Israel Harnessing Sunshine With World's Tallest Solar Tower

Discussion in 'Energy & Fuel' started by Frank Sanoica, Jan 5, 2017.

  1. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    Good story! Good show! It should be noted, however, that the Ivanpah plant in California is killing thousands of birds, many in migration, which may seriously reduce their numbers and ability to sustain their kind. I am personally opposed on moral grounds, the use of Heliostats, huge mirrors, which concentrate the Sun's rays and beam them up at towers. The heated air cremates the birds almost instantly. Photovoltaic methods simply gather the Sun's rays, turning them directly into electricity. Simpler, but less efficient.

    I am appalled that more of the killer-type plants are being designed and built, apparently in total disregard for the lives of untold thousands of animals. Where is the public out-cry, especially from animals' rights groups? Frank


    "With Israel traditionally running its economy on fossil fuels,
    renewable energy has long been hobbled by bureaucracy and a lack of incentives. But the country is starting to make an effort, setting a goal of generating 10 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from the current 2.5 percent."

    "The Ashalim project, deep in the Negev desert, is made up of three plots, with a fourth planned for the future, each with a different solar technology. Together, the fields will be Israel's largest renewable energy project when completed by 2018. They are set to generate some 310 megawatts of power, about 1.6 percent of the country's energy needs — enough for about 130,000 households, or roughly 5 percent of Israel's population, according to Israel's Electricity Authority."

    "There are around a dozen solar tower fields around the world, the largest being the Ivanpah plant in California with some 170,000 heliostats around three 140-meter-tall (460-foot) towers."

    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wi...-sunshine-worlds-tallest-solar-tower-44566464
     
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  2. Sheldon Scott

    Sheldon Scott Supreme Member
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    If we start using so much solar power the sun will get smaller, therefore the earth will get colder and we'll start a new ice age. o_O
     
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  3. Babs Hunt

    Babs Hunt Supreme Member
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    I think solar power should be used more and also wind power. These things don't add more pollution to our earth, cause less expense in the end...and are natural resources that don't hurt our earth either. :)
     
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  4. Yvonne Smith

    Yvonne Smith Senior Staff
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    All of the power lines we have criss-crossing this country also kill a lot of birds, and other small animals, and have always done so. My father was a lineman, and he was always having to change out a transformer because a squirrel or some other critter had climbed up the power pole (back when most of them were wooden poles) and electrocuted them self and also shorted out the power while doing so.
    As long as the birds only landed on the wire, they would be fine, but sometimes they tried to build nests on the poles, and that shorted out the electricity.
    Plus, there are all of the fish that we killed because we put in dams, and the fish could no longer get upstream to spawn. We have oil spills that rain rivers and even the oceans, and the nuclear power plants cause even more problems with anything that lives close enough to be affected by that.
    It seems to me that solar power is about the cleanest and the safest power that we can use, plus there is lots of it, and we are not ruining the whole earth by using it.
     
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  5. Diane Lane

    Diane Lane Veteran Member
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    Ugh, I definitely don't want the birds cremated. I read recently that a lot of dams are being undone. I'm not sure how that's going to affect people downstream, though. I'm not sure about elsewhere, but East of here, the people with more money live in the newer developments created when the rivers were dammed to form lovely lakes, and those are of course higher dollar properties. The people with less money live south, in the regions that flood whenever the powers that be decide their lake is too high and that they need to let water go, to decrease the level, which then tends to flood those lower lying areas.

    I know I have power and also internet issues here from the squirrels, in particular. The transformers and wires are still on wooden poles/trees here, and I have a lot more outages of both than my neighbors just across the street who have fewer tree and squirrel issues, therefore less interference with their power and internet/tv signals.

    I like the idea of using more natural means of obtaining fuel, but it seems each has drawbacks. I think the best approach is probably a combination of a few different sources/methods, so we're not as dependent on one.
     
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