Slicers And Dicers? KFC-CA? Tortoise Scorchers Are Now Toasting Birds; Beer Can Chicken, Anyone? Costs Four Times Conventional-Sourced Electricity; Peking Duck, Perhaps

From The Wall Street Journal:

A giant solar-power project officially opening this week in the California desert is the first of its kind, and may be among the last, in part because of growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds.

U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is scheduled to speak Thursday at an opening ceremony for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, which received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee.

The $2.2 billion solar farm, which spans over five square miles of federal land southwest of Las Vegas, includes three towers as tall as 40-story buildings. Nearly 350,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door, reflect sunlight onto boilers atop the towers, creating steam that drives power generators. ... a major feat of engineering that can light up about 140,000 homes a year....

... and cook twice that many turkeys in half the time. 

And, then look at the cost:

Utility-scale solar plants have come under fire for their costs–Ivanpah costs about four times as much as a conventional natural gas-fired plant but will produce far less electricity—and also for the amount of land they require. That makes for expensive power. Experts have estimated that electricity from giant solar projects will cost at least twice as much as electricity from conventional sources. But neither the utilities that have contracted to buy the power nor state regulators have disclosed what the price will be, only that it will be passed on to electricity customers.

Peking Duck anyone?

BrightSource wants to build a second tower-based solar farm in California's Riverside County, east of Palm Springs. But the state Energy Commission in December proposed that the company instead use more conventional technologies, such as solar panels or mirrored troughs.

One reason: the BrightSource system appears to be scorching birds that fly through the intense heat surrounding the towers, which can reach 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The company, which is based in Oakland, Calif., reported finding dozens of dead birds at the Ivanpah plant over the past several months, while workers were testing the plant before it started operating in December. Some of the dead birds appeared to have singed or burned feathers, according to federal biologists and documents filed with the state Energy Commission.

Let's see: 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit into the atmosphere. Global warming? I'm trying to think of something good to say about this:

• $2.2 billion project; government guarantees $1.6 billion
• cooks birds
• costs four times as much as conventional-sourced electricity
• permanent 
• no dual-use for the land it comes
• heats the local desert another 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit

I don't know about you, but this would really not look good in western North Dakota. I'm trying to figure out where the activist environmentalists would want to put a solar farm like this in North Dakota. And activist environmentalists want these solar farms to blanket the earth. With wind turbines in between the panels, I suppose.