Birds catch fire over Tonopah solar plant during testing

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project near Tonopah will help generate useful energy once it is fully running, but before it could do anything productive a freak accident has animal advocates worried.

Around 130 birds were injured passing over the solar farm, with the website Metro.uk.com reporting that they were zapped out of midair and set ablaze.

The solar farm creates energy by concentrating sunlight onto a specified point and the injured birds were said to have traveled through that area.

Metro went onto to report that the problem had been eradicated shortly after the incident, ensuring no other birds would endure similar instances.

“SolarReserve takes the issue of avian safety seriously,” SolarReserve Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Smith said in a statement obtained by Metro. “As such, during the course of pre-operational testing at Crescent Dunes, we have been successful in developing and implementing new mitigation efforts that maximize avian safety.”

Officials with SolarReserve, the California company that owns and operates the facility, did not return a request from the Pahrump Valley Times for comment by press time.

The solar plant is owned and operated by SolarReserve, and it’s hoped that the plant will produce 110-megawatts of clean energy once completed in March. That energy will then be sold to NV Energy.

California television station KCET, also reported the incident, stating it occurred on Jan. 14, and quoted the Nevada Bureau of Land Management’s Chief of Communication Rudy Evenson that the birds were likely attracted to the illuminated point over project’s lone tower.

Evenson also said that workers testing the plant shifted about a third of the solar project’s ten thousand mirrors to concentrate sunlight on a point 1,200 feet high, which is around double the height of the tower at Crescent Dunes.