Free Republic

Barack Obama’s Ivanpah Solar Electric Power Plant has officially failed and will begin shutting gone operations early 2026.. - $1.6 BILLION in federal loans. - $535 MILLION grant. - $600 MILLION tax credit. - MASSIVE investor write-offs.. A SCAM paid for by US Taxpayers for NOTHING ... Obamala himself is not bankrupt. Indeed, he remains awash in undrowned private chefs. Never leave your wallet unattended in the presence of Democrats. ... His first scam was Solyndra. ... Ivanpah: $2.7B to boil birds in the desert. California Bullet Train: $100B to almost connect two places no one’s trying to go. One...

For the past two decades, leftist activists have captured billions of dollars in taxpayer funding – domestically and abroad – under the guise of “fighting climate change.” From Al Gore preaching about the Earth being in a "frying pan" while getting rich off of Qatari oil money to John Kerry demanding taxpayers send him to climate change conferences around the world on a private jet – and much more. The environment was never the concern; it was a front for corruption and communist-style control. Last week, we were given yet another example of this grift when a solar project fully...

The controversial Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California’s Mojave desert is going to close 14 years early despite $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy under President Barack Obama. The Ivanpah facility works by using mirrors that concentrate sunlight on a central boiling tower, which then heats water to move turbines. It has been criticized for incinerating birds and other animals within the reflecting zone. Ivanpah has become a familiar sight on the road between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, and in the airspace above, with its blinding light visible for miles.

A major solar power plant project that was granted over a billion dollars in federal loans is on the road to closure, with energy experts blasting the project as a "boondoggle" that harmed the environment. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees to finance the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a green energy project that consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California. The facility was touted by then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz as an "example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy."...

Sometimes, government makes a bad bet. Case in point: the Ivanpah solar project. Maybe you’ve seen the unsightly, blindingly bright towers while traveling from L.A. to Las Vegas, in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada state line. Maybe you’ve read about birds getting fried to death as they fly through the sunlight directed to the tops of the towers by fields of mirrors.

Infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci has addressed attacks made on his career and reputation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who last month released the book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” Speaking to Yahoo News, the director of the NIAID said, “it really is a shame that he is attacking me in my career,” when asked about RFK’s book not being “a flattering portrait of” his career. “I think if you look at my career there are not a lot of people that would be attacking my career,...

<p>Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said.</p> <p>The plant works by using mirrors to focus sunlight on boilers at the top of three 459-foot towers, creating steam that drive turbines to produce electricity.</p>

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System located near the California-Nevada border, burst into flames when some of the thousands of mirrors that focus sunlight on water towers became misalinged and started an electrical cable fire. The plant was built with a $1.6 billion taxpayer guaranteed loan and is run by a consortium of companies that include BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google. Associated Press: Firefighters had to climb some 300 feet up a boiler tower at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in California after fire was reported on an upper level around 9:30 a.m., fire officials said. The plant...

Misaligned mirrors are being blamed for a fire that broke out yesterday at the world’s largest solar power plant, leaving the high-tech facility crippled for the time being. It sounds like the plant’s workers suffered through a real hellscape, too. A small fire was reported yesterday morning at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) in California, forcing a temporary shutdown of the facility. It’s now running at a third of its capacity (a second tower is down due to scheduled maintenance), and it’s not immediately clear when the damaged tower will restart. It’s also unclear how the incident will...

As every ten-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “It’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power. The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity, they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.) Here’s the story so far, Ivanpah: Is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a...

If you still own shares in solar energy it’s probably a sign that you’ve been in the sun too long: the sector is tanking – and deservedly so – as reality dawns that this is a Potemkin industry, an Enron of a con-trick, whose survival depends not on the energy it generates but on the subsidies it squeezes from the taxpayer. Consider Exhibit A: the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the California desert. This $2.2 billion project, heavily backed with federal grants by the Obama administration, is absolutely brilliant at killing birds. According to some estimates it accounts for...

California regulators may force a massive solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert to shut down after years of under-producing electricity — not to mention the plant was blinding pilots flying over the area and incinerating birds. The Ivanpah solar plant could be shut down if state regulators don’t give it more time to meet electricity production promises it made as part of its power purchase agreements with utilities, according to The Wall Street Journal. Ivanpah, which got a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Obama administration, only produced a fraction of the power state regulators expected it would....

A solar-power project set to open next month in Nevada has fried 130 birds during tests and will soon join another solar farm in California in avian incineration. If as many birds being burned by solar power farms built in the U.S. were to wash up on our beaches soaked in crude oil from a leaking offshore well, the outrage would be deafening. But as with the wind turbines that now cover acre upon acre of former "pristine" countryside, what amount to avian Cuisinarts slicing and dicing everything that flies, including endangered species, only the crickets are chirping. House Minority...

There is growing evidence that birds flying in the vicinity of a solar thermal power project in California’s Mojave Desert are being injured and even killed either by the solar heat that’s focused with mirrors on its three energy-collecting towers, or by colliding with the mirrors themselves. Yet a task force set up to investigate the problem at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS) has brushed aside several recommendations by the forensics laboratory of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), according to the minutes of a meeting on the subject obtained by the Los Angeles public television station...

The largest solar power plant of its type in the world - once promoted as a turning point in green energy - isn't producing as much energy as planned. One of the reasons is as basic as it gets: The sun isn't shining as much as expected.

IBM and Your Changing Energy World BY Dana Blankenhorn | NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- If I had a technology that could cut the cost of solar energy production to as little as 10 cents per kilowatt-hour (KwH), I'd be dropping everything to get it to market. But I'm not IBM (IBM_). IBM announced last week it will spend a $2.4 million grant from Switzerland studying a solar energy technology called High Concentration PhotoVoltaic Thermal (HCPVT). HCPVT combines the concentrated solar energy system used in the newly opened Ivanpah plant in California, where mirrors direct sunlight to a central point and...

Energy: What do you call an energy source that consumes vast tracks of open land and fries birds that cross its path? If you're the president, you call it "safe," "reliable," "green" and worthy of massive taxpayer subsidies. That, at least, is the case with the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station that covers a vast area of desert outside Las Vegas and, thanks to the generous support of the Obama administration, has officially opened. The plant points hundreds of thousands of mirrors at three towers to boil turbine-spinning water. But the heat rays aren't very friendly to the area's birds,...

A stretch of the Mojave Desert has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, but the milestone is being met with criticism from environmental groups concerned about the effect of solar energy on desert wildlife. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating tortoises to assessing the impact on plants. The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc.,...

A stretch of the Mojave Desert has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, but the milestone is being met with criticism from environmental groups concerned about the effect of solar energy on desert wildlife.

At California's Ivanpah Plant, Mirrors Produce Heat and Electricity—And Kill Wildlife A giant solar-power project officially opening this week in the California desert is the first of its kind, and may be among the last, in part because of growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is scheduled to speak Thursday at an opening ceremony for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, which received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. The $2.2 billion solar farm, which spans over five square miles of federal land southwest of Las Vegas, includes three towers as...