IVANPAH VALLEY, Calif. â€" At what temperature might a songbird vaporize?
Will the glare from five square miles of mirrors create a distraction for highway drivers?
Can plumes of superheated air create enough turbulence to flip a small airplane?
What happens if one of the Air Force's heat-seeking missiles confuses a solar power plant with a military training target?
No one knows for sure. But as the state and federal government push hard to build solar energy plants across the Mojave Desert â€" there are more than 100 solar applications pending â€" the military, birders, aviation officials and others are eager for answers.
When completed, a massive plant now under construction near the California-Nevada border will be the largest of its kind in the world. More than 170,000 garage-door sized mirrors will spread across this broad valley. Every 10 seconds, computers will align the mirrors â€" each equipped with its own GPS device â€" to track the sun across the desert sky, bouncing radiation to the tops of three 45-story towers. Water stored inside the towers will be heated to 1,000 degrees, creating steam power.
DOCUMENT: Commission's decision on BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah project
The project's whiz-bang technology has confounded government regulators' ability to analyze the facility, in part because nothing of its type and size exists anywhere else in the world. Although it approved Ivanpah's permit in 2010, the California Energy Commission struggled to assess the public health effects that would be created by the vast field of mirrors and the volumes of hot air pushed upward by spinning turbines and condensers.
Much of the analysis came from computer modeling, most of it provided by the project owners, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy.
In extensive hearings before the Energy Commission, the firm argued that concerns about its plant were overblown and that the project posed no danger to the public. The power plant â€" one of dozens being fast-tracked by the Interior Department â€" is slated to open early next year.
Others have their doubts.
"It's an experiment on a grand scale," said Jeffrey Lovich, a scientist with theU.S. Geological Survey.
Most questions begin with birds, which almost certainly will die at Ivanpah, just as they do at many large outdoor industrial operations. There is already documentation linking solar power to bird deaths.
About 30 years ago, ornithologist Robert McKernan and a colleague conducted studies at the Solar One plant near Barstow. By collecting and analyzing bird carcasses, they found that some birds flying through the solar field were incinerated outright. Others perished after their feathers were singed or burned off, or when they collided with the mirror structures or the central tower.
That plant, which began producing power in 1982, had 1,800 mirrors. The Ivanpah facility has 100 times that number and occupies a significantly larger portion of creosote habitat critical to migrating birds. But BrightSource officials contend that there is less risk to birds soaring above Ivanpah, in part because the reflected heat at the new plant there will be one-third as intense as at Solar One.
Birds aren't the only flying objects at risk.
The Defense Department has expressed concern about large-scale solar plants' compatibility with aviation and weapons training at the Mojave region's nine military installations.
The test pilot school at Edwards Air Force base said the most common problems are a result of "electromagnetic intrusion/reflection, vertical obstruction, frequency spectrum overlap, infrared footprint and glint/glare."
Maj. John G. Garza, who represents the Pentagon on a California renewable energy planning group, said potential conflicts with solar plants in the desert are not yet fully understood.
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