Birds getting fried at Ivanpah - averaging 1 every two minutes.

[OnlinePoker]

IVANPAH DRY LAKE (AP) >> Workers at a state-of-the-art solar plant in the Mojave Desert have a name for birds that fly through the plant's concentrated sun rays — "streamers," for the smoke plume that comes from birds that ignite in midair.

Federal wildlife investigators who visited the BrightSource Energy plant last year and watched as birds burned and fell, reporting an average of one "streamer" every two minutes, are urging California officials to halt the operator's application to build a still-bigger version.

The investigators want the halt until the full extent of the deaths can be assessed. Estimates per year now range from a low of about a thousand by BrightSource to 28,000 by an expert for the Center for Biological Diversity environmental group.

http://www.chicoer.com/breakingnews/ci_26357771/emerging-desert-solar-plants-scorch-birds-midair

[Demeter]

1. IMHO it is a stupid design

the idea that bigger is better...PV and a truck line to export the electricity would be much more useful than big boilers of steam in a desert.

[Ghost Dog]

2. Install a warning beacon, to warn off birds -

- something visible and/or audible only to birds, would this be possible?

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[Judi Lynn]

3. Painful learning this has been happening. It needs to be altered NOW. n/t

[Nihil]

4. Can't be true ... we were assured that this sort of thing couldn't happen. (n/t)