Post-modern temples to the Sun God

By Jo Nova

It was supposed to last 50 years…

The PR writers want us to believe the legendary Ivanpah has been beaten out by better cheap solar, and that this is somehow a “success”. But the truth is, it’s been killed by the same subsidies and crooked market that birthed it.

The Big Government Blob distorted the free market, and created a boom in solar power. But the business case was not that good, there was no miracle in the storage of electricity, nobody wanted fried birds, and the subsidies kept forcing more solar power generation in at the same useless time of day.

Since there were too many generators at lunchtime and not enough customers, the last surviving part of the free market has solved the imbalance.

Just another artificial boom and bust

In 2014, the project cost $2.2 billion dollars. Ivanpah has 173.000 heliostats, and theoretically could make 390 megawatts in a perfect moment. But no one in their right mind would have spent so much to get so little, so the government spent $1.6 billion taxpayer dollars as a “loan guarantee”.

I wonder how that is working out […]