Ivanpah solar power plant
© Cliff Ho. - U.S. Department of Energy from United StatesPost-modern temples to the Sun God.
It was supposed to last 50 years...

The PR writers want us to believe the legendary Ivanpah has been beaten out by better cheap solar, and that this is somehow a "success". But the truth is, it's been killed by the same subsidies and crooked market that birthed it.

The Big Government Blob distorted the free market, and created a boom in solar power. But the business case was not that good, there was no miracle in the storage of electricity, nobody wanted fried birds, and the subsidies kept forcing more solar power generation in at the same useless time of day.

Since there were too many generators at lunchtime and not enough customers, the last surviving part of the free market has solved the imbalance.

Just another artificial boom and bust

In 2014, the project cost $2.2 billion dollars. Ivanpah has 173.000 heliostats, and theoretically could make 390 megawatts in a perfect moment. But no one in their right mind would have spent so much to get so little, so the government spent $1.6 billion taxpayer dollars as a "loan guarantee".

I wonder how that is working out for the taxpayers, especially now that the capital depreciation has shifted from 50 years to 11.
11 years after a celebrated opening, massive solar plant faces a bleak future in the Mojave Desert

LOS ANGELES (AP) — What was once the world's largest solar power plant of its type appears headed for closure just 11 years after opening, under pressure from cheaper green energy sources. Meanwhile, environmentalists continue to blame the Mojave Desert plant for killing thousands of birds and tortoises.

The Ivanpah solar power plant formally opened in 2014 on roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border. Though it was hailed at the time as a breakthrough moment for clean energy, its power has been struggling to compete with cheaper solar technologies.
So it was struggling to compete with cheaper solar technologies, and yet, in a market where customers keep paying more and more all the time, it still couldn't make money?

Even the Sierra Club didn't like it:
"The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster," Julia Dowell of the Sierra Club said in an email.
"Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project's construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species," Dowell said. "While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal."
Apparently the plant would sometimes blind drivers too. It certainly blinded investors.

The company did not reply to AP questions about what would happen to the giant industrial wreckage.

h/t To Willie Soon!