Skip to main content

Controversial Solar Plant Producing Way Less Power Than Expected

Support Provided By
ivanpah-solar-10-30-14-thumb-600x400-83195
All three of Ivanpah's units generating power on August 7 | Photo: Kevin Baird/Flickr/Creative Commons License

A solar power plant in the Mojave Desert that's attracted negative attention for its injuries to birds is producing a whole lot less power than it's supposed to, according to Energy Department figures.

According to stats from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a number-crunching branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in San Bernardino County has produced only about a quarter of the power it's supposed to, with both less than optimal weather and apparent mechanical issues contributing to the shortfall.

ReWire's colleague Pete Danko, who shared the story Wednesday over at Breaking Energy, reports that Ivanpah's three units generated a disappointing 254,263 megawatt-hours of electricity from January through August. Ivanpah's owners had expected the solar plant to produce well over a million megawatt-hours of electrical power in that eight-month period.

Oakland-based BrightSource Energy, Ivanpah's designer and co-owner with NRG Energy and Google, told Danko that the desert had failed to live up to its promise of non-stop sunshine. "Weather at Ivanpah since February has generally been worse than expected, resulting in reduced output," said a company spokesperson.

Equipment issues were also behind some of the lackluster performance, according to the spokesperson, who told Danko:

As with any new plant, there have been some equipment challenges which impacted plant availability, although we have seen a consistent improvement in performance since the plant went on-line earlier this year.

As ReWire reported earlier this year, those equipment problems did indeed affect Ivanpah's output in the first months of operation. Despite the company's reassurances to Pete Danko, however, those issues seem to have persisted into September and October, past the end of the period for which performance figures were provided by the Energy Department.

According to records of power plant outages -- "curtailments" -- made public by the California Independent System Operator, which runs most of the state's power grid, Ivanpah spent most of September and about half of October (so far) with at least one of its three units offline.

On 13 days so far in October, at least one of Ivanpah's units was offline. On a few of those days more than one unit was down, losing Ivanpah 18 "unit-days" of power output.

September was even more disappointing, with 21 days in which at least one unit was down and 42 "unit-days" of power production lost. Given that September hath 30 days, and thus 90 unit-days, losing 42 unit-days means Ivanpah at best would have produced only about 53 percent of its expected output, and that's not accounting for the partial unit curtailments (every day in September) or pesky clouds.

As Danko points out, Ivanpah's owners have recently sought extensions on the repayment schedule for the $1.6 billion in government-backed loans that paid for Ivanpah's construction, hoping to delay writing checks until the firms can secure a government grant they hope to use to pay down the loan.

Support Provided By
Read More
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
A Black woman with long, black brains wears a black Chicago Bulls windbreaker jacket with red and white stripes as she stands at the top of a short staircase in a housing complex and rests her left hand on the metal railing. She smiles slightly while looking directly at the camera.

Los Angeles County Is Testing AI's Ability To Prevent Homelessness

In order to prevent people from becoming homeless before it happens, Los Angeles County officials are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict who in the county is most likely to lose their housing. They would then step in to help those people with their rent, utility bills, car payments and more so they don't become unhoused.