The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert, once touted as a flagship of U.S. solar energy leadership, is nearing its end.
Launched with $1.6 billion in taxpayer-supported loans in 2011 and praised by former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, the massive project spans five square miles, 65 miles southwest of Las Vegas, with three 459-foot towers and 173,500 computer-guided heliostats. Yet, it has devolved into another costly, mismanaged green-energy failure driven by centralized planning.
Green Jihad 
It seems SCE hasn’t finalized it’s plan for the continued operation of their part of the facility. They own the transmission infrastructure (ie substations, and high voltage transmission lines) that allow the juice from the plant to flow onto the grid. They upgraded some infrastructure recently-
Click to access factsheet.pdf
PG&E and the CPUC did not require NRG to renegotiate the long term PPA, put in place when the facility was being built, as the cpuc consumer advocates recommended when the project failed to meet its design requirements back in 2014.
PG&E and the PUC eliminated our e-7 time of use rate schedule around that time frame as it’s summer peak time period 12-6 pm and high rates when combined with solar nem rate schedule was negatively impacting their cash flows. The required move to a 1 pm to 7 pm peak time and adding in part peak times included in the e-6 rate schedule improved their cash flows.
Click to access GAS_3743-G.pdf
Maybe meta, amazon, etc. can put a server farm at the facility or just down the road adjacent to a substation that has already been upgraded to help NRG and SCE improve their cash flows.
Mark
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