Actually, banks of mirrors are all controlled though one load center at Ivanpah. load centers are distributed throughout the field. One well directed lightning strike at a load center will kill power to many mirrors. Think of the increased negative economics of doubling the power redundancy to 350,000 mirrors. The system was already grossly over priced @ $2B of taxpayers money for 390 MW
Fukushima lost utility tie-line and diesel generators. UPS batteries last only a few hours for that power load and are no good for an entire plant, especially if load center(s) are fried. Sun(nuclear power source) keeps moving. Probably cheapest to insulate the entire tower or lease the system to movie studios as a prop for the next Avenger's movie since it appears headed for default (again) On Mon, May 30, 2016 at 7:40 AM, Jed Rothwell <jedrothw...@gmail.com> wrote: > ChemE Stewart <cheme...@gmail.com> wrote: > > You guys are ignoring all of the mechanical and structural challenges of >> pointing 350,000, 30 foot mirrors at the ground using worm gears and >> stepper motors that have just lost power due to a storm and/or lightning >> strike. No motor power, no movement. >> > > Places such as large generators, telephone switching centers, data > centers, military complexes and the like always have emergency power and > backup power systems. Fukushima was powered for nearly a day even though > there was catastrophic destruction to the Diesel backup generator system. > No engineers would design a system that could be destroyed with a single > lightning strike. Except for the engineers who design the bad-guy hideouts > in James Bond movies. > > - Jed > >
