Day 12: Ivanpah Solar Project, Tehachapi Wind Farm, and California Water Issues - Los Angeles, California

We left Las Vegas early in the morning en route to pick up Dr. Linda Davis, an old Stockton Professor who would be joining us on our trip to the Channel Islands. On our drive to Los Angeles, we stopped at two important sites along the way. The first was the Ivanpah Solar Project which incorporates thousands of mirrors focusing the solar radiation onto a specific point atop a massive tower at the center of the site. Water is circulated through this focus point where it is rapidly heated and turns into steam which then turns a turbine and generates electricity. This form of concentrated solar technology is proven to be more efficient than the Nevada Solar One technology and standard photo-voltaic arrays. It is projected that solar technologies will continue to transition in this direction. 

Picture of the Ivanpah Solar Project

 the second site we visited was the Tehachapi Pass Wind farm along highway 85. It is the second largest wind farm in the country with 5000 win turbines the rise up from the hills. This site is quite a national asset, as we saw first hand when a government official pulled up in a car and instructed us that we could not take any pictures and video, and continued to watch us nearby after driving off. Each turbine at the sight has its own program that allows it to follow the wind so as to optimize blade velocity and reducing the wear on the gears. The site produces about 745MW of electricity each year, enough to supply the needs of 350,000 residents. This particular site is well managed and poses no significant threat to wildlife in the area, the birds that migrate through the area are more at risk from being attacked by a local house cat than running into one of the turbines.

Tehachapi Pass Wind Farm

We finally made it to the University of CAlifornia-Los Angeles to meet up with Dr. Davis who followed our meeting with a quick introduction of what she teaches and her time at Stockton. After introductions she has us a lesson on one of her favorite topics, water issues in California, much of which was covered in our book "Introduction to Water in California". Davis highlighted the effect local climate has on water usage and that people have artificially made southern California green when it would naturally be desert. The rain-shadow effect plays a major roll in preventing precipitation from reaching the central valley and southern California regions. Many California citizens receive their drinking water from groundwater sources while the majority of imported water sources are what get distributed for irrigation on agricultural fields.  Unfortunately, issues with salts and selenium washing frown from the mountain and percolating into the soil has caused major contamination or some local groundwater supplies leading to heavier reliance on imports.Drip irrigation would help resist run-off caused by flood irrigation and would save the state millions of dollars in water reductions. These systems are costly and time consuming to install and environmental concern just isn't enough incentive to motivate farmers to make this transition in efficiency. 

We spent our night at the Malibu Tree State Park where we were treated with clear sky and beautiful stars, an excellent atmosphere to go to bed in.