Actually this one dates from 20 years ago, about halfway through the "solar will save us" history we've been listening to for 40 years
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/table1.html">with, um, no real result.
It seems that there were solar thermal power plants operating in the desert 20 years ago, and still they have not saved us.
That's not too bad actually. You have to compare. For about 2000 years, people have been running around saying Jesus would save us, and that hasn't happened yet either. Patience...patience...
Anyway, from the
Los Angeles Times, January 11, 1990,
http://articles.latimes.com/1990-01-11/news/mn-202_1_solar-power-plant">Blasts Rip Desert Solar Power Plant:
BARSTOW — A series of explosions and fire shut down electricity generation at the world's largest solar power plant near here Wednesday...
...We had a series of explosions, more than two," said Capt. Sharon Sellers of the San Bernardino County Fire Department. "Our first units got on-scene at 9:16 a.m. and a second explosion occurred at that point, then a series of them during the entire incident," Sellers said.
"There was a mushroom cloud. The heat was real intense and there were explosions," said an inmate from the Boron Federal Prison Camp who was pressed into service to help fight the fire. He would not identify himself...
The article says that the failure was associated with the dangerous natural gas that kept the plant running after the two or three hours a day it was able to produce enough heat from the sun. (The owners of the plant had no way to dispose of the dangerous fossil fuel waste they generated from this, um, "back up" and so just dumped the waste in their favorite waste dump, Earth's atmosphere.) Actually though, further investigation showed that the dangerous natural gas had nothing to do with it. The therminol just decomposed. It was a very bad design.
Luz, the owners of the plant, went bankrupt, because the economics of the plant, um, sucked. All of the investors lost all of their money and the remaining plants were taken over by creditors. A couple of them still run, but like the rest of the solar crap in California, they're a trivial form of energy.
I was reminded of this case by another post I wrote here. I find it amusing.
And now let's hear from the inmates, not that I'm necessarily referring to prisoners...
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