Monday Notes -- November 17, 2014; Solar Energy Failing -- Not Even Able To Produce Electricity For A Measly 8 Hours/Day In Sunny Southern California -- CLOUDS; North Dakota Farmers To Cash In On Global Warming

Solar Energy, An Inconvenient Truth -- Clouds

I can't make this stuff up. Readers predicted this ever since I started blogging about solar energy on this blog.


The AP is reporting:

The largest solar power plant of its type in the world — once promoted as a turning point in green energy — isn't producing as much energy as planned.

One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn't shining as much as expected [because of clouds].

Sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal desert near the California-Nevada border, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened in February, with operators saying it would produce enough electricity to power a city of 140,000 homes. So far, however, the plant is producing about half of its expected annual output for 2014, according to calculations by the California Energy Commission.

It had been projected to produce its full capacity for 8 hours a day, on average.

Two comments. First, the "cloud excuse" is bogus -- there's been no rain in this area for a decade -- there's been a decade-long drought. No rain, no clouds. What the article does not mention: the numbers were gruberized. I can't make this stuff up.

Second: I doubt the number crunchers noted this for the first time in the last 72 hours, that this solar farm is a failure. But now that the mid-term elections are over, and it's time for mainstream media to move POTUS off center stage of this three-ring circus, the AP feels it is time to publish the story.

Also, same story from KCET:Solar Plant Apparently Running at Half Capacity.

More than a year after the formal launch of the nation's largest existing solar tower power plant, its operators seem to be having trouble keeping it all the way online. According to records provided by California's grid operator, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is running at around half its capacity so far in 2015. (I believe they mean half its "stated nameplate" capacity).

The information comes in the form of reports generated by the California Independent System Operator (CaISO), the independent agency that manages most of the state's power grid, as a daily snapshot of which of the state's more than 1,000 power plants are offline, or in CaISO's terminology, "curtailed."

According to those records, each of Ivanpah's three units has been curtailed for between 26 and 29 days so far this year, with the entire plant shut down for ten days. The outages have limited the plant's potential contribution to the state's power grid to half of the plant's rated capacity, and that's assuming that the units worked at maximum capacity when they were up and running.

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The Thumbnail Says It All When Installing Solar Energy

Te Deum, Arvo Pärt

For Investors Only

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This is quite a pleasant surprise. The country with the world's 3rd largest economy unexpectedly falls back into recession and the US stock opens lower, but now is in the green. I'm starting to lose count, but if the market finishes in the green, this is about the seventh day in eight days that the market has moved to new highs.

I'm sure some talking head will note the string of new highs.

Hopefully.

So, what's BHI doing? At $66, well short of what HAL is offering -- $78/share, including almost $20 in cash for every share of BHI held by an investor. Of course, that will be taxable. It's been my impression that when an announcement

Trading at new highs today, for those companies that interest me for some reason: AAPL, Aetna, EW, ETP, Wal-Mart.

UNP, hardly changed, slightly down.

SRE, after a few "down" days, is now up today, a little bit more than 1%.

AAPL: flat, slightly negative.

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North Dakota To Help Solve The Global Warming Problem

Update: what goes around, comes around. A writer suggests that a lot of this newly plowed farmland in North Dakota was grassland for ranchers until the government provided incentives to turn the farmland into ethanol-producing grain. And, thus another reason why I love to blog.

Original Post

ABC News is reporting:

Chevrolet has become the first corporate participant in a public-private initiative that pays farmers NOT to convert natural prairie to large-scale crop production, which would release gases that are warming the planet.

The automaker, a division of General Motors, said it has bought more than 39,000 metric tons of carbon credits from North Dakota ranchers in the prairie pothole region, a broad expanse of grasslands and wetlands reaching across the northern Great Plains and parts of Canada.

"The amount of carbon dioxide removed from our atmosphere by Chevrolet's purchase of carbon credits equals the amount that would be reduced by taking 5,000 cars off the road," U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

Grasslands store huge volumes of carbon dioxide, one of the gases most responsible for climate change. Tilling the soil for agriculture releases the gases into the atmosphere. Preserving grasslands keeps carbon bottled up and preserves habitat for waterfowl and other wildlife.

Near the end of the article:

Participating ranchers place their property in conservation easements that guarantee it will permanently remain grassland, although they can continue grazing livestock and growing hay, which can be planted without tilling the soil.

Chevrolet purchased its credits as part of a 2010 commitment to invest up to $40 million in carbon reduction programs with a goal of keeping 8 million metric tons out of the atmosphere, spokeswoman Sharon Basel said.

The credits Chevy bought in North Dakota will preserve 5,000 to 6,000 acres of grasslands.

I would suggest that oil-millionaire-farmers in western North Dakota quit farming completely, turning their farmland back into natural plains. It's a win-win for everyone. The farmers no longer complain about the roads, the dust, the oil companies. Oil companies could also buy carbon credits to offset their other sins.  Even wind farms could co-exist with the natural plains. And eventually back to the buffalo commons interrupted with a few pumpers.

Readers may be able to help me on this, but I don't think this changes the reality of what has always occurred on the range, where the buffalo roam, and the antelope play all day. Instead of the US government (i.e, the US taxpayer) paying the ranchers not to farm land they wouldn't farm anyway (cattle are now selling for some of the highest prices on record, and ranchers -- by definition -- ranch, and don't farm), a private corporation is paying the ranchers not to farm land they wouldn't farm anyway. 

One error in the above, I suppose. I suggested that GM was a private corporation. I believe the "GM" stands for "government motors."


*******************  Kent State, All Over Again   

Ferguson. Missouri. Governor. Executive order. State of Emergency. 30 days. Organized Militia. Unified Command. Memo to self: source Christiana Amanpour's itinerary. Story here.