World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself on Fire

[TerraHertz]

From the "Nothing can possibly go wrong" department:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20972/worlds-largest-solar-plant-sets-itself-on-fire/
World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself on Fire
Improperly aligned mirrors redirected the sun's rays at the wrong spot.


Oh, and from last year: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/02/test-at-tonopah-solar-project-ignites-hundreds-of-birds-in-mid-air/

[SeanB]

Oops, not exactly easy to turn off the sun if you want to stop it either with a failed mirror bank.

[coppice]

That seems like lousy design. With the ever present possibility of a mirror fault pumping energy onto any part of the faces of the towers, you'd think they would make those faces extremely heat resistant.

[ruffy91]

Just make the face reflecting. The mirrors are focused on the tower so if you reflect the rays they are out of focus and won't hurt anyone.

[lemmegraphdat]

More green jackassery.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

More green jackassery.

IMO this is still preferable to fossil fuel jackassery, eg. Deep water horizon.

William Dusenbury, general manager of Ivanpah, said a plant worker used a fire extinguisher to put out the fire.

"It wasn't a big fire at all," he said.

Workers are still repairing some of the damaged cables, and there was no estimate on when the tower would be back online, he said.

I don't know what really happened but this purports to be from a primary source.

[ZeroStatic]

Nobody bothers anymore counting how many animals have been killed by fossil fuel mining and burning to produce power, let's all just point out the small failures of the new technology.

[djacobow]

From the "Nothing can possibly go wrong" department:

http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a20972/worlds-largest-solar-plant-sets-itself-on-fire/
World's Largest Solar Plant Sets Itself on Fire
Improperly aligned mirrors redirected the sun's rays at the wrong spot.


Oh, and from last year: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/02/test-at-tonopah-solar-project-ignites-hundreds-of-birds-in-mid-air/

Just for the record, these news items refer to two separate plants. Ivanpah, a project of BrightSource Energy, is the one that had the fire. The one with the large alleged bird kill, Tonopah, was built by SolarReserve. There have been bird kills at Ivanpah, too, but that plant has been operating longer and there is more data. The numbers, if I remember correctly, are not any higher than for wind projects, or for tall buildings for that matter. Here's another article on the topic: http://breakingenergy.com/2014/08/27/a-solar-bird-death-story-ignites-controversy/#comments

Also, the operators say that they have not seen any avian mortality since they updates their standby algorithms: http://social.csptoday.com/technology/crescent-dunes-curbs-avian-risk-after-standby-algorithm-change

(disclosure: I used to work for BrightSource)

[zapta]

Just make the face reflecting. The mirrors are focused on the tower so if you reflect the rays they are out of focus and won't hurt anyone.

A few smoke grenades around the tower should buy you repair time until sunset.

[Kleinstein]

The damage pictures don't look that bad. So a niche headline - but nothing serious.
That's the principle problem with a large power station - there is a lot of energy to do har, when something goes wrong. It's similar with dams, wind turbines, natural gas plants, oil wells and nuclear power. The relatively low power density of the renewables also have a good side.

I won't expect a little smoke do much against a high light power. The smoke gets hot and will rise by thermal effects. Also wind can make this a rather short time solution, especially further up in the tower.

[Red Squirrel]

I still think this is a neat concept.  As for birds, fossil fuel still kills WAY more wildlife.  They could try to find ways to stop/reduce birds from going there.

[CatalinaWOW]

"Plant personnel had fire out by the time firefighters arrived"

I can see it now -- "Go on Jim, climb the tower.  We'll have the mirrors pointed somewhere else by the time you get up there."

All humor aside, there is a lot of sunshine being redirected here.  And light goes a long ways in the atmosphere.  The safety software and hardware on an installation of this size really matters.  To those at the plant site.  To neighbors.  To airplanes flying in the area.  Maybe even to the International Space Station.

[Red Squirrel]

Imagine something like that weaponized. You could basically give it a 3D coordinate and it would do all the calculations to focus all the mirrors at that one spot.  Could probably take down a plane like that.  It could work with radar too, you tell it to aim at a point on the radar and it figures out where it is, and follows it.

I am now on a list. Probably get arrested next time I try to buy anything reflective. 

[zapta]

Imagine something like that weaponized. You could basically give it a 3D coordinate and it would do all the calculations to focus all the mirrors at that one spot.  Could probably take down a plane like that.  It could work with radar too, you tell it to aim at a point on the radar and it figures out where it is, and follows it.

Hopefully the enemy is not smart enough to attack at night.

[CatalinaWOW]

I would be more concerned about a blinding/burning attack on an airliner.  Terrorist subverts the aiming software.    Probably somewhere between hard and impossible to achieve burning, but since focus isn't as critical for blinding I hope their firewalls and other software protection is good.

[Ian.M]

The mirror flatness, mounts and aiming mechanisms only have to be accurate enough for the reflected beams to hit the heat collector reliably.  At any significant range (relative to the installation size) the combination of dispersion of individual beams and statistical uncertainty of the aiming point for each mirror will make it near impossible to achieve any dangerous concentration of light, let alone track a moving target.   Also, the shading effect means the effective array area is vastly reduced at low angles so there is little risk to distant stationary or near-stationary terrestrial targets.

[boffin]

I would be more concerned about a blinding/burning attack on an airliner.  Terrorist subverts the aiming software.    Probably somewhere between hard and impossible to achieve burning, but since focus isn't as critical for blinding I hope their firewalls and other software protection is good.

The interesting thing is that it's only a few miles from the proposed new Las Vegas (Ivanpah) airport site.

[wagon]

Just make the face reflecting. The mirrors are focused on the tower so if you reflect the rays they are out of focus and won't hurt anyone.

A few RPG's at the tower should buy you repair time until sunset, sometime next year.

Fixed for you.

[Red Squirrel]

Imagine something like that weaponized. You could basically give it a 3D coordinate and it would do all the calculations to focus all the mirrors at that one spot.  Could probably take down a plane like that.  It could work with radar too, you tell it to aim at a point on the radar and it figures out where it is, and follows it.

Hopefully the enemy is not smart enough to attack at night.

There's always the reflection of the moon!   

Actually, I'd almost be curious to see how bright you could get a spot using the moon and something like this.  I wonder if there would be any significant energy like for PV panels. I don't imagine so though, the actual energy would already have been absorbed by the moon.  I think?

Now I'm curious to bring some solar panels outside next time the moon is super bright, and play with mirrors.   Maybe you need lunar panels for that.    I smell a potential indigogo campaign.

[zapta]

Imagine something like that weaponized. You could basically give it a 3D coordinate and it would do all the calculations to focus all the mirrors at that one spot.  Could probably take down a plane like that.  It could work with radar too, you tell it to aim at a point on the radar and it figures out where it is, and follows it.

Hopefully the enemy is not smart enough to attack at night.

There's always the reflection of the moon!   

Actually, I'd almost be curious to see how bright you could get a spot using the moon and something like this.  I wonder if there would be any significant energy like for PV panels. I don't imagine so though, the actual energy would already have been absorbed by the moon.  I think?

Now I'm curious to bring some solar panels outside next time the moon is super bright, and play with mirrors.   Maybe you need lunar panels for that.    I smell a potential indigogo campaign.

"The full Moon is about 1,000,000 times fainter than the Sun"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moonlight

[babysitter]

https://translate.google.de/translate?hl=de&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.josella-simone-playton.com%2Fsolarpow.html

comes to mind...

[DenzilPenberthy]

There's always the reflection of the moon!   

Actually, I'd almost be curious to see how bright you could get a spot using the moon and something like this. 

I can't remember the exact proof at the moment  and I'm a bit busy to go looking for it but I'm pretty sure you can't heat a surface with a magnifying glass hotter than the surface of the thing radiating the energy. Something to do with thermodynamics and entropy.

[CatalinaWOW]

There's always the reflection of the moon!   

Actually, I'd almost be curious to see how bright you could get a spot using the moon and something like this. 

I can't remember the exact proof at the moment  and I'm a bit busy to go looking for it but I'm pretty sure you can't heat a surface with a magnifying glass hotter than the surface of the thing radiating the energy. Something to do with thermodynamics and entropy.

That would be true if the moon was the source of the energy.  The obvious evidence that this analysis doesn't apply in this case is the normal operation of the solar energy system.  The mirrors are never hotter than something like 60-70C, but were able to cause a fire when a small section of them were misaimed.

The million to one losses in reflection off the surface of the moon are the real issue.

[babysitter]

There's always the reflection of the moon!   

Actually, I'd almost be curious to see how bright you could get a spot using the moon and something like this. 

I can't remember the exact proof at the moment  and I'm a bit busy to go looking for it but I'm pretty sure you can't heat a surface with a magnifying glass hotter than the surface of the thing radiating the energy. Something to do with thermodynamics and entropy.

https://what-if.xkcd.com/145/

[MotorMagic]

I like the idea of making the portions of the tower which need to be insulated, reflective. Might make the towers look even more badass then they already do.

More green jackassery.

I prefer a small cable fire to fly ash and cancer.