A $2.2 billion solar power plant in the Mojave Desert, built with massive federal backing during the Obama administration, continues to burn through taxpayer and ratepayer money more than a decade after it opened, even as both the Trump and Biden administrations, the plant’s own utility buyer, and energy experts across the political spectrum have called for shutting it down. California regulators won’t let it close.
The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, a sprawling 4,000-acre facility near the California-Nevada border, opened in 2014 as a showcase for concentrated solar technology. It uses roughly 350,000 mirrors arranged across more than 170,000 heliostats to focus sunlight onto boilers atop nearly 460-foot towers, generating steam to drive turbines. The concept was supposed to prove that solar thermal power could compete at scale. It hasn’t.
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