We probably should have seen this coming. At the Ivanpah solar power plant near Las Vegas, a massive glittering field of 170,000 garage door-sized mirrors reflects sunlight. And all those mirrors are making flying near Ivanpah not so fun—or safe.
The Clark County Department of Aviation sent a letter earlier this week urging the plant’s designers to do something about the glare, reports KCET. The letter included two separate complaints from August 2013, before the plant even opened.
One pilot describes flying near Ivanpah was like “looking into the sun.” An air traffic controller also describes receiving constant complaints but being told, chillingly, that nothing was to be done:
Daily, during the late morning and early afternoon hours we get complaints from pilots of aircraft flying from the northeast to the southwest about the brightness of this solar farm. They usually ask us what it is because they don’t know. On this particular morning, an air carrier complained about the brightness and reiterated that it was “nearly blinding.” I reported this to Management and was told that they were going to do nothing about it. They then suggested that I tell the pilot to report it through the safety reporting system that they have and to report it myself. I have no idea what can be done about this situation, but being a passenger on an aircraft that flew through this airspace and saw it for myself, I would say that something needs to be done. It is extremely bright and distracting.
Editor’s Introduction: With another review of the Renewable Energy Target commencing we felt it was important to revisit the results of a modelling exercise assessing potential wind power grid integration technical issues undertaken by the Australian Energy Market Operator back in late 2013. This study attracted little attention but gave strikingly different answers to prior modelling exercises, suggesting greater grid integration costs for levels of wind consistent with achieving the Renewable Energy Target. While this study was fine for its purpose of helping AEMO to explore potential technical changes that might be required to manage high levels of wind penetration, it made simplifying assumptions that made it unsuitable for assessing the likely economic costs of achieving the Renewable Energy Target. To head off the potential for this study to be misinterpreted and misused in the forthcoming review of the Renewable Energy Target, we asked Jenny Riesz to provide this review of the report.
AEMO’s Wind Integration Studies report, released in late 2013, suggests that technical constraints and grid limitations could lead to the significant curtailment by 2020 of around 35 per cent of the wind energy generated in Victoria, and around 15 per cent of the wind energy generated in South Australia.
Have other studies failed to capture the impact of grid constraints that mean meeting the 41,000 GWh Renewable Energy Target will be much more expensive than we thought?