Palen Project Approved
November 3, 2018 - Riverside County CA - After years of design changes, bankruptices, and new companies taking over the project, the Bureau of Land Management approved their preferred alternative of the Palen Solar Project in a Record of Decision that allows no appeal. The only way to stop the project now is litigation in federal court.
Margket forces may, however, slow the project down, since it is outdated now lacking battery storage. Cuurently all photovoltaic projects being built in California have battery storage.
The approved Palen Solar Project site in Chuckwalla Valley next to the Palen/McCoy Wilderness Area is a beautiful, remote, biodiverse desert. We have camped here, hiked here, seen kangaroo rats hop by in the night, desert lilies open their blossoms by day, fields of purple sand verbena covering the flats, and numerous zebra-tailed lizards, desert iguanas, fringe-toed lizards, and sidewinders scurry and crawl across the sand. Verdins and shrikes called from the stringers of microphyll woodland that follow washes across the basin here. All to be bulldozed and graded flat? As desert rats since the 1980s we are saddened to see more fragmentation of the California Desert wild lands, when these photovoltaic panels could easily go on rooftops and over parking lots in the built environment, paired with battery storage that could charge your EV overnight. For-profit utilities don't like that scenario.
The only thing that will stop this ill-sited energy project is market forces. Palen has no storage integrated, and now that California has too much utility-scale solar causing grid imbalances during the peak daylight hours, every PV project is hurrying to design Lithium-ion battery banks into their projects (which need to be cooled in those hot low desert summers). This is the only way solar projects are able to provide grid services in California. Perhaps Palen will need a supplemental EIS in order to achieve this. Or BLM will simply grant design changes in a Caregorical Exclusion that the public will not even see. Otherwise Palen may need to be curtailed at times (shut off) after it has been built, after irreversibly scraping the desert and wiping out this biodiversity. Which no mitigation can recoup in my experience. Mitigation is failing to replace this desert splendor:
^Fileds of Desert gold on the site of the approved Palen Solar Project. This landscape will be bulldozed and scraped. How much more pristine desert will be sacrificed?
The Palen Solar Project will result in a private infrastructure investment of $1 billion, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). EDF Renewable Energy received authorization from the BLM to construct a 500-megawatt solar photovoltaic facility and approximately seven-mile single circuit 230-kilovolt generation interconnection transmission line that would deliver power through the Southern California Edison Red Bluff Substation. It will include a main generation area, on-site substation, switchyard, site security, and a 230-kilvolt gen-tie line. The Right-of-Way is 4,200 acres, with a proposed solar project foorprint of 3,381 acres of desert ecosystem.
Oversupply and curtailments
Curtailment of large-scale solar projects is now happening with ever more frequencyin the desert. Visit the California Independent System Operator website (they control the transmission grid and how all power plants distribute energy to California):
The shift to a clean, efficient and modern grid is essential to California's economy and its environment. This transition to a low-carbon grid provides challenges and opportunities, as the state incorporates increasing amounts of renewable energy on to the electric system. Sometimes, during the middle of the day, California's renewable resources can generate more electricity than is needed.
During these periods of surplus energy, the ISO's market automatically reduces the production of energy from renewable resources, or “curtail" generation. In rare instances, when economic bids from generators are insufficient, ISO operators manually curtail production to maintain the balance between supply and demand.
Advanced Distributed Energy Resources, such as rooftop solar paired with battery storage, along with demand response, modernized grids, energy efficiency, and energy conservation, could alleviate this overgeneration problem. Plug in your electric vehicle to your rooftop solar-charged battery storage system! All that over-supply of solar energy is stored in your battery system by day, and used at night. Problem solved. A big boost to lowering GHG emissions (In Germany the government would pay you big bucks for this distributed energy generation service to help fight climate change). But in the US the Investor-Owned Utilities will hate you. But the Desert will love you.
^Desert lily, that will now be bulldozed to make way fro a utility-scale solar project on public land.
^We found this sidewinder curled up in a burrow on the project site. This snake will now be crushed by bulldozers--there is no mitigation for most desert wildlife.
^Sand verbenas on the project site--these will now be bulldozed and scraped. We are saddened that we must continually record "before" photos of desert ecosystems that will be changed forever. Distributed Energy Resources such as rooftop and parking lot solar need to be considered as alternatives to this resource destruction.
Second Meeting In Palm Springs
July 14, 2016 -- This Palen Solar PV Project should be scheduled in Blythe CA, which is also close to the project site proposal. Underserved communities and Tribes are in the area and should not be required to make the drive to Palm Springs to comment. The comments should also be recorded as part of an official scoping process.
The notice: http://www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/info/newsroom/2016/july/CDD-16-32.html
BLM Schedules Additional Public Meeting on Palen Solar Project in Eastern Riverside County
MORENO VALLEY, Calif. - The Bureau of Land Management has scheduled a second public meeting to solicit public input for the Palen Solar project technology conversion.
The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 4, 2016, from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Palm Springs City Hall, 3200 E. Tahquitz Canon Way, Palm Springs, CA 92262. The 30-day public comment period will close on September 3.
The California Energy Commission previously approved, and the BLM previously prepared, a Final Environmental Impact Statement for development of the project using thermal solar trough technology. EDF Renewable Energy now proposes to construct and operate the project as a 500 megawatt solar photovoltaic electric generating facility with associated infrastructure in the same 4,200-acre project site previously analyzed by the BLM and approved by the CEC.
The project is located in eastern Riverside County north of the I-10 Interstate, approximately 10 miles east of the community of Desert Center.
Due to the change in technology for the project, the BLM is preparing a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement that will include opportunities for public review and feedback.
For further information contact: Bureau of Land Management, Palm Springs South Coast Field Office, 1201 Bird Center Drive, Palm Springs, CA 92262 or call (760) 833-7100.
New Palen Solar PV Project
June 21, 2016 - Copy of notice mailed to a few groups (not including Basin & Range Watch), on the proposed Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the re-awakened Palen Solar Photovoltaic Project (formerly a concentrated solar thermal project):
