Solar Power Can Be Harmful Too

Alternative fuel sources should be renewable and plentiful. With that reasoning solar power is one of the best alternative power sources available. So there was little wonder when the world’s largest solar power generating plant was recently opened up in the Mojave Desert. The system was run by a combination of 350,000 mirrors about the size of your garage door, aiming sunrays at three 40-story-tall towers.

The sunlight boils water in these towers, generating steam that drives special turbines to produce 392 megawatts. That is enough energy to power 140,000 homes for a year. Then came the unwanted side effect on the environment. It seems that the power generating towers of the solar plant are a hazard to the local birds.

The birds that fly into the zone between the the mirrors and the towers literally get burnt to death. The scorched birds have been found lying dead on the ground by the researchers running tests on the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. The dead birds found over the last few months include a peregrine falcon, a grebe, two hawks, four nighthawks and a variety of warblers and sparrows.

While it is clearly impossible to stop the advance of the solar power plant, there has to be some solution to ensure that the birds do not fly into the blaze zone and get burnt. This is a problem that researchers working on the science project never imagined they would have to solve.