Over $2B California Solar Plant Built To Last, Now Closing Over Inefficiency
Daily Caller | 9/24/25 | Hailey GomezThe partially taxpayer-funded Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert is set to shut down in 2026 due to inefficiency in generating solar energy, according to the New York Post.
The $2.2 billion plant, which features three 459-foot towers, was greenlit in 2010 and completed in 2014. According to the New York Post the closure stems from the site being “outpaced by solar photovoltaic technology” and proving both inefficient and costly. The shutter of the site comes more than a decade ahead of its original 2039 end date, according to the Associated Press.
Speculation about Ivanpah’s early closure began in January, when Pacific Gas & Electric announced an agreement with the plant’s owners to terminate its contracts.
“Ivanpah Solar was built when developers were investing in many different types of clean energy. The goal was to find efficient and affordable technologies to reduce the need for greenhouse gas-emitting fossil fuels,” PG&E wrote in a January press statement.
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Funds for the massive plant partially came from former President Barack Obama’s Department of Energy, which in 2011 issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees under former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz. At the 2014 opening, Moniz touted federal support for the project, calling it “a shining example” of America’s leadership in solar energy.
Moniz can’t buy everything, it’s true.
I am shocked, SHOCKED that this project needed subsidies.
I always thought it was designed as a bird-crisper – worked great!
All the people that were supposed to get rich quick got rich quick and the money is all gone so the project is over.
That will also be IMAO’s obituary, no?
Seemed to be a Bright Idea at the time….oh..and trace back the money…just sayin..
Speaking of solar panels, i’ve come to realize that although I like the Andy Griffith show there’s s huge swath of side characters that I don’t like.
For example, Ernest T Bass is irritating in every episode he is in however I like his voice as a radio announcer, where he shows up occasionally. And he was a meek TV repair man once. I likes that character.
Next up is the Darling family. Which I refer ro as belligerent applied ignorance as a personality trait.
The “Fun Girls” have a few episodes and I am disappointed whenever I watch and am presented wirh one of their episodes. I think a main reason they were introduced was to make Helen Crump have to act Jealous.
The actor that played Sam the Butcher on the Brady bunch has about 4 different characters on the show but I don’t mind him so much.
I call this the ST TNG effect.
Rihar seems to be the only one who gets the “Open Thread” concept of “Friday Night Open Threads.”
(a) “Next up is the Darling family.”
That blonde chick would be properly impressed in my world, even if it meant wining and dining her.
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(b) “Which I refer to as belligerent applied ignorance as a personality trait.”
OK. Challenge accepted. I’m going to float that as a Straight Line on Wednesday, and let’s see who bites.
(c) The “Fun Girls” have a few episodes and I am disappointed whenever I watch and am presented wirh one of their episodes. I think a main reason they were introduced was to make Helen Crump have to act Jealous.
.
Helen Crump knocks them both into a cocked hat.
They are just your typical martini-girls, but Helen? Repressed Helen? Ply, coax her successfully, and I guarantee you a very good and passionate night. And possibly life, unlike the Fun Girls.
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“The actor that played Sam the Butcher on the Brady bunch has about 4 different characters on the show but I don’t mind him so much.”
I was confused at first. I thought you meant “different characters on the Brady Bunch,” but that could not be, in any but a Star Trek universe. On closer reading, I believe you meant “about 4 different characters” on the Andy Griffith Show, and that’s right. I remember him as a gangster holding Barney or Andy at gunpoint. Yeah, he was quite the character actor.
But in all of Hollywood, a given show couldn’t find other actors to hire?
A friend and I always laugh when we think of old Virginia Gregson, who played on “Dragnet” a thousand times, as an old-woman neighbor witness with wasp-like Gary Larson glasses. She was in about every second episode. Dang, Dragnet! You couldn’t find another neighbor-like actress?
The ST TNG effect is the Star Trek The Next Generation effect.
I realized when that show was on that I really liked the show (like the Andy Griffith Show) but I don’t like a lot of the characters.
The “gimme” character I don’t like is Wesley. Irritating little know-it-all whiner.
I don’t like either if the Doctors. Either arrogant, always right, or both. Couldn’t stand them.
Ryker was smug, aloof, and creepy. He could swing his leg over any chair he wanted as long as it wasn’t on screen, as far as I was concerned.
Geordi was tolerable most of the time, but also whiney. Data was slightly more tolerable. And it turns out he went to the same high school as two of my friends.
So in conclusion, i like Captain Picard and Worf. And that’s about it.
And as i grow up I seem to like and relate to Worf more and more. Mostly because of his impatience with other peoples stupidity.
Now you know.
Oh, and I didn’t cotton to Deanna Troi neither.
Oppo’s ST:TNG experience:
I gave it like half a commercial-break’s chance.
“Is this like TOS? No? Bye.”
Saw snippets throughout my life. Like the memes with Picard covering his face in disgust.
The doctors and Troi were just breasts, and too blatantly so, I thought. Was Seven of Nine from that show? No? But Good Gawd Almighty!
And if you know me, “too blatantly” is saying an awful lot. Almost an unlawful lot. You really have to go some to get me to say “Oh, they’re just looking for an excuse to put those straining things on the screen.” Which I normally don’t mind.
But I would have preferred Helen Crump In Space to those Hooter Girls from the Playboy Mansion, where I know man has ever gone before. Nobody ever would’ve taken them seriously as authority figures on a starship.
We’re going where no man has gone before. planet Psi Epsilon, nudist colony for women.
Well the actress that was Helen Crump played Pete Malloy’s love interest in the late days of Adam-12.
Then Reed went on from Adam 12 to a Battlestar Galactica reboot. So by two degrees of separation, she… still didn’t play a hot star trek actress.
But she had the looks and hairstyle for it.
Helen Crump on the Andy Griffith Show —->
Terri Garr on the Andy Griffith Show
Role: Girl in Red Convertible
Episode: “The Wedding” (8.26) —->
Terri Garr on Star Trek.
Two degrees.
Perhaps a future Saturday Night Hootenanny?
I never liked Thelma Lou, either.
Engineers don’t typically build things. They design things. There’s a vast amount of knowledge between what the engineer puts on paper, and what actually gets produced.
The production of a design is outsourced across multiple industries. Not one manufacturer makes their entire product from scratch. This one of the big challenges of bringing manufacturing back to America. As a prime example, we have all the plans necessary to reproduce a Saturn V Rocket engine. No one on the planet knows how to make one. Many of the faculties responsible for producing components of the rocket no longer exist. Many of the people that came up with the procedures and techniques to actually produce those components are dead, and the knowledge of the “how” died with them. Much of the equipment used was scrapped, or modernized and it’s incapable of doing the same things the old technology did in the same way that it did it.
The current push to alleviate this problem within Industry 4.0 is something called model based design. The model is intended to be a digital twin of the part, from concept all the way to replacement. It’s not a horrible idea, but manufacturers are leery. How do you protect your IP if your IP is attached to a model that is shared? If you spend $100 million trying to figure out how to make a hollow fan blade with a space age coating, what’s to stop AAA discount turbine from stealing the process and winning the next 7th gen fighter contract?
But on the subject of Ivanpah, I think it’s a different issue. The engineers know the limitations of the technology. That’s not the only consideration. They are fulfilling a demand request that is not motivated by a desire for efficient power generation. You can’t blame the engineers for giving the consumer the thing they want to consume whether it’s good for the consumer or not. In this case, the consumer is the idiot government. For that stupidity you can blame the voter, not the engineer.
Over 2 billion for a solar plant that is inefficient, several millions for a train to nowhere, millions more for the maintenance and upkeep of several thousand illegal aliens. Good thing Gavin Newsome has deep pockets.