Community Power - Not Towers!

Community Power, Not Towers!

Scenic Beauty of Colorado’s San Luis Valley threatened. 

Public comments due Thursday January 26^th  - Hearing Feb 2

Solar Reserve Project - Crescent Dunes, California

  Colorado’s San Luis Valley is facing a proposal for two 656-foot concentrated solar power towers near Great Sand Dunes National Park.  The towers would produce approximately 200 Megawatts of power to be exported to the rest of Colorado.  The project is nearing final review for a permit in front of the Saguache County Commissioners.  It would be expensive, ugly, and unnecessary.  It would kill Sandhill Cranes and Bald Eagles, and raise power prices throughout the state.

            

     When an independent review of the sound impacts of Tessera Solar’s 2009 proposal was made, the results were dramatically different from the company’s comforting claims.

     Public comments are due by 3PM – Thursday January 26, 2012 – email to wmaez@saguachecounty.net 

A public hearing will be held 2-8 PM - Thursday Feb. 2, 2012 at Center School Auditorium – 550 Sylvester Ave, Center CO  81125 – please RSVP to info@saveslv.org if you are coming.

Tell the Saguache County Commissioners:

Follow the BLM’s lead and allow no power towers in the San Luis Valley.

Make any final approval contingent on an independent study on visual impacts.

Make any final approval contingent on observation of an operational Crescent Dunes project to validate Solar Reserve’s claims.

The Solar Reserve project would raise power prices throughout Colorado through a loophole that exempts “experimental” projects from the 2% rate cap.  This would mean the price tag of over $1 billion would be tacked on to everyone’s electric bills!  Solar Reserve tells me their technology is “proven” – they really shouldn’t be able to have it both ways.  Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) projects are far more expensive than ordinary solar PV.  Many CSP projects recently proposed for the Mojave have been converted to PV or abandoned.  Solar Reserve’s project has been constructed with a $773 million DOE loan guarantee from the same program as Solyndra’s.

            The towers would be located in the center of the San Luis Valley west of Great Sand Dunes National Park, and would impact the Sangre de Cristo Wilderness, and the Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area.  The towers would be almost as high as the dunes themselves.  Such a project would be more than just an eyesore, a desecration of monumental proportions – it appalls me that it is even being considered in such a scenic area.  Solar Reserve cannot mitigate the visual impact and thus the project should be moved outside the valley where transmission is available, perhaps at the site in Pueblo County where a nuclear plant was rejected.

            In August 2011 the Journal of Solar Energy Engineering published a paper titled “Methodology to Assess Potential Glint and Glare Hazards From Concentrating Solar Power Plants:  Analytical Models and Experimental Validation.”  The paper models a solar tower half the size of Solar Reserve, and concludes “this irradiance will not cause irreversible eye damage, but it is sufficient to produce a temporary after image if one looks directly at the source”.  The safe distance for the smaller  was calculated to be 1840 meters – larger than the radius of Solar Reserve’s proposed mirror field.  Scaling up to Solar Reserve’s size would give a “safe” distance of about two miles, and a mirage that magnified the size of the bright spot tenfold would increase that to over 6 miles.

            Even if the brightness of the towers was not sufficient to cause temporary spot blindness, it would still be distracting enough to mar the valley’s vistas throughout the entire valley every moment that the sun shines for at least the next 50 years.

                 

Morro Bay, California is the site of a spectacular 576-foot volcanic plug.  In the 1950s Dynergy built a gas-fired power plant with 450-foot stacks.  Anyone who visits the town can’t help but notice.  Now, over 50 years since the stacks were built, a lengthy process is underway to figure out how to dismantle them.  Did the power plant lead to economic growth?  In 2000, per capita income in Morro Bay was $21,687.  In Pismo Beach just to the south income was 42% higher, and in Cambria, the neighboring town to the north, it was 36% higher.  It’s hard to say if the eyesore stunted Morro Bay’s tourist economy, though – power plants are typically built in lower income areas.

The project would kill birds through mirror collisions - no mitigation could prevent this.  (Don’t believe those guys that say the light cone would fry the cranes and eagles of the valley.  The birds would actually be vaporized.)  There would be a risk of fire and explosions, though not of nuclear scale. 

Smart grid, battery storage, and demand response can better provide resilient and reliable power to the San Luis Valley for much less money.  Solar Reserve cannot store energy produced from other sources, and would saturate the grid, making a distributed energy network impossible.

Again:

Public comments are due by 3PM – Thursday January 26, 2012 – email to wmaez@saguachecounty.net 

A public hearing will be held 2-8 PM - Thursday Feb. 2 ,2012 at Center School Auditorium – 550 Sylvester Ave, Center CO  81125

Tell the Saguache County Commissioners:

Follow the BLM’s lead and allow no power towers in the San Luis Valley.

Make any final approval contingent on an independent study on visual impacts.

Make any final approval contingent on observation of an operational Crescent Dunes project to validate Solar Reserve’s claims.