A bit of lackluster performance

Another problem with Green Energy - from National Review:

Cloudy days for solar thermal
This past weekend’s Wall Street Journal has some unsurprising news about solar-thermal technology. Excerpts to follow, but, in short: It’s very expensive to build, it doesn’t deliver nearly the amount of projected power, and it kills birds:

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar power project in California’s Mojave Desert is supposed to be generating more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity each year. But 15 months after starting up, the plant is producing just 40% of that, according to data from the U.S. Energy Department.

A bit more:

One big miscalculation was that the power plant requires far more steam to run smoothly and efficiently than originally thought, according to a document filed with the California Energy Commission. Instead of ramping up the plant each day before sunrise by burning one hour’s worth of natural gas to generate steam, Ivanpah needs more than four times that much help from fossil fuels to get the plant humming every morning. Another unexpected problem: not enough sun. Weather predictions for the area underestimated the amount of cloud cover that has blanketed Ivanpah since it went into service in 2013. 

And this:

Electricity prices from new solar farms average around 5 cents a kilowatt-hour, according to GTM Research, which tracks renewable energy markets. That compares with between 12 and 25 cents a kilowatt-hour for electricity generated by the Ivanpah power plant, state and federal data show. 

Solar farms are arrays of photovoltaic cells not thermal conversion plants like Ivanpah. The article is being a bit disingenuous in its reporting - these costs are after a hefty subsidy from the Federal Government (read: us taxpayers)

I wonder if it would be cheaper just to burn dollar bills - we seem to be pumping a lot of money into energy ratholes...