Massive solar plant in Mojave Desert the first of its kind on federal land

Las Vegas-bound travelers nearing the Nevada border rarely take notice of the vast, empty stretch of the Mojave Desert surrounding them. But that may soon change.

On Wednesday, ground is to be broken for a massive solar thermal plant spanning about 3,600 acres and involving 346,000 mirrors, each about the size of a billboard.

Not only will the plant be highly visible to travelers on I-15, it also will be closely watched — and probably copied — by solar developers. Many developers are angling to start their solar projects by the end of the year, when a federal program that could cover up to 30% of the construction costs is due to expire.

The nearly $2-billion project is the first of its kind to be built on federal land and also the first to have slogged through myriad environmental, financial and technical issues that future solar projects are likely to face as well.

Read more: "Solar plant in Mojave Desert to start construction."

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Field biologist Colden McClurg monitors the path of a road grader at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System site in San Bernardino County on Oct. 6, 2010. Construction is expected to be done in 2013. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[fred]

Finally it seems like we are doing something positive..... bring it on!

[Mike King]

We need more green energy. If the cost private solar panels were cheaper a lot more people would have them installed, the government should help with that more, instead of trying to goto war or chasing pot heads.

[CaliPHOBE]

That's why God gave us the Mojave Desert..... to use for our betterment. We've got millions more acres available for projects like this.

[Andy K]

I would bet it will have a minimum of a one billion dollar overrun, it will not be on schedule, one extra year will be required to get it to work and it will have similar operating costs as the post office

[save the deserts!]

Such a boondoggle.

$2 billion in taxpayer dollars (94% of project cost/risk borne by taxpayers, 0% of equity for taxpayers in the upcoming IPO, which will benefit Chevron, BP, StatOil, Morgan Stanley and Google - worthy recipients of billions of our tax dollars in a recession, right?).

4,000 acres of healthy ecosystem (also owned by taxpayers) which will be permanently destroyed (again, for private profits), 5 years of massive construction emissions (on the tail of the manufacturing and transportation of the industrial machinery), plus $50 million or so in ratepayer dollars to upgrade the otherwise unneeded transmission (which will also increase GHG emissions).

All to sell power for extortionate prices which we are not allowed to know, back to ratepayers who all live in totally sunny places. The same $2 billion in taxpayer money could have gotten free power for 200,000 CA families for the next 40 years. Bright Source will instead sell us super expensive power for 20. Bargain! So, why weren't our tax dollars used to benefit US, while reducing GHGs much more and much faster? That would have been a TOTAL win.

Right. Because Chevron and BP get whatever they want from our government and we still get nothing. You thought it was just Bush, but it's not. It's Obama, Salazar, Schwarzenegger, Peevey - all of them selling us out for Big Energy profits.

Don't even get me started on the sellouts at the Big Enviros. They have utterly degraded and discredited themselves when it comes to industrialization of our arid ecosystems for Big Energy profits. Total enablers.

Here's the bottom line: It has been proven that decentralized, democratized clean energy and efficiency within our built environment are much faster, cleaner and cheaper ways to reduce GHGs, while stabilizing the grid and improving local economies (more and better jobs, improved property values and local economic activity).

There is NO upside to Big Solar. it does not produce any more power than rooftop solar, is more expensive, kills our wilderness and spikes GHG emissions for several years, while unjustly enriching Big Energy companies. Where is the outrage?

[Get Planted]

Industry need this electricity to function. Residential areas, however, have enough space on their property to generate all the solar energy they need.

[uncle_vito]

The destruction of the environment in the name of green energy is going to be insane. Can an oil spill be as bad as the desert covered over in solar panels?

[eric]

This is such excellent news. Forget about other people saying this isn't worth it. First of all when all these CSP projects(around 2 GW of electricity) are done in a few years they'll off set some or hopefully all of the power we pay for from coal fired power plants out of the state. So essentially these plants will help to create and pull jobs that we have been paying for out of state and bring them back into the state. Let's couple that by saying that the coal and oil industries have long had subsidies as well for big projects like this. Now let's also take into account that as electric cars begin to hit the roads it's possible to have an industry that is all California from start to finish. Imagine someone in California buys one of the new Tesla electric cars that will be available in the near future(the more affordable sedans). Those cars will be built here in California keeping those jobs here, as well as the other parts of that business being all here in the state. In the future when we have more renewable energy most of the power that goes to power that car should be from power sources created here in the state and from businesses in the state. So that electric car will help reduce the largest part of our national trade imbalance which is for oil which goes mostly to foreign countries all over the world. Creating this future business is a win, win, win, win all around. The research and development for the entire beginning to end of this new business could be here, the manufacturing could be here, the distribution could be here, and the fuel delivery etc..etc.. could all be here. This is the future and it's good all around for us, not to mention it's great for our air and our planet as well.

Thanks

Eric
West L.A.