Huge California Solar Plant Shutting Down After Years of Failure

Economics is a harsh business.

Stein's Law applies, without exception: "If something cannot continue, it won't continue." If a technology, product, or service is not economically viable, by which I mean that it's not profitable, then it will inevitably fail. Oh, government subsidies may prop it up for a while, but the outcome is never truly in doubt.

Case in point: California's huge, and hugely expensive, Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is shutting down, after a decade of operation, due to being - wait for it - too costly to operate.

Seen from the sky, the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert resembles a futuristic dream.
Viewed from the bottom line, however, Ivanpah is anything but.
The solar power plant, which features three 459-foot towers and thousands of computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats, cost some $2.2 billion to build.
Construction began in 2010 and was completed in 2014. Now it’s set to close in 2026 after failing to efficiently generate solar energy.

That's always the failure with these kinds of systems. They can't compete with traditional energy sources. They are trying to replace sources of low energy density with sources of high energy density, and that never works. This one is particularly egregious because of the bird-killing design, which used mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the collection towers. It works the same way as a kid with a magnifying glass on a sunny day, cooking ants on the sidewalk.

At least it's ending now. You know, maybe this is one of the reasons California is trying desperately to stop the oil and gas companies from fleeing the state?

Exposed: 2026 Federal Budget Still Funding Electric Buses for California

And just in case that wasn't reason enough to label this as a stupid idea, we might note that it only lasted this long thanks to federal subsidies.

In 2011, the US Department of Energy under President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in three federal loan guarantees for the project and the secretary of energy, Ernest Moniz, hailed it as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”
But ultimately, it’s been more emblematic of profligate government spending and unwise bets on poorly conceived, quickly outdated technologies.
“Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government subsidized energy schemes,”Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News via statement this past February. It “never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected, while relying on natural gas to stay operational.”

It kills birds, too - by the thousands. Watch:

It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.

If California were really devoted to providing clean, cheap, reliable electricity to California residents, it would be looking into nuclear power. Nuclear power is everything the green energy scolds claim to want - clean, having essentially zero emissions - but it's everything solar and wind power boondoggles are not, namely, reliable, affordable, constant, and with high energy density.

California isn't doing that, which tells you a lot.

At least this plant is shutting down; we should be grateful for the acknowledgement of reality. Now, insects and birds around the Ivanpah plant will be a little safer, and we can hope against hope that the state of California will take this as a lesson.

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