blog, I am amazed by what to me is "new" technology, but to the industry was nearly obsolete the day it was placed online. Leaving Las Vegas driving west on Interstate 15 which connects Los Angelos to the rest of the South West, five miles after crossing the state line on the right side of the highway, (I want to say the west side, but I'm not sure it may be to the north) is the new (to me) Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Plant. There are many opinions of the project, of which I know very little about the technology but it does follow the basic rules of electric generation, heat + water = Steam to drive a turbine. The largest Solar Thermal System in the world creates 377 megawatts of power, enough to supply 140,000 homes in California during the peak operating times, normally from 9 am-6 pm, it will reduce CO2 exhausted into the atmosphere by more than 400,000 tons per year. when compared to a comparable gas turbine plant, 173,500 heliostats (mirrors) follow the sun, directing the sun's power to a heat collector atop a tower 400 feet above the desert floor. The heat collects in what I would call the "fire box" because that's how I understand the process, I don't know the terminology. Inside the fire box is a boiler with a water wall of boiler tubes turning water into steam which is directed within high-pressure piping to a steam turbine 400 feet below it. Water is boiled to produce the steam, it is an enclosed system using 95% less water than a comparable power plant using an "open" system cooling tower. The steam turbine performs the same as other plants spinning a generator to produce power, which needs to be used as it is being produced. There are times when too much power is made, which requires the plant to give electricity to the state of Nevada, often having to pay them to take it.

Typical Gas Turbine electric generating plant.

 Making electricity is very expensive, it appears that to make a profit of $1.00, the company's had to spend $5.00. So naturally driving across the country I notice every power plant we pass, my wife is not really interested in hearing about them, especially when I say, "pull over so I can take a picture of that one." I take pictures out of the car window, we have 2005 Excursion, huge vehicle but very comfortable.
  There have been problems with the plant, bird deaths, no way to store the power for later use, it is more expensive to produce and having to pay to relieve itself of excess power production. I certainly don't want to trivialize any of these concerns, to me there is one thing that makes this project more than worth it.
  Sometimes to make positive steps we have to meet challenges that don't always work out to be exactly to plan, we all like it when a plan goes well. In my opinion, most of the time a horizontal step that is slightly forward is well worth the cost and the effort, I feel this project is one of those. It is more (in my opinion) a step at a 45-degree angle to the positive, it is not a step back, or even slightly back. I compare it to my planting of potatoes and cantaloupe in a "leaf tower", will it work? By all calculations and planning the cantaloupes should grow, and if they don't does it mean its a failure? I don't think so, I think if it doesn't I will back up and try again, in a slightly different manner learning from my first attempt. So goes engineering, and the Ivanpah plant, this may not be the future of power generation but the knowledge gained from it is nothing but positive. In the future creating heat with the sun and producing steam will most likely look totally different, the bird deaths which are a major concern of any project will be dealt with positively, it's no reason to stop trying. The glitches in the controllers of the mirrors will be an issue of the past, as well as the monetary concerns.  (This is a very interesting Link to Bechtel's presentation page, several interesting videos are on it)
  What about storage, It has been my opinion for a long time that the future of electrical service to homes especially resides in battery storage, each home could have a bank of batteries to store power, charging them during off-peak hours is a possibility. The research being done on batteries, Tesla is one company, is barrier-breaking, in the future we each could have high tech batteries with a trickle charger, connected to the power grid. Part of Californias plan is to include rooftop solar panels in the plan for the power supply to be 25% renewable energy by the year 2025, 50% by 2050. We could easily power our homes with stored energy, charging them when the power is available, from the utility. Powering our homes 24 hours per day off of the battery bank, charging during the day, yes peak hours that's when the sun shines, it would store enough power to keep each home supplied during brownouts, and power outages, we would not notice when the power went out. I have been thinking lately the need for solar panels is already obsolete, much like the Ivanpah project or more gas turbines. Storage may well be the answer, and it would make us all more self-reliant. It has never made sense to me to stay connected to the utility if I have solar panels, my goal would be to be rid of Pacific Gas and Electric. Using the utility's energy to trickle charge batteries versus installing expensive solar panels which we do not own makes a lot of sense to me. It makes more sense if I install solar panels to join with 5-10 other neighbors, install the panels and batteries, disconnect from the Utility and form a small power company selling the excess power to 2-3 other neighbors at a much-reduced rate. To install solar panels and sell the excess to the Utility so they can, in turn, sell it at an inflated price makes no sense if I install them I want to be disconnected. The huge solar projects like Ivanpah may be the ticket to achieve that goal.

20-12 volt batteries connected in series will supply 240 volts, single
phase, 10-12 volt batteries in series will supply 120 volts.

  There are many other issues concerning Ivanpah, but man it is the correct direction for us to head like I said in 20 years solar generation may not resemble that project at all, but we will have learned a lot. There are many ways to generate electric power, wind, hydro, solar, and the earth. The earth is actually a generator, the spinning ball of iron in the core creates a magnetic field, which is electricity, scientists are now hypothesizing it may be able to supply wireless electrical power. I think within the next 100 years that may become a reality, Nicola Tesla thought so as well.
  Thank you for reading and sharing my blog, self-reliance depends on providing electrical energy for ourselves, sustainable energy without the use of fossil fuels. The Wright brothers did not carry 200 passengers on their flight at Kitty Hawk, only one was on the plane and look what it started. Thanks again, leave a comment tell me what you think, that's what's important, not my rambling on.
jacquesandkate  EmergencyKitsPlus.com