Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck”

Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck”


Slowly but surely, the United States is finally confronting the twin challenges of energy dependence and global climate change. Though largely unrecognized, the Defense Department is implementing numerous initiatives to promote energy efficiency and construct renewable energy generation capacity. However, environmental advocacy and private sector proponents of renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, are concerned that military objections to projects near military ranges and installations may delay or even prevent energy development. Looking down the figurative rail lines of energy planning, there is a potential train wreck on the horizon, but there is still time to negotiate win-win solutions.
The Department of Defense is the largest single consumer of energy in the United States. In 2006, it spent $3.5 billion to purchase 3.8 billion kWh of electricity. Its 577,000 domestic buildings are spread across more than 5,300 sites. Combined with its annual purchase of 110 million barrels of petroleum fuel each year, and natural gas for heating its buildings and water heating, this makes the Department one of the largest—perhaps
the largest—generators of greenhouse gases in the world.
But there is hope. People within the Defense Community are recognizing the need to reduce energy dependence, combat global warming, and increase electrical grid reliability. A landmark 2007 study by the CNA Corporation, National Security and Climate Change, found, “Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America’s
national security.” Furthermore, a 2008 Defense Science Board study, “More Fight, Less Fuel,” argued that it would be advantageous for the military, for its own reasons, to improve its energy policies. Many of its recommendations focused on deployed forces, but for domestic installations it called upon the Defense Department to “pursue the
concept of ‘islanding,’ which would isolate critical loads, and selectively entire installations, from the grid and make them self-sufficient.”
Thus far Pentagon “energy security” efforts are nascent and fragmented, but they are real. In 2007, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations and Environment)
Phil Grone told Congress:
The Defense Department is one of the major leaders of the federal government in renewable energy. For example, DoD installations received over nine percent of their electricity from renewable sources in fiscal year 2006, which compares favorably to the national average of around six percent. In addition, the Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Installations and Environment … established a goal for the Department to procure or produce renewable energy equivalent to 25 percent of the total electricity demand by 2025, where life cycle cost effective, setting the pace for the rest of the federal government and industry.
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While DoD does purchase some “green energy” locally, there are a number of base-level renewable projects that are very cost effective. For instance, the Navy facilitates the operation of a geothermal power plant at China Lake, California, and is developing an additional plant at Naval Air Station Fallon in Nevada. The geothermal plant at China Lake provides enough energy to operate the entire base. In addition, there are several wind facilities in Naval Base Coronado, San Clemente Island, California, FE Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming, Ascension Island, and eight additional projects are under consideration. DoD has multiple solar facilities and initiatives at several locations, including bases in California, Texas, and Arizona; and North America’s largest solar array, being constructed
at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, which will provide one third of the base’s
requirement by generating at least 14 megawatts of electricity.
Still, federal investments in renewable energy are dwarfed by the tens of billions of dollars that private companies are investing in wind turbines, solar thermal plants, photovoltaic arrays, and electricity transmission. Where private projects appear to interfere with the military’s principal missions, the Defense Department is emerging as an opponent or potential opponent of otherwise viable investments. In this report, I review two such unfolding conflicts: land competition in California’s Mojave Desert and
concerns, across the country, that wind turbines degrade the performance of military and other radar systems.
The Western Mojave Gold Rush Driving through the Western Mojave Desert, east of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area, one sees a vast wasteland. It’s difficult to imagine the region land-poor, but in reality there is sharp competition for the land and airspace among renewable energy companies, military facilities and ranges, endangered habitat, and off-road vehicle enthusiasts. Expanding the generation of solar and wind energy in the region will require balancing energy production and transmission against the other three uses.
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The West Mojave Desert area, as defined by the federal Bureau of Land
Management (BLM), encompasses “9.3 million acres in Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, and San Bernardino counties: 3.3 million acres of public lands administered by BLM, 3.0 million acres of private lands, 102,000 acres administered by the State of California, and the balance of military lands administered by the Department of Defense.”
The Western Mojave’s future is closely tied to its location, on the eastern edge of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. The California Department of Fish and Game reports:
Within the Mojave Desert region, the west Mojave has the greatest land area with the fewest protections for maintaining wildlife diversity. The western Mojave has experienced tremendous growth over the last 20 years, and that trend is expected to continue. Collectively, the 11 incorporated cities of the western Mojave grew by 25 percent in the last decade, about double the statewide growth rate, and the region’s population is expected to grow from 733,000 in 2000 to 1.5 million in 2036. Existing local government General Plans provide for residential growth in the western Mojave to reach a population of 5 million.… In the western Mojave, sprawling development replaces and fragments desert habitat. Growing communities require additional rights-of-way for power lines, pipelines, and roads, further fragmenting habitat. This pattern and density of growth dramatically increases the severity of development’s effects on wildlife.
The Western Mojave Desert is ideally suited for the development of renewable energy. It is near one of the nation’s largest population centers; it is largely undeveloped; and it contains vast energy resources. The rugged ridgelines and mountain passes are ideal sites for wind turbines. The flatlands have some of the best insulation in the world—to those who know the numbers, 7.65 kWh/m2/day. Wind developers have submitted more than 43 applications, covering about 264,000 acres of Bureau of Land
Management property in the Western Mojave, while solar developers have proposed 25 projects on 170,000 acres. 1
The Western Mojave is also home to five major military complexes: Edwards Air Force Base, China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station, its associated Mojave B Naval Range, Ft. Irwin National Training Center, and the Twenty-Nine Palms Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center. Above and beyond the first four land installations is the 20,000-
square-mile R-2508 Special Use Airspace. In addition to the 17.4% of the R-2508 shadow managed by the Defense Department (more than 2.2 million acres), large swaths are managed by the National Park Service (26.8%), Bureau of Land Management (24.6%), and the Forest Service (13.0%).
1 Press reports give larger numbers, but they don’t isolate the Western Mojave from other Southern California desert areas, and some of these proposals may exaggerate current plans for development. On the other hand, it is also likely that new proposals will be put forward.
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Twenty Palms is outside R-2508. The largest Marine base in the world, it
currently covers about 600,000 acres. Officially it is studying assuming control over an additional 200,000 acres of land, but Marine Corps insiders reportedly want more:
Marines must train as they fight. The Marine Corps must fulfill training
requirements for a large-scale, Marine Air Ground Task Force (MAGTF). This
requires more training land and airspace than is now available anywhere in the United States; the training area must at a minimum provide three maneuver corridors for a ground combat element comprised of three battalions that are simultaneously maneuvering for 48-72 hours with combined-arms live fire and the accompanying special-use airspace; a Center for Naval Analyses study shows that Twenty nine Palms is the best location with sufficient land and airspace Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 5 potential to meet the training requirements… The Marine Corps will study various land acquisition options that could meet the requirement, including a No Action alternative. Many options have been looked at that involve lands contiguous to the current base range complex at Twenty nine Palms. Options approved for study by the offices of the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense (OSD) will be presented to stakeholders and analyzed in full compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
Depending upon how much land the Marines seek, it is likely that expansion will impact habitat, recreational uses, and future energy production. In fact, once the Marines formerly request land from BLM, it’s expected that all energy proposals in the potential
footprint—including some rather large projects—will be frozen.
A short drive from population centers, the Western Mojave is also a Mecca for off-highway vehicles, including motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, and four-wheel drive Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 6 vehicles. BLM’s seven off-road open areas in the Western Mojave cover over 350,000, and there are thousands of miles of additional authorized trails and access routes. The California Department of Fish and Game estimates, “In addition to resident recreationists, the Mojave Desert [as a whole] attracts 2 million off-road vehicle visitors annually.” Those
riders are passionate about their sport, and they express that passion effectively whenever others propose to restrict significantly their access to the desert.
From Death Valley to the Joshua Tree National Park, the Mojave Desert is home to environmentally sensitive resources. Because vegetation is sparse and threatened species are spread out over wide areas, large swaths of land are needed to protect and preserve sensitive habitats. Home to endangered species such as the desert tortoise and the Mohave ground squirrel, it is overlain with a patchwork of official “critical habitat”
and slightly larger Desert Wildlife Management Areas. Though there are a number of state and local Habitat Management Plans in place, the principal vehicle for protecting desert habitat is BLM’s West Mojave Plan, the March 2006 amendment to the California Desert Conservation Area Plan. Among other tools, the Plan manages the use of federal desert lands by motorized vehicles, grazing cattle, and other commercial activities.
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Compatibility Issues Competition for land in the Western Mojave is driven by the limited compatibility of the major uses: habitat, military operations, energy production, and off-highway vehicles.
To learn to what degree renewable energy generation is compatible with desert habitat and military operations, in April 2008 I joined a tour of the Solar Energy Generating Systems (units III-VII) facility in Kramer Junction, California. This facility, rated at 150 Megawatts, is among the oldest, largest solar electrical generating systems in the world. Operated by FPL Energy in partnership with Southern California Edison, the facility consists of long rows of parabolic mirrors that rotate on a horizontal axes to follow the Sun each day. The mirrors focus the Sun’s heat on tubes containing an oil, which in turn is used to heat water to drive a conventional turbine power plant. Like other thermal power plans, the SEGS facility has a control room that manages the (daily) startup and shutdown of each unit. Operators also clean the mirrors regularly, and each month they replace about 200 four-foot-square mirror panels broken by the powerful desert winds.
A quick look around SEGS showed that the solar thermal technology is not
compatible with habitat preservation. To permit free mirror-trough rotation as well as Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 8
regular maintenance, the ground beneath was leveled and scraped. The operators use both physical and chemical methods to prevent vegetation from taking root. The facility was constructed before the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service establish criticaled habitat zones for the desert tortoise, and in fact SEGS is prevented from expanding across Highway 395 by tortoise critical habitat. Assuming that new solar farms are similarly designed, they are for now likely to be confined to areas away from threatened species.
In April 2008 the Argonne National Laboratory projected the impact of likely environmental exclusions on potentially developable acreage for solar energy in BLM’s California Desert District. In the two BLM areas that make up the Western Mojave, available land would drop from 2,089,000 acres to 923,000.
Wind energy is generally more compatible with land habitat and agriculture, but in some locations—such as central California’s Altamont Pass—wind turbines are perilous to bats and birds. Thus far I not heard of any particular problems with flying creatures in the Western Mojave, but it’s a potential problem that should be addressed.
Nationally the Interior Department has created a Wind Turbine Guidelines Advisory Committee to recommend measures to avoid or mitigate wind farm impacts on wildlife, but I did not evaluate such measures in this study.
Furthermore, the establishment of wind farms requires the construction of
roadways, which may cover as much as six percent of the property. The roads are necessary to bring in towers, blades, cement mixers (for laying foundations or pads), and cranes for assembly. Not only may such road networks directly impact habitat, but unless access is restricted they can essentially invite in additional habitat-damaging traffic.
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Argonne Labs also estimated the likely impact of habitat restrictions on land with potentially developable wind resources. The total for the Western Mojave is reduced from 843,000 without exclusions to 459,000 with them.
My visit to SEGS also demonstrated that solar projects are often compatible with military operations—as long as those operations don’t generate dust. Kramer Junction is not far from Edwards Air Force Base, and the control room looks out at the approach to the base. Our host told a story of how a schoolteacher, accompanying her class to the same control room, asked if sonic booms from the Air Force jets broke mirrors all over the facility. At least that’s what her husband, an Air Force pilot had speculated. SEGS
officials not only reported that the planes did no damage, but that operators enjoyed the informal air show provided by the Air Force and occasional space shuttle landings. Now Edwards, following the lead of Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base, is planning its own major solar generating project.
On the other hand, the high-speed, low-level flight operations by Air Force and Navy pilots in the area face physical compatibility issues with wind power—in fact, with any activity utilizing tall towers. (I address radar interference in a separate section below.) Planes fly as low as 200 feet above ground level. Wind turbines, usually built on mountaintops and ridgelines, often have tip elevations as high as 400 to 600 feet above
ground level. To reduce hazards and avoid restrictions on military flight operations, the Navy and Air Force negotiated a zoning overlay ordinance with the wind industry.
Adopted by Kern County to cover its unincorporated areas, the ordinance uses a zoning map with colors representing various allowable structure heights, Any tower proposed to Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 10 exceed the zone height would need military approval for the County to approve the project.2
The Height Restriction Zoning provides the military with protection against a form of encroachment while providing wind energy firms with the predictability they need to plan projects. It also serves as a model for how parties with distinct but orthogonal—that is, not antithetical—interests can work together to find mutually acceptable solutions to difficult problems.
Solar energy appears to be incompatible with nearby off-highway vehicle use, because in the desert such vehicles, like tracked military vehicles, stir up dust than can quickly degrade performance. On the other hand, motorized recreation may in cases be compatible with wind farms. At a site proposed for wind development within BLM’s Johnson Valley Off-Road Vehicle Area, FPL Energy proposes to allow off-roaders to ride up to and around the wind turbines themselves, while still fencing off the proposed
electrical substation.
Private off-road vehicles simply are not allowed onto military bases in the region, but there is no apparent conflict with military over-flights elsewhere in the special use airspace.
Off-road vehicles are particularly damaging to habitat. Fish and Game
summarizes:
The 1980 California Desert Conservation Area Plan referred to off-road vehicles as the “most pervasive management issue in the area.” Along with direct collisions with desert tortoises and other wildlife and the crushing of animal burrows, off-road vehicles compact soils, induce erosion, spread invasive plant species, and denude the landscape of vegetation. Off-road driving or riding has essentially a non-restorable impact on some desert habitat; damaged soils and perennial vegetation are not likely to recover for several hundred years or more.
Re-vegetation efforts on disturbed upland areas of the Mojave are expensive and have had little success.
The West Mojave plan addresses the motorized vehicle impacts by limiting access to the most sensitive areas, calling for increased enforcement, and education Finally, some military operations threaten habitat while others protect it.
Environmentalists opposed the annexation of 110,000 acres by Ft. Irwin because of anticipated harm to desert tortoises. The Army expanded the base anyhow, relocating 800 threatened tortoises. This backfired when coyotes ate 23 the transported tortoises. Now environmental groups are suing, arguing in addition that the tortoises were moved to inferior habitat containing diseased tortoises.
2 Similarly, I recall the Marine Base at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina getting the adjacent town to move a cell-phone tower located in or near a Marine helicopter flight path.
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More generally, Fish and Game found:
Military training activities utilize large areas of the Mojave landscape. Bases
and training centers occupy 2.6 million acres, or 13 percent, of the land area.
Some of the most degraded lands and some of the most pristine habitats are on lands managed by the Department of Defense. In areas of the U.S. Army’s National Training Center at Fort Irwin and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twenty-nine Palms, where warfare is practiced with heavy tracked armored vehicles, significant tracts are nearly denuded of plants, and the soils are hard packed. However, in other areas of Fort Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, and China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS) there exist some of the best representative habitats of the desert region, protected from public access and destructive land uses.
In many parts of the country, from Ft. Bragg, North Carolina to the North Shore of Oahu, the military has overcome the challenges of on-post habitat protection by partnering with other agencies and non-profit conservation groups to create adjacent buffer zones, under what is now known as the Readiness and. Environmental Protection Initiative. Installations find such buffer zones essential to environmental compliance when they increase their intensity of use within their boundaries. Thus, development
activities—including wind farms and solar projects—that do not directly encroach upon military operations may still affect them in the long run, if they reduce habitat or potential habitat that the military may someday want to satisfy its environmental obligations.
One Big Table Government agencies have established a number of forums for resolving the competition for ownership and use of the Western Mojave’s fragile landscape. Here I profile three of the most imporant.
First, the R-2508 Joint Land Use Study (JLUS), a collaborative planning effort
among three military installations—China Lake, Edwards Air Force Base, and Fort Irwin—surrounding counties and cities, and other affected agencies, addresses all lands beneath the R-2508 Complex or in the vicinity of the three bases. Funded by the Defense Department’s Office of Economic Adjustment, the JLUS released a draft document in March 2008
recommending 61 distinct strategies for sustaining the military mission while promoting both the economic vitality of the region and protecting public health, public safety, and the natural environment.
The JLUS is a strong, positive program, but thus far it has not addressed the
challenges posed by the rapid, impending energy gold rush in the R-2508 shadow.
Second, in May 2008 the Bureau of Land Management announced the scoping, in cooperation with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), of a programmatic environmental impact statement (PEIS) assessing “the environmental, social, and economic impacts associated with solar energy development on BLM-managed public land” in California, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. The legal and practical significance of the study was lost in the coverage of BLM’s controversial, since reversed
moratorium on new solar project applications.
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The BLM-DOE study is an essential step in managing the energy gold rush in the Western Mojave and elsewhere, but it is not designed to address military requirements in the region. Furthermore, as a document “owned” by government agencies, the PEIS development process is likely to be a “comment and response” dialogue, rather than a collaborative process or negotiation among equals.
Third, and most promising, is the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative
(RETI). Sponsored by California’s energy agencies, its purpose is “to help identify the transmission projects needed to accommodate these renewable energy goals, support future energy policy, and facilitate transmission corridor designation and transmission and generation sitting and permitting.” RETI is a model multi-stakeholder dialogue: “an open and transparent collaborative process” with participation from state and federal
agencies, public and investor-owned utilities, energy generators, and non-profit advocacy organizations.
Because the sitting of transmission lines and energy generation projects are
inextricably linked, RETI will propose competitive renewable energy zones (CREZ) for the Mojave Desert region. RETI’s Environmental Working Group is defining a category of lands, including wilderness areas and state and national parks, off limits to energy Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 13 development, as well as a second list, including land designated critical habitat, where development will be restricted.
The Defense Department sends a representative to RETI, but thus far the Initiative has not devoted substantial effort to the relationship between military activity and energy development. All major installations in the region are planning renewable energy projects, and at least one, Ft. Irwin, is planning to become a self-contained energy “island,” but the bases will not be included in the CREZs developed by the Initiative.
Each of the existing forums for addressing military, energy, and habitat issues in the Western Mojave has its value, but I believe there is a need for an overarching discussion, in which all of the parties—including OHV representatives—are at the table, planning land use in the Mojave. RETI might be the basis for this, but since its program and process are well established, it might make sense to create a separate umbrella
discussion group including many of the same interests.
Only by addressing all the bilateral tensions at a single table can lasting solutions be developed. The Western Mojave—particularly its BLM and Defense lands—should be viewed as a jigsaw puzzle, By addressing all four imperatives—energy, military, habitat, and recreation—at once, it may be possible to develop win-win solutions. For example, a military base might propose to open up a portion of its land, beyond what it needs for
energy self-sufficiency, to commercial renewable power production, in exchange for banking off-site habitat protection. Balancing such complex concerns will not be easy, but in the absence of a single forum, it’s likely that the various study groups will come up with competing solutions for the same Western Mojave land mass.
A Issue that Should Be on the Nation’s Radar Screen In late February the Kern County, California Planning Commission voted to approve the PdV 300-turbine wind farm near Rosamond, in the Western Mojave desert,
over the objections of Northrop-Grumman. The giant Defense contractor warned that radar interference from the project, when built, would force it to close its nearby Tejon Test Facility. The company conducts classified research on radar-eluding stealth technology there, and it asserts that any interference would undermine its studies.
About the same time, the Air Force gave the green light to Shiloh II, a new wind project in the Montezuma Hills, in central California between the San Francisco Bay Area and Sacramento. The 700 existing turbines in the area were already showing up on air traffic control radar screens at nearby Travis Air Force Base, and more than a year earlier the installation had opposed approval of Shiloh II, with as many as 88 more.
Modern wind turbines, blades of quickly moving steel a few hundred feet above the ground, are exactly the types of objects that radar systems, whether for air defense, air traffic control, or target acquisition, are designed to detect. It should not be surprising, therefore, that wind power systems show up on military, homeland security, and Federal Aviation Administration radars as interference. The protection of such radar systems
Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 14 could undermine the growth of wind power in many parts of the country, but only a handful of people in government and the wind power industry are paying attention. If the U.S. is to move smoothly toward the official U.S. goal of 20% wind energy—as a share of the electricity supply—we will have to come up with the science, resources, and policy to overcome the growing conflict between radar and wind power.
The interference caused by wind turbines is real, but there appears to be very little data quantifying the problem. How many turbines, of what size and at what distance, does it take to prevent a radar system from doing its job? Do the functional consequences vary from region to region? Windmills cause clutter, but at numerous locations military radar and wind turbines operate compatibly.
While some offices at the Air Force have at least some of the data and expertise to evaluate the potential radar impact of proposed wind turbine projects, that expertise clearly is not found at the installation level. Furthermore, the catastrophic consequences of radar failure—a collision between aircraft or worse, a terrorist attack—means that decision-makers are inclined to object to proposals wherever there is uncertainty. In March 2006 the Defense and Homeland Security Departments enacted a policy that they would contest wind power projects proposed within line of sight of radar systems, effectively halting development at a number of Midwestern sites. Later that year federal agencies clarified that the line-of-sight criterion simply means that more careful evaluation is necessary.
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Typically, wind projects need approval from both local and federal agencies. At Montezuma Hills and Rosamond, the Air Force and a government contractor expressed opposition at local planning hearings. At the former, local officials were reluctant to approve any action that might, down the road, lead to an economically costly base closure. In general, however, local officials are hesitant to block rewarding investments
such as wind power due to issues, such as radar operations, that they know little about.
A more daunting obstacle is federal approval. The principal federal process for screening proposed wind projects is the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Obstruction Evaluation. As its name implies, it is a process that was established for an entirely different purpose: preventing the construction of physical obstacles in airplane flight paths. The FAA acts as a clearinghouse for all other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense. In the past the FAA (at least sometimes) evaluated wind farms
early in the development process, but today its web site reports: Inside the tower of a high-tech 1.5 MW wind turbine Due to resource limitations, the FAA can no longer support feasibility studies for proposed Wind Turbine projects. The FAA must have all Wind Turbine Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 16 configurations at the time of your filing to accurately evaluate the cumulative effect of the entire project as it pertains to the national airspace system.
Some wind project proponents have sought approval instead through the
Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, which coordinates with other federal agencies through the
Inter-department Radio Advisory Committee. This process also suffers from the fact that it was set up to address an entirely different question: radio transmission.
Hard-working federal officials have tried to make these processes work, and resources permitting, a long-range radar office in the Air Force has tried to supply answers to wind power companies in advance of their submissions to the FAA, letting them know whether specific development sites were likely to generate opposition further down the approval process. However, with the explosion of new wind projects across the country, the Air Force, like the FAA, doesn’t have the resources to promptly conduct
site-specific analysis.
Furthermore, while there are some sites where wind turbines promise no radar interference, and others where radar operators will always find them unacceptable, a large number of sites lie in a grey area. That is, wind farms can operate in these locations with proper mitigation. In January 2008 the Jason group, affiliated with the MITRE Corporation, explained:
There is no fundamental physical constraint that prohibits the accurate
detection of aircraft and weather patterns around wind farms. On the other
hand, the nation’s aging long-range radar infrastructure significantly increases the challenge of distinguishing wind farm signatures from airplanes or weather.
Progress forward requires the development of mitigation measures, and
quantitative evaluation tools and metrics to determine when a wind farm
poses a sufficient threat to a radar installation for corrective action to be
taken. Mitigation measures may include modifications to wind farms (such as methods to reduce radar cross section; and telemetry from wind farms to radar), as well as modifications to radar (such as improvements in processing; radar design modifications; radar replacement; and the use of gap fillers in radar coverage).
The wind-power industry is willing, perhaps anxious to build mitigation into its projects, but from the national security perspective it’s imperative to build mitigation into radar technology, because U.S. forces operate throughout the globe, in and over areas where wind power operators might not be so willing to please. At Montezuma Hills, a key reasons that the Air Force agreed to wind farm expansion was that it was already planning to upgrade its radar from an analog to a digital system more capable of filtering out wind turbine clutter.
Since wind turbine towers are stationary, and the movement of the blades is repetitive, it should be relatively simple, from a technical point of view, to use digital signal processing to reduce or even eliminate interference. With digital systems, this may Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 17 only require a software upgrade. However, on a national scale, upgrading both land-based and mobile radar systems could take time and large sums of money. The cash-strapped armed services are unwilling to accept new obligations, particularly in response to a new, externally imposed requirement. In other words, why should the military and Department of Homeland Security be forced to undertake a wholesale revamping of their radar systems just because someone else plans to make money installing and operating windmills? At Montezuma Hills, the wind developer—who faced money-losing delays from the Air Force after making a substantial investment—at one point reportedly offered to donate $1 million toward the solution. In general the wind industry is willing—and
able—to pay its share, but at this point there is no legal or regulatory framework for determining what a fair share from industry might be.
As far as I know, our legal system has no ground rules for judging radar
interference. Does a wind developer have a right to build wind turbines if they meet the rules already established for land use and energy transmission, or does the operator of a radar system have a right to scan the skies without interference from distant structures? In the absence of a framework for weighing such conflicting requirements, one can expect
continuing fights over the establishment of new wind farms.
Finally, a solution is not on the horizon because there is no one at the Defense Department “in charge” of resolving the problem. Travis Air Force Base withdrew its opposition to the Montezuma Hills expansion only after a four-star general, the commander of the Air Mobility Command, approved it. The Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Installations and Environment) recently established a point of contact in the Environmental Readiness and Safety Office. A career civilian official at the Department of Defense, he is doing an excellent job of reaching out to the wind industry, but he lacks
the resources to develop solutions and the clout to approve projects on behalf of the various operating commands.
Steps toward Solutions:
The first step in resolving the contradiction between wind energy and military radar operations is to place a high-level official in charge, with the resources in hand to develop technical solutions and the authority to prioritize implementation of mitigation techniques. The Defense Department, in cooperation with an obviously willing wind industry, needs to collect more data so it can better predict, avoid, and even ignore
interference from wind turbine facilities. They need to develop reliable mitigation technologies as well as a plan to implement them where they are needed most. This will take real money, but in the context of the overall size of the military budget or even current wind energy investment levels, it’s a price the nation can afford, particularly if implemented in phases.
The second step is to reverse the federal approval process. That is, instead of having project developers bring in complete project proposals for screening, an umbrella body with participation from every agency and office responsible for operating radar should create radar-safe wind energy zones, similar to (perhaps overlaid on) the CREZ Renewable Energy: Avoiding a National Security “Train Wreck” 18 being developed by RETI and similar organizations in other states. I’ve heard that Texas created such zones for wind power, but without Defense or Homeland Security
participation. Like RETI, the wind-power “zoning” body should include participation from generating companies and utilities; state, tribal, and local governments; and nongovernmental organizations. The new process would differ from the existing approaches in two critical ways: First, it would be one-stop shopping. All entities with a potential reason for excluding property from wind-power development must sit at the same table.
Second, it would eliminate blind-alley investments. That is, wind developers would not have to do detailed technical planning or make large speculative investments to find out whether a proposed project would pass the radar interference test, nor would they have to disclose privileged information to competitors.
Like the Kern County height ordinance, the national wind zone map could
describe not just radar-free and wind-free zones, but a large middle ground, in which the density and size of proposed projects is matched with the proper level of mitigation. At this time, there is enough land in the U.S. suitable for wind energy development significant growth, based upon today’s science. As we fine tune the technology and gradually upgrade existing radar systems, more land will become available.
Even if all parties agree on a common approach, it will take a few years to fully implement it. However, there is no reason for wind power development to grind to a halt.
Rather, the goal should be to negotiate win-win solutions before the collision between wind and radar—the proverbial train wreck—is unavoidable. Congress and the executive branch must recognize how destructive such a train wreck would be, and take action now.
The nation needs wind energy, and we still have enough time to work toward the 20% goal without sacrificing the national security and air traffic control functions with which it might collide.
Understanding the Whole Picture National security, environmental protection, and economic vitality are all important objectives of the federal government and our nation as a whole. Because the other two goals sometimes conflict with the Defense Department’s principal missions, the
Department has for the past several years developed and refined analytical tools for understanding “encroachment,” the conflict between Defense training or operations and external activities. Now renewable energy development is emerging as a national goal with momentum of its own. Currently subsumed in those tools for analyzing encroachment, under the categories of economic growth or environment, the role of energy should be upgraded. Wind, solar, and other renewable energy sectors are good for
the economy and good for the environment—of the entire planet—and they are growing at remarkable rates. The Defense Department, if it acts quickly, can ensure that renewable energy development strengthens, rather than threatens, the Department’s national security objectives.

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Sustainability advocacy

A few Tried and True Strategies for Inspiring Environmental change
Many business leaders find it challenging to lead others on the path to sustainability - and not necessarily because they’re working with a tough audience (although that happens too). Rather the trouble lies in their inability to communicate in way that generates real-world action and measurable results. But certain individuals seem to have cracked the code - they’ve figured out how to turn environmental conversations into sustainable changes for their companies, and for the environment. What exactly are these leaders doing differently, and how can we learn from them?
Principle I: Emphasize the business necessity.
Aspiring change leaders must have their heads wrapped firmly around the financial implications of their pet environmental initiatives. Environmental strategy consultant believes that creating a compelling business need is by far the most critical factor for getting decision makers on board with green initiatives. The good news for aspiring sustainability leaders is that the case for business necessity is getting easier to make with every passing day.
“Customers are asking questions about environmental performance,” and “Companies like Wal-Mart will give more shelf space to those companies that can reduce their footprint. Employees demanding more from companies they work for is another clear force that creates a compelling business need - it’s tough enough to compete for the best talent without turning them off on values-driven and environmental issues.”
The take-home? When seeking to serve the sometimes elusive triple bottom line, make sure you start with the bottom-line that decision makers value most- cold, hard cash. This topic is sure to get them listening.
Principle II: Frame environmental goals in terms of the other’s self interest.
With work demands and obligations bombarding them at every possible moment, how can we get organizational leaders to make our green initiative a priority? Here’s the secret of all motivational conversationalists: Take the perspective of the person you are speaking to and frame your agenda so that it occurs to other person as highly relevant to their own personal goals.
Of course, to accomplish this requires that we do a minimal amount of homework to learn more about our audience. What are their goals? How do these goals relate to our proposal? What do they have to gain by our success? This may seem like a lot to think through up front, but if we are willing to make a habit of this sort of analysis our persuasive abilities will skyrocket.
A good example comes from environmental initiatives for one company. Which has a distinguished track record of leading change in the organization and attributes much of the success to this simple habit? “There are multiple benefits to all environmental initiatives, so the language we use to impart the message has to mirror that diversity,” “For example, if I’m promoting an energy conservation initiative such as a lighting retrofit for the facilities, I will need to alter my message based upon my audience. I need to address the financial savings on our utility bill to the finance folks, the labor and maintenance benefits to the technicians in the field, and the quality of light with clients or tenants of the facility.”
Principle III: Appeal to enlightened self-interest.
Once you’ve framed your proposal in terms of ever-pressing financial imperatives and the other person’s self-interest, feel free invoke the “better angels” of your audience’s nature. Invite them to see how jumping on board with your initiative will also serve the more high-minded planetary and humanistic bottom-lines. Sometimes the best way to do this is directly, by discussing the positive global impact that your green proposal will create in terms of waste and greenhouse gas reduction. Other times it may be preferable to first be discreet, seeking topics that evoke in your audience a feeling of selflessness and a desire to contribute.
Creating rapport through meaningful conversations. “A great tactic is to look around and find something that the person you’re talking to really cares about. I’ve found that a universally powerful topic is children. If you can get people take a second to think about their children, and the effect that their choices might have on them, they seem to open up and be much more willing to consider higher causes like the environment.” Whatever your angle, remember that - beneath the cynicism and chaos - people want to do the right thing. You are, in fact, giving them a fresh opportunity to do just this.
Principle IV: Use humor to melt defensiveness.
Unfortunately, for most people there is still a huge gap between environmental awareness and environmental action. This gap often causes them to feel slightly guilty and defensive when the topic of saving the environment is even raised. If we don’t overcome it, this subtle mental block can make our audience unreceptive and make our words more likely to fall upon deaf ears. What are we to do? How can we get past this mental filter and raise our audiences to consider new possibilities? One strong approach is with humor.
One company has turned the tactic of using humor to overcome environmental guilt into an art by designing a stylish faux legal contract called an “Environmental Guilt Waiver.” This contract bestows clients and friends with a “24-hour exemption from all existential torment in connection with the environmental crisis” for making simple positive environmental choices in their daily life. The result? After receiving the waiver, clients who might normally be resistant to discussing the environment open up more easily and take a more active interest in the topic. “Making people feel guilty doesn’t help the environment,” “People want to have fun and be part of the solution. We’re doing what we can to make saving the planet a more pleasant experience!”
Principle V: Paint an inspiring vision.
John F. Kennedy gave us the image of a man on the moon. These world leaders knew that all great accomplishments start out as little more than compelling images that capture our imagination. Granted, few people will ever reach the heights of power and influence that these historical figures attained, but each of us can nonetheless draw from that same well of wisdom when we seek to cause changes in our own work-life sphere.
Want to be a true visionary? Simply do this: envision the end result that you are seeking to cause for your organization and help others see it too. Make it vivid, make it compelling, make it believable and make it personal. What are the implications for your audience of this goal coming to fruition? How will their life - and the life of their organization - be changed as a result of small efforts made today? If you can get others in your organization to use their imagination to experience your environmental proposal in this way, you will generate astounding levels of motivation for your cause.
Principle VI: Stick with it.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were our current environmental challenges. As you do your part to reinvent the wheel in a new shade of green, remember to be patient and - even more importantly - be persistent. No matter how eloquent, business savvy and sincere we may be, sometimes the only way to get through to people is with good old-fashioned repetition. Allow yourself to be the squeaky (green) wheel that gets the grease!
Someone once remarked that breaking up with someone is a lot like trying to tip over a refrigerator…you have to rock it a few times before it actually topples over. Getting people to change their environmental thinking and behaviors is the same way. So stick with it. Be persistent. After all, how much does environmental change really matter to you? Are you in it to win a popular contest or to do the right thing? Are you willing to continually raise the issues that matter to you most, even when those around you don’t seem interested? If so, you are a true leader, and success is only a matter of time.
Compiled by: YJay Draiman

Geothermal Energy: The Alternative of the Future

Geothermal Energy: The Alternative of the Future


When the energy crisis hit Americans in the 1970's, people were scrambling to find ways to conserve energy. The crisis brought to attention the very real shortage of fossil fuels. Gas and oil prices skyrocketed, and Americans looked for ways to save energy. They started producing smaller cars, driving less, and turning down their thermostats. Also, they started to examine alternate energy sources, such as solar, geothermal, and biomass. For a while, Americans were making a conscious effort to cut back on the use of fossil fuels. However, when gas and oil prices started to go back down in the early eighties, many of the conservation ideas were forgotten. In the minds of most Americans, the energy crisis had been solved because they could now afford to use fossil fuels again.

Looking into the next century, we can see energy shortage problems starting to resurface. The possibility of another energy crisis is very real; however, this one will be different. It will not be a matter of fossil fuels being too expensive, it will be a matter of fossil fuels no longer being a resource. Our gas-powered cars, factories, and heating systems are using fossil fuels much faster than the dinosaurs are turning to coal. The way things are going now, we won't make it through the next century before running out of our fossil fuels.

The problems with fossil fuels go beyond their rapid depletion. The pollution from burning fossil fuels is really taking a toll on the environmentand the atmosphere. Factories in the United States spend millions of dollars on filtration systems to try and cut down on the amount of harmful emissions, yet the environment just isn't getting better. Converting fossil fuels to energy is a large contributor to the problem. Besides the fact that fossil fuels are ruining our surroundings, their availability is always questionable. Currently, the U.S. buys most of its oil from Middle Eastern countries. What happens if our foreign trade with the Middle East does not hold up? The unstable foreign trade lead to the energy crisis of the 1970's, and it could happen again without much warning. A glimpse of this could be seen during the Desert Storm conflict, when oil prices went up. In a more serious situation, the U.S. is stuck without an energy source.

These are major problems that need to be addressed, before suddenly we are without energy. We are not saying that we need to ban the use of fossil fuels, maybe we need to just start looking seriously into alternate energy sources. The most obvious source right now seems to be solar energy; however, there is another renewable resource that many people might not know about. Geothermal energy is a resource that does not harm the environment, and is not dependent on foreign trade ("Geothermal Heat Increases," 1998). No fuel is burned when the plants are operated. This cuts down on the amount of carbon dioxide and other gases formed during the combustion of fossil fuels, producing one-sixth the amount of carbon dioxide that natural gas plants do, and none of the nitrous oxide or sulfur bearing gases ("Geothermal Energy Technical Site," 1997). Geothermal energy is also easy on the land because there are no mineshafts, tunnels, open pits, waste heaps, or oil spills ("Geothermal Education Office," 1998).

In addition, using geothermal energy would help the foreign trade of both wealthy countries, such as the United States, as well as many third world countries. Geothermal energy would allow the U.S. to become independent from the unstable Middle Eastern trade, because it is literally right in our backyard (Cole, 1998). On the other hand, it helps developing countries grow, because they do not need to depend on other large countries for energy ("Geothermal Education Office," 1998). Ukraine is a prime example of this. There is an energy crisis that is digging a hole in their national economy, and the Ukrainian Government is turning to geothermal energy to fill it in. There are currently nine geothermal plants in operation, and another one is a work in progress. A $2 million payback is estimated upon completion of the tenth plant. Thousands of jobs are being created by these plants, and the amount of money that would otherwise be paid to foreign countries for fossil fuels is astronomical ("GeothermalÖfill energy gap," 1996).

It all sounds like a good idea, but many people are unaware of how it operates. Geothermal energy is available wherever the earth's large oceanic and crystal plates slide apart. This is based on the idea of plate tectonics. The earth is made up of huge plates of rock, floating on molten rock and magma. These plates do not fit together perfectly, and where the plates touch there is buckling and grinding. This movement creates friciton and pressure, allowing ground water within the plates, to come in contact with deep subsurface heat sources, namely magma ("Geothermal Technologies," 1996). Geothermal energy then uses the natural hot water and steam that is produced as a result of the plate collisions to create energy. This usage is called hydrothemal energy ("Geothermal Heat Increases," 1998). There are currently three technologies used to convert hydromthermal fluids to electricity. The first, routes steam created from the collisions of the plates, to large turbines. These turbines consist of a huge cylinder with a blade-rotating engine. When the steam builds up in the turbine, the blade starts to rotate because the steam particles are moving so fast. The turbine in turn drives the generator that creates the electricity. This process replaces the need for fossil fuel boilers used in conventional power plants. ("Geothermal Electricity,"1998).

The second technique simply uses high temperature water (over 200ƒ C). This process is used when the underground source is not hot enough to turn the water to steam. Highly pressured fluid is sprayed from the plates into a tank of lower pressure. This rapid drop in pressure causes some of the fluid to vaporize quickly, or "flash" into steam. Once converted to steam, the turbine is activated to power the generator, as in the first technique. Any left over fluids can be recycled by returning it to the earth to increase the pressure, making this process very efficient. Because water is used in this process, not steam, the amount of friction between the plates does not have to be as great as in the first process ("Geothermal Electricity," 1998).

The last hydrothemal process is the most complicated, because it utilizes fluids that are at a temperature lower than 200ƒ C. This fluid cannot vaporize itself; however, it does produce enough heat to vaporize other liquids. Boiling fluid is pumped from the earth into a tank similar to a double boiler. The inside part of the double boiler contains a secondary fluid with a low boiling point. This secondary fluid will boil and flash into steam to once again drive the turbine and so forth. These plants are generally smaller than say, steam of high temperature facilities making them beneficial to small industries that lack a prime geothermal location where there is a lot of plate activity (Mclarty, 1998).

There are other sources of geothermal energy besides hydrothermal fluid, such as hot dry rock, geopressured brines, magma, and ambient ground heat. Hydrothermal fluid is currently the only source used on a widescale basis; however, hot dry rock is another up and coming method in places where hydrothermal systems are not hot enough to drive turbines. The earth's plates are comprised of layers of rock, that increase in heat until you reach the inner core, estimated at 6,650ƒ C. The current theory is that cold water will be heated if it is pumped into this rock at high pressure. The water is then drawn back to the surface as steam to drive turbines. The higher the temperature, the more efficient the system works. The main problem that geologists are having right now is to make the water hot enough. The pressurized water needs to be pumped six kilometers under the surface, and by needing to go deeper, it is upping the cost of the geothermal plant (Graham-Rowe, 1998).

Cost however, is relative. While the initial costs of exploratory drilling are somewhat expensive, actually building the plants is very cost efficient. Coal and oil shale plants cost $1 billion and $600 million respectively to build, but two hydrothermal plants cost $100 million together (Devine, 1998). Therefore, this is a relatively cheap energy source. Along with lower start-up costs than conventional energy sources, there are other financial benefits associated with geothermal energy. The U.S. government is currently offering financial support to organizations that choose geothermal energy resources over fossil fuels ("College Subtracts EnergyÖ," 1995). In addition, several states are considering weighted cost factors for industries that plan to continue using the environmentally unsafe fossil fuels (Mclarty, 1998). When a new company or corporation is taking bids from electrical companies, some states mandate those energy sources that are potentially harmful to the environment must increase their bid, to ensure the safety of the environment. In doing this, geothermal energy looks even more attractive.

These laws and mandates are not nation wide because geothermal energy is just not logical in some places. The prime locations for geothermal energy use and production are known as hot spots. Hot spots are the places where large oceanic and crystal plates collide and slide apart. This is where geothermal energy is most readily available. Some spots are the Ring of Fire-the islands in the Pacific Ocean-, the South American Andes, Central America, Mexico, the Cascade Range of the U.S. and Canada, the Aleutian range of Alaska, the Kahichatka Peninsula of Russia, Japan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and New Zealand ("Geothermal Education Office," 1998). Currently New Zealand and Indonesia are two of the hottest spots for geothermal energy. Since the 1950's, New Zealand has been using the underground energy to benefit their economy. It has steadily developed for the last 40 years and now has the potential to supply 10% of the country's power needs. Regulations set by the New Zealand government has encouraged expansion of commercial industry. There are many other countries that have the potential for large advancements, including Indonesia. The geothermal reserves in Indonesia equal 16,000 megawatts of electricity per year (Cole, 1998).

To put into perspective the amount of money that 16,000 megawatts of geothermal energy can produce, lets look at the United States. The U.S. is only producing about 2200 megawatts of energy per year, and it accounts for $1 billion of revenue. This takes the place of 30 million barrels of oil that we would otherwise need to import (Mclarity, 1998). If Indonesia has the potential to have 16,000 megawatts of geothermal energy per year; the amount of revenue could be as high as $7.3 billion.

Everything seems to point out that geothermal energy is the resource of the future, so why isn't it used more? First, we must point out that we do not think that the use of fossil fuels should be dropped completely. There are locations where geothermal energy just isn't available or very cost effective; however, we need to start looking at the other places were geothermal energy is possible. People worldwide need to make a conscious effort to use geothermal energy wherever it is possible. Because geothermal energy is a fairly new topic, people are tentative to commit to it for fear that it is just a passing fad that will soon be proven ineffective. In fact, geothermal energy is here to stay, and we need to start taking it seriously, because it will be a very important option in the future. Fossil fuels are rapidly depleting, and geothermal energy is picking up where it is leaving off.

Explore Clarke College's use of geothermal energy

Reference List Cole, B. (1998, September 28). Geothermal powers in New Zealand. Modern Powers Systems. First Search. Online. FastDOC. College subtracts energy use with geothermal systems. (1998, September 28). Air Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration News. First Search. Online. FastDOC. Devine, M. (1981). Energy from the west: A technology assessment of western energy resource development. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. Geothermal education office - Power from the earth's heat. (1998, October 13). [WWW]. Available: http://marin.org/npo/geo/pwrheat.html Geothermal electricity production (1998, November 15). [WWW]. Available: http://eren.doe.gov/geothermal/gep.html Geothermal energy will fill energy gap. (1998, October 6). First Search. Online. Fast DOC Geothermal Energy Technical Site. (1998, November 12). [WWW]. Available: http://geothermal.id.doe.gov/goethermal/faq/q01.html Geothermal heat increases our energy supply. (1998, October 27). [WWW]. Available: http://www.crest.org/renewables/geothermal/grc/supply.html Geothermal technologies. (1998, October 13). US Department of Energy, 1-6. Available: http://www.eren.doe.gov/geothermal/history.html Graham-Rowe, Duncan. (1998, October 6). Resources: Energy: Deep down at the earth's core. Academic Universe. Online. Mclarty, L., & Reed, M.J., (November 15 1998). The U.S. geothermal industry: Three decades of growth. [WWW]. Available: http://geothermal.id.doe.gov/geothermal/articles/mclarty/index.html

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal energy is a renewable and sustainable power source that comes from the heat generated by the earth. "Geo" means earth and "thermal" means heat. The Earth has four main layers, as is shown in the first picture below (Geothermal Education Office). Each layer has different compositions, functions and temperatures, as is illustrated in the second figure below (Geothermal Education office). The heat of the earth radiates outward and sometimes melts the mantle at temperatures of 300° F- 700°F. When the mantle becomes melted magma is created. Sometimes magma reaches the surface of the crust and is then called lava. The magma reaches the crust and heats nearby rocks and water. The heated water can reach the surface and form hot springs and geysers.




Geothermal energy creates less environmental pollution, is renewable and sustainable, avoids importing energy resources, benefits remote areas, adds to energy source diversity, creates less waste disposal and has a long life span.

Geothermal energy is produced by drilling a well into the ground where thermal activity is occuring. Once a well has been identified and a well head attached, the steam is separated from the water, the water is diverted through a turbine engine which turns a generator. Usually the water is injected back into the ground to resupply the geothermal source. The pictures below illustrate how the set-up of a geothermal site collecting energy looks like (EIA kids site) and (Geothermal Education Office).




Locations of Geothermal Energy Use

Geothermal energy is generally harnessed in areas of volcanic activity. The Pacific Ring is a prime spot for the harnessing of geothermal activity because it is an area where the tectonic processes are always taking place. The picture below shows the general location of the Ring of Fire (EIA kids site).


The USGS defines tectonic processes as a series of actions and changes relating to, causing, or resulting from structural deformation of the earth's crust. [Adapted from American Heritage Dic. of the English Language, 4th ed.] This picture illustrates the term tectonic processes (Geothermal Education Office).




Geothermal power plants are used all over the world, but can not be located just anywhere. They are located where tectonic plates collide and generate volcanic activity. The map below shows where plate boundaries are located and the following map illustrates the general location of geothermal power plants being used around the world.




The table below shows MW of Geothermal Energy in different countries around the world. For more information on the countries below, click on the name. For further information on other geothermal plants throughout the world visit this website, Selected Geothermal Power Plants (ORMAT GreEnergy Power).

Zunil, Guatemala 24 MW
São Miguel, Açores Islands, Portugal 14 MW
Leyte, The Philippines 125 MW
Olkaria, Kenya 100 MW
Nagqu, Tibet, P.R. of China 1.0 MW
Reykjanes Peninsula, Iceland 9.1 MW

The table below shows the countries that are using Geothermal Energy and the number of Megawatts that their power plants produce.

Producing countries in 1999 Megawatts
United States
2,850
Philippines 1,848
Italy 768.5
Mexico 743
Indonesia 589.5
Japan 530
New Zealand 345
Costa Rica 120
Iceland 140
El Salvador 105
Nicaragua 70
Kenya 45
China 32
Turkey 21
Russia 11
Portugal (Azores) 11
Guatemala 5
French West Indies (Guadeloupe) 4
Taiwan 3
Thailand 0.3
Zambia 0.2

Within the United States, the West (and specifically California) are major producers of Geothermal Energy. Each state has different regulations on geothermal energy. According to the Bureau of Land Management in California, , "The Geothermal Steam Act of 1970, as amended, (84 Stat, 1566; 30 U.S.C. 1001-1025) provides the Secretary of the Interior with the authority to lease public lands and other federal lands, including National Forest lands, for geothermal exploration and development in an environmentally sound manner. This authority has been delegated to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). BLM implements the Act through the regulations contained in 43 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 3200." The table below shows the amount of money, leases and megawatts produced in California during the Fiscal Year 2000 (October 1, 1999-September 30, 2000).



Types of Geothermal Power Plants
Geothermal technology has three varied ways of taking geothermal energy and turning it in to useable energy for humans to use. The most common systems are steam and binary power plants. There are two different types of steam power plants: dry steam and flash steam. The following definitions and pictures are from Geothermal Technologies Program or Godfrey Boyle in Renewable Energy: Power for a Sustainable Future.


Dry Steam Power Plants or Hot Dry Rock Power Plants

Vapor dominated resources where steam production is not contaminated
Steam is 1050°F - 1220° F
Steam passes through turbine
Steam expands
Blades and shaft rotate and generate power
Cooling towers generate waste heat
Most common and most commercially attractive (Godfrey Boyle)
Used in areas where geysers do not exist
Need water to inject down into rock
Well is deep
Takes more time to inject water in well




Binary cycle power plant

Uses lower-temperatures, but much more common, hot water resources (100° F – 300° F).
Hot water is passed through a heat exchanger in conjunction with a secondary (hence, "binary plant") fluid with a lower boiling point (usually a hydrocarbon such as isobutane or isopentane).
Secondary fluid vaporizes, which turns the turbines, which drive the generators.
Remaining secondary fluid is simply recycled through the heat exchanger.
Geothermal fluid is condensed and returned to the reservoir.
Binary plants use a self-contained cycle, nothing is emitted.
Energy produced by binary plants currently costs about 5 to 8 cents per kWh.
Lower-temperature reservoirs are far more common, which makes binary plants more prevalent.


Flash or Steam plants

Use very hot (more than 300° F) steam and hot water resources (as found at The Geysers plants in northern California)
Steam either comes directly from the resource, or the very hot, high-pressure water is depressurized ("flashed") to produce steam.
Steam then turns turbines, which drive generators that generate electricity.
Only significant emission from these plants is steam (water vapor).
Minute amounts of carbon dioxide, nitric oxide, and sulfur are emitted, but almost 50 times less than at traditional, fossil-fuel power plants.
Energy produced this way currently costs about 4-6 cents per kWh.

A History of Geothermal Power

A History of Geothermal Power


The history of geothermal energy use traces back tens of thousands of years around the globe. In times pre-dating modern western civilization, indigenous peoples used hot water from springs for cooking, cleaning, and bathing. These springs served as a source of warmth and their minerals as a source of healing. Archeological evidence shows that the first human use of geothermal resources in North America occurred more than 10,000 years ago with the settlement of Paleo-Indians around hot springs.



Modern use of geothermal energy is characterized by increasingly more organized commercial and industrial ventures from spas and resorts in the early 1800s to the eventual development of electricity production and geothermal heat pumps. The first known commercial use of geothermal energy in the United States occurred in Hot Springs, Arkansas, where, in 1830, Asa Thompson charged one dollar each for the use of three spring-fed baths in a wooden tub. Within the next twenty years, more resorts and spas of increasing size would grow up around such springs.

In 1892, the world's first district heating came online in Boise, Idaho, eventually growing to serve 200 homes and 40 downtown businesses. Although this system was unique for 70 years, there are now 17 geothermal district heating systems in the United States and dozens more around the world. In Iceland, the entire capital city of Reykjavik is powered by the geothermal energy from the North Atlantic Oceanic Ridge below the island.



In the early 1900s, the first instance of geothermal electric power emerged. In Italy, Prince Piero Ginori Conti invented the first geothermal power plant in 1904 at the Larderello dry steam field and it is still in operation today. The first geothermal electricity plants in the United States were operated in 1960 at The Geysers in Sonoma County, California. They produced 11 megawatts (MW) of net power and operated successfully for more than 30 years. Today, 69 generating facilities are in operation at 18 sites around the country.



Throughout the 1970s, government backing through legislation, grants, and the actions of agencies like the Department of Energy furthered research, development, and continued acceptance of geothermal electrical power into the electricity producing mainstream. Work in the 1970s laid the foundation for actualization of more advanced types of geothermal steam production in the 1980s from flash steam to binary vapor cycles. Net electrical output of these plants reached 50MW by the end of the decade. Progress continued in the 1990s as the Department of Energy increased its efforts to promote the use of geothermal energy for electricity generation as well as space and process heating. By the mid-90s, the DOE identified over 9000 thermal wells and springs and 271 communities connected to geothermal energy.



Modern non-electrical use of geothermal energy continues. For instance, beginning in the 1960?s the Maoris of New Zealand have used geothermal energy for cooking. France and many other European Union nations are using geothermally heated water to heat thousands of homes.



For more information about the history of geothermal energy, visit the following web sites.



A History of Geothermal Energy in the United States

A comprehensive timeline of geothermal energy in the United States, from the early 1800s until the year 2000, covering the opening of spas and resorts to research and development of cutting-edge advanced technology for electrical production in the late 20th century.



History of the utilization of geothermal sources of energy in Iceland

Brief review of early geothermal energy efforts in Iceland, especially focusing on the digging of Thvottalaugar (washing pools) around the capital city of Reykjavik.



History of Geothermal Energy

A down-to-earth overview of some ancient and modern examples of geothermal energy worldwide, with focus on pre-industrial usage.



REPP-CREST Geothermal History

A late 20th-Century timeline, in brief, of modern geothermal electricity and heat pumps in the United States. Covers major events, government agencies, and legislation between 1960 and 2000.



Geothermal Energy and Other Distinctive Energy Sources

Milestones in geothermal power intertwined with relevant historical instances in thermodynamics, engineering, drilling, and electrical power production. Short essay covering low tech to high tech uses, including a drilling and mining angle.



Modern Heating and Cooling for Historic Structures Slide Show Presentation

Flash slideshow of how small-scale geothermal power is helping preserve the historic integrity of landmark buildings while giving them the comfort and convenience of modern heating and cooling systems. One such project was the Trinity Church in Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts.

Geothermal Energy

Geothermal Energy

What Is Geothermal Energy? Geothermal energy is the natural heat of the Earth, which is transferred from the hot core of the planet to the much cooler surface by conduction of heat through rocks. It is this same heat that produces the molten lava, hot ash and gases that we see spewing from an erupting volcano. Geothermal energy can be harnessed by modern technology and brought to the surface as steam or hot water and converted to electricity.

Miles beneath the Earth's surface lies one of the world's largest energy resources—geothermal energy. Our ancestors have used geothermal energy for cooking and bathing since prehistoric times. Today, we use this enormous energy reservoir to supply millions of people with clean, low-cost electricity. Geothermal power plants use wells to pipe steam and hot water trapped underground to the surface to make electricity. The power plants produce electricity at 5¢ to 7.5¢ per kilowatt-hour. The Geysers Power Plant in northern California—the world's largest geothermal power plant—generates more than 1700 megawatts of electrical power. Geothermal power plants are highly reliably and can operate 24 hours a day. Most power plants operate more than 95 percent of the time.

A comprehensive new MIT-led study of the potential for geothermal energy within the United States has found that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth's hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.

An 18-member panel led by MIT prepared the 400-plus page study, titled "The Future of Geothermal Energy" (PDF, 14.1 MB). Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, it is the first study in some 30 years to take a new look at geothermal, an energy resource that has been largely ignored.

The goal of the study was to assess the feasibility, potential environmental impacts and economic viability of using enhanced geothermal system (EGS) technology to greatly increase the fraction of the U.S. geothermal resource that could be recovered commercially.

Although geothermal energy is produced commercially today and the United States is the world's biggest producer, existing U.S. plants have focused on the high-grade geothermal systems primarily located in isolated regions of the west. This new study takes a more ambitious look at this resource and evaluates its potential for much larger-scale deployment...

MIT-led panel backs 'heat mining' as key U.S. energy source



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Gene Wescott, a geophysicist and Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks has explored the possible use of geothermal energy in the Aleutian Islands to produce hydrogen for use in clean automobiles.

...Several decades ago, when the world was searching for new types of energy, Professor Wescott was dispatched from his campus in Fairbanks to a long string of islands that stretches for 1,100 miles from Alaska into the northern Pacific Ocean. The Aleutians are volcanic islands, many of them quite active today, and they are literally sitting on shallow beds of molten rock, surrounded by water.

The U.S. Department of Energy wanted to know if those desolate islands could be used to produce geothermal energy. The idea was that the hot areas beneath the surface might provide a continuous source of blistering hot water, which could in turn be flashed to steam and used to turn turbines and produce electricity. The precedent had been set in California and Iceland. California draws a small percentage of its electricity from geothermal power plants near San Francisco.

Energy for Centuries

So Wescott traveled out the Aleutians, drilling a few test wells along the way, and he found just what common sense would suggest should be there. The rocks beneath the surface were very, very hot.

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But here's the hitch: Why build power plants hundreds, or thousands, of miles away from any users? It isn't practical to run power lines from the Aleutians all the way to the major population centers of the western United States, so what Wescott really found was an enormous source of energy where nobody could use it.

So the whole idea kind of died, except in the mind of Gene Wescott...
In recent years, Wescott has returned to the idea of building geothermal power plants in the Aleutians, and using that electricity to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen could be liquified, he says, and shipped to Asia or the west coast of the United States. One of the largest geothermal resources he found in his earlier research is near the major deepwater port of Dutch Harbor, making it almost seem as though providence planned the whole thing.

Wind Power

Wind Power

Wind is an inexhaustible source of energy. But the full potential of wind cannot be developed unless engineers understand the problem they are solving. A brilliant engineer will come up with a brilliant solution, but if the solution is for the wrong problem—that would be a wasted opportunity.

Wind engineers are doing a brilliant job developing solutions that have vastly improved the performance of wind turbines and the generators connected directly to the turbines; as well as in understanding the behavior and availability of wind resources. But it is time for Engineers to turn their creative efforts toward solving the problem of wind energy’s intermittency.



Wind technology faces three major challenges:

1.Cost — manufacturing, shipping and installing wind turbines will require a large up front capital investment, but after the initial investment is made, the wind is free.
2.Transmission of power to the consumer — the electricity produced by a wind turbine needs to be connected to the electric power grid (transmission lines, etc.) before the electricity can be delivered to homes and businesses, but the best locations for capturing wind power are not always conveniently located near population areas. Construction of new roads and transmission lines in remote areas will cost more than the wind turbines. A massive federal public works project on the scale of the U.S. Interstate highway system is needed to provide renewable energy generators with the transmission access required to deliver renewable electricity to the nation.
3.Energy storage — the electric power grid requires a steady, predefined voltage. Wind is not steady or predictable. However, if the wind's energy can be captured and stored, then the electric grid can draw from the stored energy to generate a steady flow of electricity when needed. The best way to store wind energy is to use the electricity produced by the wind turbine to pump water uphill to a reservoir and then use the water pressure in the reservoir to produce conventional hydroelectric power when needed. Another way to store the wind's energy is to use the power generated by the wind turbine to run an air compressor and then store the compressed air. The compressed air is then used to drive a conventional gas turbine (providing over 50% of the gas turbines power), which generates a steady, predefined voltage for the electric grid. Other types of energy storage are possible, such as hydrogen gas, flywheel and battery storage.

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Power is blowing in the wind, and harnessing that power can bring clean renewable electricity to homes and businesses across America. But trouble is also blowing in the wind. Grid connected wind energy today is little more than a scene on a Hollywood movie set—a story that people want to believe, and the producers hope to make money from.

People see electricity flowing and they say, “Look it is real.” ...their imagination has been captured, very much like the effect intended by the perfect camera angle scene on a movie set—it LOOKS REAL, because it is a real set, made of real material, but there is nothing behind the set, where the camera angle has hidden the true nature and purpose of the set.

Wind energy performs poorly if it is used in a way that cannot exploit its full potential—wind energy performs poorly when connected directly to the electric grid.
Yes the wind electricity is real; the engineer’s solution has worked just like it was supposed to for the problem that the engineer was given to solve—renewable wind generated electricity on the grid—problem solved!

Wait. Was that really the problem? Obviously it was part of the problem, but was that the whole problem? Let’s step back and look at the bigger picture. What was the purpose in the first place? Was there a shortage of electricity? Was the grid going dead?

Some areas of the power grid have experienced brown outs and black outs, but we were told that the grid failures were caused by overloading the transmission lines — demand exceeded the maximum load for the wires — in other words, a lack of transmission capacity, not a lack of electric power. And, yes we are told that more electric power plants are needed as demand increases. But will grid connected wind provide reliable “always available” electricity to fill the need for future electricity supply?

Recently, we have been told that wind generated electricity will free us from oil dependence. But that can’t be true, because our nation’s electric power companies do not rely on oil to generate electricity, and we don’t use electricity to fuel our cars.

Then why do we want wind generated electricity on the grid?

For one reason only: to replace coal as the source of fuel for electric power generation.

America has more coal than the Middle East has oil. Coal generates 50% of America’s electricity today and produces over 30% of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. There is no shortage of coal within the next 100 years. Replacing coal generated electricity is an environmental issue; we are not running out of coal. Coal plants release mercury and other pollutants into the atmosphere, along with massive quantities of carbon dioxide.

Wind energy does not produce air pollution.

The Hollywood drama surrounding the politics of wind energy is focused on carbon dioxide and global warming. It is a fascinating drama, but it is not about energy independence.

Wind energy will reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but only if wind really does REPLACE coal generated electricity. And that may not happen.


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The electric grid is designed to provide and support “always on always available electricity on demand.” Think about it—that is an amazing technological accomplishment. But it comes with a catch; you can’t have it both ways. You can’t expect the grid to support intermittent sources of electricity like wind, and at the same time continue to provide you with a constant dependable source of electricity. What is the grid to do when the wind stops blowing, or fails to start blowing when you want your electricity?

Is there a solution? Yes, energy storage, but that would cost money — a major investment in new infrastructure for energy storage and transmission. Wind energy advocates like to quote the “cost of wind generated electricity” without including the capital cost of constructing transmission lines (or transmission power losses over long distances) and the cost of energy storage. When such costs are included, the real cost of wind exceeds the real cost of nuclear energy. So then, if eliminating carbon dioxide is the goal, why not build more nuclear power plants? (Hint: Nuclear energy is an abomination unto the earth goddess Gaia).

Unfortunately, there exists a ready made Hollywood type of solution, a short-cut that allows wind engineers to skip the important energy storage step and connect their wind generated electricity directly to the grid (if and when transmission lines are available). This “short-cut” takes advantage of a feature of the grid that is intended for an entirely different use. By tweaking the grid system to exploit this feature wind investors can make money and the electric company can comply with the politicians demand to use wind, but it will not REPLACE coal electricity, or the carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere by the coal generators.

This feature of the grid, which will allow intermittent electricity to be connected and distributed without interrupting the grid, exists for the purpose of handling varying demand throughout the day. Electricity demand increases and decreases over a 24 hour period, kind of like rush hour traffic. There are predictable periods during the day when demand increases dramatically, called peak periods. At night, after most people are asleep, the grid is subjected to the lowest demand.

The utility companies will often use small generators to quickly add electricity during the peak period as needed, and wind would work well as a substitute for these small generators, if the wind was predictable, but it isn't.


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A significant percentage of the available electric power throughout the day is called “base load” power. Much of the base load power is produced by large coal (and nuclear) powered generators. Base load power is the minimum amount of power that a utility company makes available to its customers. This minimum is calculated to insure that enough spare capacity is available at all times. When demand is lower than the spare capacity, the unused electricity is simply unused. But it is still generated; coal is still burned—the electricity is available whether it is used or not. Without this “wasted” spare electricity, we would too often be left in the dark, or without TV, refrigerators and computers… and microwave ovens and air conditioners, washer and dryer… on and on, Americans love their electric appliances.

A good analogy of how the grid operators (along with utility generators) insure that enough electricity is always available is found in the example of an “all you can eat” buffet restaurant (or any restaurant). How do the restaurant owners plan for unpredictable customer demand? The restaurant simply plans to throw away a predetermined percentage of food. When was the last time you went to a restaurant that was out of food? The left-over fresh food is not kept to be served the next day—it would not be fresh. The cost of the food served and the food thrown away is averaged into the price charged to the hungry customers who visit the restaurant at varying times throughout the day, with the highest volume of customers coming to eat during the normal meal time hours.

The customers of electric utility companies are paying for the “spare available electricity” whether it is used or not, just like restaurant customers pay for the perfectly good food that winds up in the dumpster behind the restaurant every night. If however, the restaurant has an unexpected busy night, less food goes into the dumpster and more profits into the Restaurant’s bank account. The Electric Utility companies also make more profit during higher than expected demand. Profits and losses are averaged over the month—the rate that customers are charged is determined by the projected average cost of electricity.


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Along come the politicians, demanding that utility companies buy electricity generated from wind. The utility companies explain to anyone who will listen that this isn’t going to work. The environmental groups put on the pressure, and the politicians agree to pay the utility companies to take the wind energy. The Utility companies say, OK we’ll take your money, and they set up their systems to replace coal generated electricity with wind generated electricity (when the wind blows), and throw away the coal generated electricity, in the same way they “throw-away” the unused spare electricity that is available for unpredictable demand.

What! What do you mean throw away the coal generated electricity? Wouldn’t that mean carbon dioxide was still produced? Yes, that is exactly what it means. Well, then why not turn off the coal generator while the wind is blowing? Hmmm, have you ever seen a coal plant’s steam turbine generator? They are huge; and they require massive boilers and giant furnaces. Think of it like trying to stop a train that is moving at 100 miles per hour. How long do you think it took to get the train up to that speed? Large steam turbines can take over ten hours to warm up. You can’t stop the train on short-notice, and you can’t turn the giant coal powered turbine generators off and on at short notice either. The size and speed of the generators is one reason why the cost of electricity is as low as it is. The small generators that can be turned on and off quickly cost much more per kilowatt hour, it is simply a matter of economies of scale.

When the wind generated electricity enters the grid, the grid operator redirects an equal portion of coal generated electricity off the grid (in other words, the coal generated electricity is “thrown away” like “unused” spare electricity) — and the coal keeps on burning and the carbon dioxide keeps pumping out the smoke stack.

With the wind connected directly to the system, green electricity is flowing on the grid; but the wind has not really reduced the total carbon dioxide produced by coal powered generators.

Solar Energy Potential

Solar - PV Energy Potential

Every hour, the sun radiates more energy onto the earth than the entire human population uses in one whole year.
The technology required to harness the power of the sun is available now. Solar power alone could provide all of the energy Americans consume — there is no shortage of solar energy. The following paragraphs will give you the information you need to prove this to yourself and others. You do not need advanced math skills to follow and perform the arithmetic examples shown below. Anyone who can balance a checkbook or calculate the total square feet of floor space in his or her home, and understand why an area measuring 10 yards by 10 yards equals 100 square yards, can perform the following arithmetic examples and prove that American energy independence could be achieved with solar energy alone.

Science tells us that every square meter of the earth's surface, when exposed to direct sunlight, receives about 1000 watts (1 kilowatt) of energy from the sun's light. Depending on the angle of sunlight, which changes with the time of day, and the geographical location [see map below], the power of the sun's light will be somewhat more or less than 1 kilowatt-hour per hour for every square meter of the earth's surface exposed to the sun.

On average, and particularly in the Sunbelt regions of the Southwestern United States, every square meter area exposed to direct sunlight will receive about 1 kilowatt-hour per hour of solar energy. However, scientists estimate that sunlight will provide useful solar energy for only about 6 to 7 hours per day because during the early hours and late hours of the day the angle of the sun's light is too low. So, for example, if the sun's light provides 6 productive hours of solar energy per day, then a square meter of land in direct sunlight will receive about 6 kilowatt-hours of solar energy during the course of a day.

Scientists like to measure things using the metric system. However, most Americans are unfamiliar with the metric system. (Europeans use the metric system.) It is easier for Americans to think in square feet and square yards because feet and yards are common lengths in the United States. So, for the sake of clarity and because this is written for an American audience, all measurements will be converted from meters to yards.

A meter is just a little longer than a yard (about 3 and ¼ feet to a meter, compared with 3 feet to a yard). There are 10.8 square feet in a square meter. There are 9 square feet in a square yard (3x3=9). A simple calculation can accomplish the conversion from square meters to square yards. A square yard is 83.33 percent of a square meter. Prove this by multiplying 10.8 (the number of square feet in a square meter) by 83.33%. The answer is nine (the number of square feet in a square yard). If you perform the calculation you will see that the answer is slightly less than the whole number 9 (but close enough for our purpose). Using this conversion, we can say that a square yard of land in direct sunlight receives 1000 x 83.33% = 833 watts of solar energy. This calculation can also be used in reverse to convert yards to meters, simply divide by .8333 (833 divided by .8333 = 1000 rounded).

Every square yard of land, if exposed to direct sunlight, receives about 833 watts of solar energy [NOTE: see the map above, and adjust the estimated amount of solar energy accordingly]. Therefore, a one square yard area exposed to continuous direct sunlight [in an optimal geographical location] for six hours will have received 6 hours x 833 watts = 4,998 watt-hours of solar energy during the course of a day. In round numbers, a one square yard area will receive about 5000 watt-hours (5 kilowatt-hours) per day of solar energy. Another way to obtain this result would be to take the 6 kilowatt-hours per meter (explained above in the third paragraph) and apply the conversion calculation (6 x 83.33% = 5 rounded).

Americans can assume, at least in the Sunbelt regions of the southwestern United States, that every square yard of land exposed to direct sunlight will receive about 5 kilowatt-hours per day of solar energy.

With the above information in mind, perform the following exercise: Measure an area ten yards long and ten yards wide. That would be thirty feet by thirty feet. Take a good look at the size of it. You are looking at an area covering 100 square yards. If that area were in direct sunlight all day it would receive about (5 x 100) 500 kilowatt-hours per day of solar energy. Now go look at your home electric bill. Your electric company calculates your home electric bill based on how many kilowatt-hours of electrical energy you use. Find the total amount of electricity that you have been billed for (given in kilowatt-hours). The amount of kilowatt-hours on your bill is for an entire month. If your home is a typical residential electric customer, you and your family consume between 500 and 1000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. Compare the quantity of electric energy your home consumed in one month with the quantity of energy the sun gives freely to a 100 square yard area exposed to direct sunlight. One hundred square yards of sunshine provides as much energy in 1 to 2 days as an average family uses in an entire month!

It would be great if 100% of the sunshine became electricity, but solar energy and electricity are not the same. Technology accomplishes the conversion of solar energy to electricity. Several different technologies are used; perhaps the one that most people have heard of is the solar panel, made from photovoltaic cells called PV.

For a detailed explanation of photovoltaic cells there is a very good article on the Internet located at:
www.howstuffworks.com/solar-cell.htm, it is well written and easy to read.

Conversion of one form of energy to another always causes a loss of energy. In other words, the new form of energy will be less than the original. Efficiency is the word scientists use to describe the difference in power resulting from the conversion of one form of energy to another. The efficiency of commercially available solar panels (PV) is about 15%. This means that when a solar panel converts the sun's light to electricity, only about 15 percent of the energy in the sunlight becomes electricity. The same thing is true of gasoline in your car. Your car's engine can only convert about twenty-five percent of the energy in gasoline to mechanical energy that turns the wheels.

With an average efficiency of 15 percent, a square yard of solar photovoltaic cells (PV) would produce (5 kilowatt-hours of solar energy multiplied by 15% =) .75 kilowatt-hours of electric energy per day. Solar panels (PV) covering an area ten yards by ten yards (100 square yards or 900 square feet) would produce 100 x .75 = 75 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day.

Seventy-five kilowatt-hours per day is a lot of electricity for a single-family home. If part of the electricity is stored in a home battery, or is used to electrolyze water for producing hydrogen gas, and the gas is stored for use by a fuel cell when needed, then 100 square yards covered with solar panels would provide an average family with energy independence. Most detached family homes have more than 100 square yards (900 square feet) of roof, or that much space around their homes where solar panels could be installed.

In the Southwest, if you look at any commercial or industrial park, or any typical mall or supermarket you will see that most of the buildings have flat roofs. Those roofs require insulation to lower the cost of air conditioning on hot days. If those roofs where covered with solar panels the sun would provide electricity for the air conditioning and save businesses millions of dollars per month that would otherwise be paid to the utility companies.


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Another technology, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), takes a different approach to harnessing the power of the sun. Unlike photovoltaic cells, CSP uses mirrors to concentrate the sunlight on a focal point, which magnifies the suns heat. Similar to holding a magnifying glass in the sun, focusing the light onto a piece of paper until the paper catches on fire.

CSP technology has more than one form. Troughs, dishes and towers are the different forms available today. A CSP dish or tower looks like a modern glass sculpture and contributes aesthetically to the landscape. CSP systems can achieve 30 percent efficiency, or about twice the efficiency of standard photovoltaic cells (2 x .75 = 1.5 kilowatt-hours per square yard per day).

Large Concentrating Solar Power plants create the thermal energy equivalent to conventional fossil fuel power plants. After the sun sets, CSP plants generate electricity from cost-effective thermal storage, providing 24-hour service to the power grid.

Consider the solar energy potential of one acre of land. There are 43,560 square feet in an acre. Divide the number of square feet in one acre by 9 (the number of square feet in one square yard) and you find that there are 4,840 square yards in one acre of land. A CSP dish, tower, or trough receiving an acre of sunshine would yield about (1.5 kilowatt-hours per square yard times 4,840 square yards per acre) 7,260 kilowatt-hours of electricity per day, at 30% efficiency. One acre has enough solar energy potential to yield 7.26 megawatt-hours of electricity per day, using technology that exists now. (Each thousand kilowatts is one million watts. A million watts is a megawatt.)

Consider the solar energy potential of one square mile of land. A square mile is 640 acres. One square mile of sunshine has the potential of providing (640 acres x 7.26 megawatt-hours) 4,646 megawatt-hours per day of electricity using existing CSP technology at 30% efficiency.

Ten thousand square miles is a plot of land 100 miles long by 100 miles wide. Multiply 640 acres by 10,000 square miles equals 6,400,000 acres. With a yield of 7.26 megawatt-hours of electricity per day per acre, a CSP system receiving 6,400,000 acres of sunshine would produce about 46,464,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per day.

What does this mean?

The entire State of California uses about 50,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per hour at peak time, and much less during off-peak hours: Sweltering California declares power emergency —Cal ISO expects record demand at 52,336 megawatts.
www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/2004-07-08_SUMMER_DEMAND.PDF size: 68 Kb
www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/2003-01-28_OUTLOOK.PDF size: 170 Kb
www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/peak_demand/2002-07-10_CHART.PDF size: 20 Kb

Suppose that California uses an average of 38,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per hour over a 24-hour period, then 24 hours x 38,000 megawatts = 912,000 megawatt-hours per day, multiplied by 365 = 333,880,000 megawatt-hours per year. This supposed average is too high because in 2005, California actually consumed 288,245,000 megawatt-Hours (MWh) for the entire year: www.energy.ca.gov/electricity/gross_system_power.html

A CSP farm large enough to capture the solar energy radiating on an area of land 100 miles long by 100 miles wide can produce about 50 times more electricity in a day than California consumes in a 24-hour period. For example, 50 x 912,000 = 45,600,000 megawatt-hours per day.

Imagine driving your car 100 miles along one side of the CSP farm, then turn 90 degrees right and drive 100 miles along another side, then turn 90 degrees right again and drive another 100 miles, then make another 90 degree right turn and drive another 100 miles to complete driving a 100 mile square. Inside that area is 10,000 square miles or 6,400,000 acres.

A 10,000 square mile solar energy farm that produces 46,464,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per day would produce 365 x 46,464,000 = 16,956,360,000 megawatt-hours of electricity per year or about 17 trillion kilowatt-hours, which is 17,000 terawatt-hours or 17 petawatt-hours.
Tera- (symbol: T) is a prefix in the SI system of units denoting 1012, 1 Trillion or 1,000,000,000,000 (1 million million) therefore, 1 terawatt = 1 Trillion watts.
In physics and mathematics, peta- (symbol: P) is a prefix in the SI (system of units) denoting 1015, 1 Quadrillion or 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one billion million) therefore, 1 petawatt = 1 Quadrillion watts.


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The CSP examples above assume 30 percent energy conversion efficiency and 100 percent land use. In a practical application, not all of the land area will be used. This is because of unfavorable terrain and the need for service roads and land for plant facilities. And, the solar collectors must be individually positioned for optimal orientation to the angle of sunlight and given enough space between collectors to prevent a collector from casting a shadow on adjacent collectors; the result is unused space between the collectors. For these reasons, actual electricity production will be less than the numbers shown in the examples. However, the desert regions of the southwestern United States will easily produce 7 hours of productive sunlight per day, and often exceed 1 kilowatt of solar energy per square meter, so in that respect the above calculations are conservative.

All of California's electricity can be produced from 200 square miles of sunshine; 128,000 acres of desert land. Lake Mead, behind Hoover Dam, covers more than 200 square miles. Given an area the size of Lake Mead, for the production of electricity from solar energy, California would be energy independent.

CSP plants seem to use a lot of land, but in reality, they use less land than hydroelectric dams for generating an equivalent electricity output, if the size of the lake behind the dam is considered. The same is true for coal plants. A CSP plant will not use any more land than a coal power plant if the amount of land required for mining and excavation of the coal is taken into consideration.


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If the sunshine radiating on the surface of an area 100 miles wide by 100 miles long would provide all of the electricity that America needs, every day, why would Americans hesitate to use it? There are millions of open acres in the deserts of America, where the sun's energy does nothing more than heat rocks and sand.

In 1942, General Patton established a training area in the deserts of the southwestern United States to train and prepare American soldiers to fight in the deserts of North Africa during World War II. Patton's original training area was 18,000 square miles, and then expanded to 87,500 square miles (350 miles x 250 miles), an area stretching from Boulder City, Nevada to the Mexican border and from Phoenix, Arizona to Pomona, California. One million soldiers trained in this area using tanks, artillery and aircraft. The desert is very resilient, there is little evidence today of injury to the desert ecosystem.
www.militarymuseum.org/CAMA.html

The point being, the federal government can “borrow” public land from the National and State desert Parks for the purpose of building a national solar energy system. The system would only be needed until fusion energy, or something like it, is developed, then the land would be returned to nature in the care of the public parks service. Time, sand and the desert wind would gradually remove all evidence of technologies brief occupancy. In the meantime, the lizards, turtles, snakes and scorpions would hide and sleep in the shade under the giant mirrors and troughs.

The reason why solar energy has not been development on a large scale is the cost. Not the cost of sunshine, that is free. Private investors resist putting their money into solar energy projects because of the high upfront capital investment required for plant and equipment. The initial investment is what causes the price per kilowatt-hour for electricity from solar energy to be higher than the price of electricity generated from natural gas or coal. The estimated kilowatt-hour rates assigned to solar energy are not based on the cost of electricity generation, they are based on the cost of the investment capital and the requirement to earn a return on investment, or pay back the loan for the investment. Remember, the solar fuel is free.

Solar energy would not be expensive if the cost of the initial capital investment is not factored into the price per kilowatt-hour.

With the obvious enormous public benefit a national solar energy system would provide, why is the government holding back? Should solar energy be a public works project? We have a good example that may help answer that question. Southern California, as it is seen today, would not exist without Hoover Dam and the Colorado River Aqueduct, because without the Colorado River water the current population of Southern California would never have happened. Southern California does not have enough natural water to support the demand of a small fraction of its current population. The federal government funded Hoover Dam and the Colorado River Aqueduct. The economy of Southern California, having grown because of that funding and other public investments, has returned more in tax revenue than was spent building the dam and aqueduct, plus the sale of water and electricity has earned enough to pay the federal government back the amount of the original funding, with interest.