The Wall Street Journal has returned attention to the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, the $2.2 billion Department of Energy-backed concentrating solar power plant whose slow start became the subject of some controversy after a Breaking Energy story last fall. The Journal reported that “15 months after starting up, the California plant is producing just 40… Keep reading →
Crescent Dunes will be generating electricity before the end of March, and SolarReserve’s south-central Nevada solar project won’t stumble out of the gate the way power-tower forerunner Ivanpah did, CEO Kevin Smith said in an interview with Breaking Energy. It would be an understatement to say there’s a lot riding on him being right. Crescent Dunes,… Keep reading →
The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System had a good November, and by the end of the month the controversial “power tower” plant in the Mojave Desert had topped 400,000 megawatt-hours of electricity generation since beginning operation in January 2014. New data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that the three ISEGS units pumped out… Keep reading →
The US federal government has long had a hand in guiding development of the country’s energy sector. In some cases, such as the Department of Energy’s role in the early stages of research and development that helped usher in the shale boom, this has been hailed as a success. In others, such as the highly-publicized… Keep reading →
