Green activists & everyone else are a little upset by the new solar/fossil-fuel plant igniting birds in mid-air, possibly because the birds are attracted to the reflections which look like a body of water. Un-Natural selection has not yet weeded-out the dumb birds that can't distinguish a solar power plant from a body of water.
Solution: point the mirrors away from the Sun at the clear sky and use them instead to highly concentrate the 340.3 Watts per meter squared continuous longwave infrared "back-radiation" from man-made greenhouse gases. Unlike solar power, backradiation is available 24/7/365 and on cloudy days or nights - there's reportedly even more greenhouse gas backradiation available on cloudy days and nights than with clear skies, and no need for fossil-fuel backup at night or on cloudy days!
Plus, with the 173,500 mirrors directed away from the Sun and at the clear sky, solar energy will be reflected back to space to increase albedo and cool Gaia much more so than use of this solar/fossil-fuel plant to reduce harmless CO2 emissions. The safe but highly-concentrated longwave infrared backradiation on the power towers will be totally harmless to the silly birds that are still attracted to the mirrors, completely eliminating all those "streamers."
Back of the envelope calculations prove how this works:
- According to NREL, the total heliostat solar-field aperture area is 2,600,000 m²
- The receiving area at the top of the power towers is estimated to be 1000 m²
- According to Kevin Trenberth, the 24/7/365 clear-sky IR backradiation from greenhouse gases is 340.3 W/m²
- 2,600,000 m² * 340.3 W/m² = 884,780,000 Watts
- 884,780,000 Watts/1000 m² = 884,780 W/m²
- Per the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, 884,780 W/m² equates to a temperature of 1987.49°K, 1714.3°C, or 3117.82°F
- According to NREL, pointing the mirrors at the SUN, generates an output temperature from the power tower of only 1050°F, but way more than needed to drive the steam turbines
- These Stefan-Boltzmann Law calculations clearly prove that concentrating the greenhouse gas IR backradiation from the clear sky will produce 3 times as much free green energy as from the SUN, and 24/7/365 too!
Using this bright idea, they can
hit two birds with one stone, oh, sorry, bad analogy. But seriously, what are they waiting for?!?