Mojave Road Experience in Jeopardy

Of all things to review, a wind turbine project on a piece of history... Unbelievable.

The cost of this wind project is too great to accept. We can generate clean energy with solar panels on our rooftops and over parking lots. We do not need to sacrifice our Mojave heritage.
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It's not like they are highly efficient form of energy generation, either.

No. Just no.

Unfortunately, a lot of (most?) people/citizens do not know anything about American history - and don't care to learn. Without an understanding of the past, there is no incentive to preserve it. Without preserving the past, we as a society will not know which way to go in the future.
 
I'm REALLY tossed up on this issue. Windmills are part of the solution, but damn they screw up a view. No matter where you put alternate energy sources, it's going to be in someones back yard.
 
I don't really see that windmills are "part of the solution" when you take for example Palm Springs/Coachella. There are almost 5000 windmills in that valley. During the summer months, they don't even provide enough energy to power all of the residents of the valley, roughly 400,000 folks. And their population is 1/295 that of Los Angeles. The valley's population drops to as low as 200,000 in the summer months when folks flee the heat.

Not to mention that it costs over $300,000 to construct a single turbine, and then $30,000/year to maintain each one.

That's $1.35 billion to construct, and $135 million annually in maintenance costs. That allocates about $330/month on a power bill for each resident in the valley just to cover the operation costs of their windmills alone.

When even 4500 windmills aren't enough to power the residents of a small area like the Coachella valley without a more reliable power plant taking up the slack, you're left with the fact that there isn't enough open space in ALL of CA to even power just Los Angeles. Well, there might be, but you won't be able to look ANYWHERE without seeing a windmill.
 
We all know that nuclear is the cheapest option, cost per megawatt, to produce energy. And many people have switched sides to become PRO or at least lean on the side of nuclear as the better or required option.

— From Anti- to pro-:
George Monbiot (environmental journalist, went anti- to neutral in 2009, pro- in 2011)
Mark Lynas (author of “Six Degrees”, 2008)
Stewart Brand (author of “Whole Earth Catalog”, 2005)
Dick Smith (Australian entrepreneur, 2011)
Ben Heard (eco-consultant, 2010)
Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace, 2003)
Stephen Tindale (former director of Greenpeace, 2009)
Chris Smith (chairman of the Environment Agency, 2009)
Chris Goodall (Green Party activist and prospective parliamentary candidate, 2009)
Gwyneth Cravens (author, 2007)
Hugh Montefiore (a founder of Friends of the Earth, 2004)
Chicco Testa (Italian politician, 2008)
Ian McEwan (author, 2010)
Steve Kirsch (US entrepreneur, 2008)
Tony Blair (former UK PM, 2006)
Al Franken (Democrat Senator and media host, 2011)

— From Neutral to pro-:
James Lovelock (Gaia theory, 2004)
Bob Hawke (former Australian Prime Minister, 2008)
Bob Carr (former NSW Premier, 2008)
Jared Diamond (scientist and author, 2005)
Jesse Jenkins, Michael Shellenberger & Ted Nordhaus (Breakthrough Institute, 2008-2010 [was anti-, pre-2000, then neutral from 2004-2008])

— From “Can do with 100% renewables” to “nuclear required”:
Jim Hansen (climatologist, 2008)
Barry Brook (biologist and risk modeller, 2009)
David Mackay (physicist, ?maybe, 2008)
Jeffrey Sachs (economist, 2009)

Without tax subsidies, wind and solar fall flat on their faces. Companies would not even attempt such a bad business model if they weren't forced to do so by laws requiring it.
 
If every roof had solar on it, it would overcome that inefficiency. Your house is going to have a roof on it anyway, why not make use of it?

I have no stats to back this up, just common sense...school buses in the desert have "double roofs" on them, Land Rovers have made use of a double roof for hot climates forever. My logic is if you have solar panels, and an air gap between the panels and the conventional roof, you have an added layer of insulation of sorts. This is obviously the most effective in sunny climates.

A few of the guys at work have solar that they added after the fact, one of them had a TOTAL annual electric bill less than $100, and the other one had a total bill of less than $350. Compare that to $500 MONTHLY power bills in the summer time and I think it is efficient enough to justify the panels. The schools in our area are starting to put solar panels over their parking lots. I agree that turning farmland into solar farms is probably not the best use of that land. Then again, with the water wars in SoCal, I can see where a land owner would rather have a steady monthly income vs the hit/miss of farming.

IMO there isn't one overall solution, but a lot of little contributions to the grid. The whole pipe dream of CA cars being all electric by 2025 is a crock. We don't have enough power in this state to run what we already have with out rolling brown outs/black outs in the summer. Where are we going to get the energy to recharge a couple hundred million cars per day? My seat of the pants opinion is even if we had the power available, the existing grid can't handle that load.
 
Without getting too very political, I think we all know who supported the shutdown of San Onofre here in California. BIL worked there. Sad thing is now over 3000 Californians are out of work and ratepayers along with SCE and SDGE are footing a bill for it's shutdown. BIL knows it would have taken LESS money to gut and completely redo San Onofre than it's taking to shutter the facility. Regardless of who's fault the new turbines falls on, a great source of electricity in SoCal is gone forever. I haven't heard recently how the license renewal is going on Diablo Canyon. It's in jeopardy as well because of fear mongers.

Windmills are more of a blight on the landscape than solar farms IMHO and those farms that point the reflection to a tower that I think then turns liquid to steam to generate electricity? There's one just south of Barstow and three of them just inside California near Primm, NV. Environmentalists are after those too because birds flying through the reflection to the towers get fried. Birds learn... Personally I'd rather see the solar than the windmills. There's a huge lot of the windmills in the Altamont pass near Livermore in Norcal as well.

I'm very happy so far with the solar panels I put on my roof in December. Bills are at or near zero. 5 year payback. Remember there's now legislation mandating all new homes have solar installed beginning in 2020. Double edged sword on that as it'll increase the cost of a new home $20-30K and payback is 20+ years. Cost of housing is extreme enough in California and this is another added burden.

In addition to the Mojave Road, I remember talk of a huge set of power lines running through Anza Borrego. Anyone know anything more about that?
 
brentbba said:
I'm very happy so far with the solar panels I put on my roof in December. Bills are at or near zero.
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But why are your bills near zero? Is it because of the excess power you're reimbursed for that your panels create during the day?

Do you have a battery bank to store power so that your house is self-sufficient at night?

What if the power company stopped buying power from you during the day? I believe I heard that was eventually going to sunset (no pun intended), and that typical folks that use little power during the day and use the majority of their power in the evenings would see their power bills return to pre-solar installation levels, because most solar installations aren't using battery banks.
 
bob91yj said:
The whole pipe dream of CA cars being all electric by 2025 is a crock. We don't have enough power in this state to run what we already have with out rolling brown outs/black outs in the summer. Where are we going to get the energy to recharge a couple hundred million cars per day? My seat of the pants opinion is even if we had the power available, the existing grid can't handle that load.
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Ever been to the Desert View Tower in In-Ko-Pah?

That guy had a solar array built to support his Nissan Leaf. And it couldn't. He ended up selling it because it turned out to be huge electricity cost for him, much more than just buying fuel for a fuel efficient vehicle.
 
Mitch said:
But why are your bills near zero? Is it because of the excess power you're reimbursed for that your panels create during the day?

Do you have a battery bank to store power so that your house is self-sufficient at night?

What if the power company stopped buying power from you during the day? I believe I heard that was eventually going to sunset (no pun intended), and that typical folks that use little power during the day and use the majority of their power in the evenings would see their power bills return to pre-solar installation levels, because most solar installations aren't using battery banks.
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You 'bank' your power generation during the day and then draw from your own 'bank' for power in the evening. They true up that bank annually at a wholesale rate as I recall. Basically if your overall generation exceeds what you use - no bill outside regulatory charges.

I looked into a battery back up bank. Tesla is making a good one but was told more than once that a German company named Sonen I think had the best ones at this time but 3x more than Tesla. Regardless, both were rather expensive and recommendations I had were to wait a few more years as technology is improving all the time and prices will come down.

I think the sunseting you are referring to has already occurred and it's now your own bank of power generation you rely on.
 
"A document released by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) under a Freedom of Information Act request indicates that towering wind turbines of the proposed Crescent Peak Wind project would be visible from a majority of the Mojave Road in the eastern Mojave desert."

TERRIBLE IDEA
 
bob91yj said:
If every roof had solar on it, it would overcome that inefficiency. Your house is going to have a roof on it anyway, why not make use of it?
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Bob, does your mobile home have solar on it? If not, you should contact one of the many crony capitalists out there to fix the situation. Our electric bills in CA are very high so that we can subsidize the installation of solar on the roofs of the environmentally holy. This will lead to the breakdown of the entire grid. CA is already paying Arizona to take excess solar power off our hands when the sun is shining and then the gas power plants are spooled up when the sun is setting and everyone is turning on the AC when they get home from work. It is inefficiency on a monumental scale.

I read an article about a year ago that all national parks and forests, preserves, monuments, etc. in the West will soon become islands in the midst of vast industrial solar and wind farms. You can see this happening as you drive northeast from Mojave on the 395. That entire desert wilderness that goes on to the horizon will soon be scraped and covered with solar panels right up to the border of the Red Rock Canyon State Park. Highway 127 which goes north from Baker into Death Valley through an exquisitely beautiful desert wilderness valley will soon be scraped for industrial solar farms. Is this what we want for our grandchildren - driving through hundreds of miles "environmentally friendly" industrial solar and wind farms until they reach one of the natural islands?

What will the wild life do in this situation? The ground animals will be either killed during the scraping process or be confined to the natural island. Genetic transfer to other islands will cease. The birds will be chopped up by the wind turbines if they try to leave one island for another. But hey, who cares! We are "saving the planet"!

Farmland in the Imperial valley is being consumed by industrial solar at an unbelievable pace - No problem, we'll just import the lost food from Mexico.

Cam
 
Mojoe Outfitters said:
Is this what we want for our grandchildren - driving through hundreds of miles "environmentally friendly" industrial solar and wind farms until they reach one of the natural islands?

What will the wild life do in this situation? The ground animals will be either killed during the scraping process or be confined to the natural island. Genetic transfer to other islands will cease. The birds will be chopped up by the wind turbines if they try to leave one island for another. But hey, who cares! We are "saving the planet"!

Farmland in the Imperial valley is being consumed by industrial solar at an unbelievable pace - No problem, we'll just import the lost food from Mexico.
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Nailed it.

I'm 100% against these solar and wind farms. It would be one thing if they made enough energy to replace other means. But they don't. Follow the money here, it's all "smoke and mirrors" folks. We're being fed a bunch of bull.
 
My Dad sent me this - not sure how much is true/accurate, but it makes you think.

Subject: Tesla & Volt -- Electric cars

INTERESTING - ONE OTHER QUESTION. IF ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT USE GASOLINE, THEY WILL NOT PARTICIPATE IN PAYING A GASOLINE TAX ON EVERY GALLON THAT IS SOLD FOR AUTOMOBILES, WHICH WAS ENACTED SOME YEARS AGO TO HELP TO MAINTAIN OUR ROADS AND BRIDGES. THEY WILL USE THE ROADS, BUT WILL NOT PAY FOR THEIR MAINTENANCE!



In case you were thinking of buying hybrid or an electric car:

Ever since the advent of electric cars, the REAL cost per mile of those things has never been discussed. All you ever heard was the mpg in terms of gasoline, with nary a mention of the cost of electricity to run it. This is the first article I’ve ever seen and tells the story pretty much as I expected it to

Electricity has to be one of the least efficient ways to power things yet they’re being shoved down our throats. Glad somebody finally put engineering and math to paper.

At a neighborhood BBQ I was talking to a neighbor, a BC Hydro executive. I asked him how that renewable thing was doing. He laughed, then got serious. If you really intend to adopt electric vehicles, he pointed out, you had to face certain realities. For example, a home charging system for a Tesla requires 75 amp service. The average house is equipped with 100 amp service. On our small street (approximately 25 homes), the electrical infrastructure would be unable to carry more than three houses with a single Tesla, each. For even half the homes to have electric vehicles, the system would be wildly over-loaded.

This is the elephant in the room with electric vehicles. Our residential infrastructure cannot bear the load. So as our genius elected officials promote this nonsense, not only are we being urged to buy these things and replace our reliable, cheap generating systems with expensive, new windmills and solar cells, but we will also have to renovate our entire delivery system! This latter "investment" will not be revealed until we're so far down this dead end road that it will be presented with an 'OOPS...!' and a shrug.

If you want to argue with a green person over cars that are eco-friendly, just read the following. Note: If you ARE a green person, read it anyway. It’s enlightening.

Eric test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes, "For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.” Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery. So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately 270 miles.

It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph. Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of 14.5 hours. In a typical road trip your average speed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.

According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery. The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for electricity. I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16 per kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery. $18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate the Volt using the battery. Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only 32 mpg. $3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.

The gasoline powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs $46,000-plus. So the American Government wants loyal Americans not to do the math, but simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs more than seven times as much to run, and takes three times longer to drive across the country.
 
Like I said, follow the money on ALL of this stuff. Deep rabbit holes ahead...
 
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