Posted on 10/10/2025 5:49:41 PM PDT by CFW
The sun will soon be setting on the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility in California’s Mojave Desert. Boosted by $1.6 billion in taxpayer-backed loans in 2011, the gargantuan project was hailed by President Obama’s first energy secretary, Ernest Moniz, as “an example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”
Instead, it has become yet another example of central planners squandering taxpayer money on an ill-conceived green-energy boondoggle. Covering five square miles of the sun-drenched Mojave Desert, 65 miles southwest of Las Vegas, Ivanpah features three 459-foot towers and 173,500 computer-controlled mirrors known as heliostats. “The mirrors reflect heat from the sun to a receiver mounted on top of the tower,” energy consultant Edward Smeloff told the New York Post. “That heats a fluid. It creates steam [that spins] a conventional steam turbine. It is complicated.”
So complicated, in fact, that the project ran with breathtaking inefficiency. Since going into operation in 2014, Ivanpah, built at a cost of $2.2 billion, never came close to meeting its boosters’ lofty expectations. In the world of solar energy, Ivanpah found itself unable to compete with conventional photovoltaic installations, which themselves are unable to meet the soaring demands of electricity-hungry artificial intelligence (AI).
But whatever its shortcomings in producing electricity, Ivanpah has been a super-efficient killer of birds. The light generated from the mirrors’ reflection of the sun can reach temperatures of 1,000 degrees. Birds unfortunate enough to fly over the “clean-energy” facility could be burned alive in the intense heat. According to the Association of Avian Veterinarians, Ivanpah is believed to be responsible for at least 6,000 bird deaths each year,” the Post reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailycallernewsfoundation.org ...
Where is Al Gore? Counting his money from this BS?
Good enuf fer government work.
Perhaps the solar panels can be broken up and sold to the off-grid hippies.
It will be our legacy. 50,000 years from now the pyramids will have crumbled into dust, but the bits and pieces of our ‘renewable energy’ projects will still litter the American wasteland.
DOH!
Surely they made money from extreme foodies treated to charbecued wild birds?
It is apparent that the only thing "green energy" is good for is killing birds, whales, and other wildlife.
It will be our legacy. 50,000 years from now the pyramids will have crumbled into dust,
If all things must fall
Why build a miracle at all?
If all things must pass
Even a pyramid won’t last
“Perhaps the solar panels can be broken up and sold to the off-grid hippies.”
those are not solar panels, but are just mirrors focused on a central tower ...
HMM...
Will there be a memorial at the site for all the birds who lost their lives there? 🤔
The fried birds facing out of the sky are knows as “streamers” at the plant.
there are no solar panels there.
Just mirrors concentrating the solar energy in one superhot spot.
Hippies would get some mirrors in their back yard. No good to anything, but for fun park, since they are of parabolic shape.
This facility is just off the I-15 as you cross from the Nevada state line into California.
OBAMA OR GORE???
You’d be right, except you are wrong. My Grandfather has solar panels in Ohio of all places and doesn’t spend a dime on an electric bill for 8 months out in f the year.
I guess us taxpayers won’t get any ROI on that “investment”.
It will be sunsetted... 😁 😎
Nope. These are just mirrors and do nothing to produce power.
They should send them to the politicians who back this garbage so they can see their stupid corrupt faces better.
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