11 years after a celebrated opening, massive solar plant faces a bleak future in the Mojave Desert | AP News PV more cost effective? w/out killing birds & turtles. Who knew. Our PV paid for itself in 6 years. The next 3 or 4 years of ownership were on the house ... even as So Cal Edison, PG&E continued gouging their customers, rather than maintain their infrastructure that endangered communities with fire risks.
The Ivanpah plant was started too late to really work out. I remember the Solar One project from the late 1970s-early 1980s. That was a pilot of these concentrated solar generating systems, but much smaller in scale. It proved that we could take advantage of solar energy without making a massive investment into silicon wafers or technical glass production. Economically, that was a really big deal in 1980. If the world had been forced into using renewables to the same level we do today, there would be a pretty hideous backlog of orders for PV panels because there were only so many people and machines making the parts in 1980. But a concentrated rig just needs mirrors, electromechanical tracker mounts and plumbing/boilermaker engineering. We had plenty of production and skilled workers to handle that in 1980. Well, we (globally) wound up with PV production capacity eventually, and it is just hitting its stride. So now it's cheaper just to do PV panels. In other words if they'd funded and built the Ivanpah plant in 1985 it would have made a heap of money by now, and nobody would care about the write-off. For whatever reasons, they moved too slowly.
"It is also how we directly tap the great fusion generator in the sky" I'm still on Team Photosynthesis in this regard.
Ivanpah solar concentrating is 386 megawatt theoretical. One can see how that has been 'eclipsed' by PV farms since: Largest PV power plants list 15 Largest Solar Farms in The World 2025 | The Eco Experts "a concentrated rig just needs mirrors, electromechanical tracker mounts and plumbing/boilermaker engineering." That was written to sound so simple. But this place has windblown sand on the regular. Would not want job of keeping all those mechanicals clean. Speaking of boilermakers, what is the working fluid there - superheated steam? Is anyone doing liquid sodium yet? == I recall plenty of opposition before Ivanpah building, mostly based on tortoises. One lesson to be learned from this is just how sensitive those are to landscapes remade. Populations were in serious decline before Ivanpah and I have a shed-a-tear story about that if needed Also familiar with rescue and rearing operations for, um, Gopherus agassizii. They are on IUCN Critical list and a 'conservation-reliant' species. Anyone (some limitations apply) with large yard, in right climate, providing right food, and decade-scale dedication can run their own tortoise factory. Putting smalls out in habitat where they can thrive seems in need of better definition. == I am not sure that they are 'keystone species' in their habitats. They eat plants, but many others also do. They dig unique holes, so possibly desert-needs-this ecosystem engineers. I'm not here to deny their charisma, nor that ecosystems need charismatic poster species to hold 'development' slightly back. == In summary I think they are really nifty, but that Ivanpah is tiny compared to them.
Okay it's fair to say that what they did wasn't quite simple, but the point was that it was achievable at scale with the technology and talent we had available in 1980, when photovoltaics were not yet achievable at that scale. Some larger installations are using molten salt, but the focus seems to be upon using it for short-term storage so they can operate 24h. Not clear whether they are using it as the working fluid from collector into the storage, or if it is strictly the storage media itself with a water steam loop feeding into it.
We have a fairly large sun tracking solar farm about 1km from our place. The latest project has been to add LFP battery packs to extend the energy sales period into the peak load/$$ period. and Battery storage completes renewables investment in Mannum - Epic Energy The battery park fills the space to the left of the sub-station and the funny looking dome huts are feed troves for the pig farm, so not a lot of neighbours live close by The systems in South Australia far exceed the total electrical energy used each day in SA, so a lot is piped into the adjoining states via high voltage DC grid connectors. Energy wasteful because the solar DC is converted to AC to travel through the state grid, then DC to join up with the interstate grids, then back to AC to distribute through their grid network. Even with all the inefficiencies and sales interstate, the local solar farm gets throttle back due to grid saturation, so it made sense to store the excess and sell it when the sun wasn't shining but the demand was high. All the grid power generated in SA is renewable, solar or wind, we have a lot of wind turbines along the coast, away from the cities. There are more bird deaths on the roads and the dumb things flying into windows than associated with the wind turbines .... you'd think the birds would be able to hear them with all the "infrasound" they are supposed to generate but then again, it only seems to be a problem on the farms that don't have wind turbines Maybe, one day, they will have big batteries at the state borders and move the export solar energy via a dedicated DC network and cut down on all the inefficiencies. Until then, the battery roll out is in full swing with govt subsidies for suckers those that believe it will reduce their power bill .... as long as the sign away the right for the power provider to drain their battery of the solar generated by their own solar panels, in case of a need to stabilise the network .... yeah, right ... This is what they do with the mirror solar concentration over here Our Technology - The Sundrop System - Sundrop Farms and a website explaining a bit about it Sundrop Farms - A fresh way of growing - Redefining sustainable greenhouse T1 Terry
