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Ivanpah: the value of first-of-line green energy projects, even when they fail

Karin Kloosterman — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 06:50:04 +0000

A major solar power plant project called Ivanpah, that was granted over a billion dollars in US Government federal loans is now on the road to closing two of its three units, with energy experts labeling it a “boondoggle”. While critics argue that the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility is another example of government waste, it’s essential to recognize the role such first-in-line projects play in advancing clean energy.

In 2011, the US Department of Energy (DOE) under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees to finance the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a project consisting of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California. At the time, then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz called it an “example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”

The Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a $2.2 billion concentrated solar plant in California, was once hailed as a breakthrough in renewable energy.

It was a time when spending on green energy projects was flush, starting with a boon around 2006 and 2007. Investors and government subsidizers were looking to fund dreams and Ivanpah promised a world with free energy harnessed from the sun.

Solar thermal versus photovoltaic PV panels

Solar thermal technology uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight, generating heat that produces steam to drive a turbine for electricity. It is known to kill birds that pass by it, attracted to the light. In contrast, photovoltaic (PV) panels convert sunlight directly into electricity using semiconductor materials. While solar thermal can include energy storage with molten salt, PV is generally cheaper, more efficient, and easier to scale.

Ashalim is producing power but local financial estimates say it was not worth the cost.

Ashalim producing power in 2022. You will see a blinding light when you drive by it in the desert

Now, after more than a decade, Ivanpah is set to shut down 2 out of 3 of its units. The facility never lived up to its energy production goals and required backup natural gas to stay operational. Its primary buyer, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), has canceled its agreement 14 years early, citing cost savings for customers. Critics argue that the plant was not only financially unsustainable but also had environmental drawbacks, such as harming wildlife in the Mojave Desert.

The plant’s operators plan to begin closing units in early 2026, with decommissioned units potentially being repurposed for photovoltaic solar energy production. Operator NRG Energy plans to shut down two-thirds of the Ivanpah Solar CSP plant after Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) decided to terminate two power purchase agreements (PPAs) with the facility to save ratepayers money.

Ivanpah sp;ar energy panels

But while Ivanpah may not have been a commercial success, dismissing it entirely as a failure ignores the bigger picture. Groundbreaking energy projects often face immense technical, financial, and environmental challenges—many of which only become apparent through real-world implementation. These projects are bold experiments that inform future innovations, providing invaluable lessons that improve the next generation of technology.

Ivanpah isn’t the only example. The solar thermal plant at Ashalim in Israel also fell short of expectations, proving too costly to compete with newer photovoltaic solar technologies. Similarly, MASDAR City in the United Arab Emirates, envisioned as a fully sustainable zero-energy metropolis, has struggled to achieve its initial ambitions and remains sparsely populated. We have an intern dispatch what it’s like. However, these efforts have contributed to advancements in green energy, from refining solar technology to informing large-scale urban sustainability planning.

Even failed projects serve as milestones on the road to a more sustainable energy future. Without Ivanpah and other early ventures, the solar industry wouldn’t be where it is today—producing cheaper, more efficient energy. Green innovation requires trial and error, and while not every project will be a financial success, the lessons they provide are often worth far more than their price tag. Saudi Arabia, for instance, is investing in hydrogen energy projects which may never be commercially viable without massive investments to sustain them. So let’s see “failing” as an outcome of bravery.

Ivanpah wasn’t the first to fail.

Ivanpah is connected to Israel through BrightSource Energy, the company that developed the solar thermal technology used in the plant. BrightSource is an Israeli-founded company specializing in concentrated solar power (CSP). The same technology used in Ivanpah was later implemented in Ashalim, a large CSP plant in Israel’s Negev Desert. Both projects faced challenges related to efficiency, cost, and environmental concerns, highlighting the difficulties of scaling solar thermal technology.

Ashalim, developed and owned by EDF Renewables, is operating today, but at a loss. There are more than 25 similar CSP towers across the world, including China, Spain, Morocco and the United States — but only one, in the United Arab Emirates, stands taller than the plant in Ashalim, Israel.

An Israeli business newspaper, Calcalist, called the Ashalim power plant “one of the saddest stories” in the history of Israeli infrastructure. Others say the tower’s more expensive energy is, in fact, almost imperceptible to Israeli citizens, since the higher cost is spread across the millions of consumers on the national grid.

Let’s look at a few failed power plants from the west:

1. Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project (USA)

Investment Cost: $1 billion
ROI: Negative – declared bankrupt in 2020
What Happened? Crescent Dunes, a concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Nevada, was backed by a $737 million federal loan guarantee. It was supposed to provide 10 hours of energy storage using molten salt technology, allowing it to generate power even after sunset. However, persistent technical failures—including leaks in the molten salt storage system—resulted in multiple shutdowns. In 2019, its sole customer, NV Energy, terminated its contract, leading to its financial collapse.

2. Kemper Clean Coal Plant (USA)

Investment Cost: $7.5 billion
ROI: Negative – converted to natural gas after exceeding budget by $5 billion
What Happened? The Kemper Project in Mississippi was designed to be the first large-scale “clean coal” power plant using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Initially estimated to cost $2.4 billion, expenses ballooned to $7.5 billion due to construction delays, cost overruns, and unproven technology. In 2017, after years of setbacks, the project was abandoned as a clean coal facility and converted to a conventional natural gas plant, making its CCS ambitions a complete failure.

3. Pelamis Wave Energy Project (Scotland)

Investment Cost: Estimated £100 million+ (~$130 million)
ROI: Negative – company went bankrupt in 2014
What Happened? Pelamis was one of the first large-scale attempts at harnessing wave energy. It deployed snake-like floating devices off the coast of Scotland to generate electricity from ocean waves. While the technology showed promise, it struggled with durability, maintenance costs, and efficiency. After failing to secure further investment, the company went bankrupt in 2014, demonstrating the difficulties of making wave energy commercially viable.

These examples highlight the immense challenges of scaling up new energy technologies. Despite their failures, they provided valuable lessons that inform ongoing advancements in solar, clean coal, and wave energy.

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Noor Complex in Morocco 160MG CSP solar power plant

Faisal O'Keefe — Mon, 22 Feb 2016 06:15:36 +0000

Morocco has activated the Noor I concentrated solar power (CSP) plant, the first part of a three-phase development in the Sahara Desert intended to supply more than a million homes with electricity by 2018. The 500,000 crescent-shaped solar mirrors of Noor I, which sits on thousands of acres of desert terrain near Ouarzazate, will generate up to 160 MW of power. It’s the largest CSP plant to come online in the Middle East and North Africa region, and the African continent. When the full fit-out is complete, the 350 MW plant will be the single largest solar power production facility in the world.

When Morocco’s King Mohammed VI inaugurated the facility, he also officially launched Noor II and Noor III. According to Climate Investment Funds (CIF), the Noor I project cost nearly US$1 billion, exceeding an original estimate of US$820 million. Financing came from CIF, The World Bank, and the African Development Bank, and was also backed by Moroccan government guarantees. Undisclosed energy subsidies from the king will keep costs from being transferred to energy consumers.

“The returns on investment will be significant for the country and its people, by enhancing energy security, creating a cleaner environment, and encouraging new industries,” World Bank Country Director for the Maghreb, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly said in a press release.

The World Bank predicts that the plant will bring down the industry-wide CSP costs, but the future of the technology is uncertain given rapid price decline in solar photovoltaics (PV). The plant’s cost is around US$6 per watt, whereas utility-scale solar PV projects are coming in below US$2 per watt. The recent bankruptcy of the largest global CSP developer, Spain’s Abengoa, has further undermined interest in future CSP investments. That said, the technology is well-suited for harnessing the desert’s solar energy.

The Guardian wrote about the project last October, stating,””The potential for solar power from the desert has been known for decades. In the days after the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 the German particle physicist Gerhard Knies, calculated that the world’s deserts receive enough energy in a few hours to provide for humanity’s power needs for a whole year. The challenge though, has been capturing that energy and transporting it to the population centers where it is required.”

Unlike PV systems, CSP output doesn’t dip when skies are momentarily overcast, and they do not need battery back-up to store energy for nighttime use. The technology works like this: concentrated sunlight hits the mirrors, which heat fluids in a system-wide pipeline, which create steam that, in turn, drives turbines which produce electricity. The Ouarzazate system uses 39-foot-tall parabolic mirrors to focus energy on that pipeline causing fluids to reach temperatures of 739 degrees Fahrenheit. Surplus heat can be stored in a tank of molten salts for use during nighttime or on overcast days; Noor 1 is designed to keep three hours worth of such storage, which presently is a lower cost alternative to battery storage.

Morocco – similar to Jordan – is not an oil producer, and imports about 97 percent of its energy consumption, according to the World Bank. Investment in renewables reduces reliance on foreign suppliers, secures the nation’s long-term energy supply and reduces the nation’s long-term carbon emissions by millions of tons.

The project spearheads Morocco’s ambition to tap its expansive deserts to become a solar superpower, ultimately aiming to offer energy to the Mediterranean Basic and Europe. Solar energy will make up a thirty-three percent of Morocco’s renewable energy supply by 2020, with hydropower and wind power each providing similar shares.

Morocco’s environment minister, Hakima el-Haite, believes that solar energy could have the same impact on the region this century that oil production had in the last.

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Dubai’s MENASOL conference unites solar energy in the Middle East

Faisal O'Keefe — Mon, 05 May 2014 05:24:29 +0000

Over 400 senior executives will descend on Dubai this week to learn how best to develop and construct photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated solar thermal power (CSP) plants in the region’s top markets including Jordan, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Morocco.

Heavy-hitters and start-ups on both local and international levels will participate in the sixth annual MENASOL Conference running from May 6 through 7.

Bespoke to the challenges of project development in this region, the event promises to show how to create an unbeatable project proposal with “the perfect combination of market insight and a robust desert plant design” to assure winning projects in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Keen familiarity with dust, humidity and water shortages will ensure adequate maintenance programs which, in turn, impact project profitability.

CSP industry leaders – including Saudi Aramco, Kuwait Oil Company, Masdar, Abengoa, and ACS Cobra – attend MENASOL to meet essential contacts for launching regional CSP plants. Participating government agencies include National Electric Power Company Jordan (NEPCO), National Electricity Office- Morocco (ONÉE), Moroccan Solar Energy Agency (Morocco), Dubai Supreme Council of Energy (DSCE) and Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA).

With over 70 speakers from the leading solar developers such as Abengoa, ACWA Power, SolarReserve, and BrightSource, delegates will receive strategic and technical advice on construction, operations and maintenance. They’ll discuss labor coordination specific to each technology and market sector.

The opportunities in the MENA region for both local and international solar companies are steadily rising; the MENASOL conference will gather senior representatives from key agencies to show attendees how best to exploit these opportunities.

Major financiers from across the investment landscape including the IFC, World Bank, Gulf Investment Corporation, KfW-IPEX, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation and Mizuho bank will be on hand to discuss multiple different laws operating on land purchase, asset ownership and project financing.

The conference includes over 20 hours of scheduled networking time to ensure that delegates meet the contacts they need for real business development across multiple markets.

For more information, visit the conference website (link here).

Image of sun from Shutterstock

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Ashalim is Israel’s Largest Concentrating Solar Power Plant

Tafline Laylin — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 11:10:48 +0000

Spain’s super solar giant Abengoa has teamed up with Israel’s Shikun & Binui Renewable Energy (SKBN) to build a concentrating solar power plant in the Negev desert. When the company announced their win of the BOT tender of the Ashalim plant, they also claimed it will be the largest of its kind in the country.

The Negev desert comprises more than half of the entire country, which enjoys an annual solar irradiance of 2,000kWh per square meters.

That’s a lot of sun, and aside from Arava’s solar plants, a BrightSource pilot project, and a few other relatively small installations, this energy has gone largely untapped.

The Ashalim solar power plant in Israel

But now the Israeli government is stepping up its solar program with plans to ensure that by 2020, 10 percent of its overall energy mix will come from renewable sources.

Negev Energy, the new partnership between the Spanish and Israeli companies, will build and operate the 110 MW Parabolic Trough plant under a 25 year power purchase agreement. The energy they produce will sell for NIS0.76 per kilowatt hour, or $0.21.

Parabolic troughs are deployed less and less as photovoltaic cells become less costly, however the benefit of using this technology, which tracks the sun throughout the day to concentrate heat on a heat transfer fluid, is its ability to store the energy for use after dark.

Ashalim producing power in 2022. You will see a blinding light when you drive by it in the desert

Recall that Abengoa is the company behind the first solar power plant that can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regardless of weather conditions.

Although Israel doesn’t have much of an eco-conscience, seeing as it will do anything it can to get energy no matter how it comes, the Ashalim plant will divert 300,000 carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere every year once it is online.

Construction is expected to begin in 2014.

:: Bloomberg

More on Solar in the Negev:

Arava Power Signs Solar Deals with Negev Bedouins

Arava to Power One Third of Touristy Eilat

Zenith Solar Produces Dish That Concentrates the Light of a Thousand Suns

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Israel’s BrightSource Still Private After IPO Withdrawal

Shifra Mincer — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:54:15 +0000

Concentrated solar power company BrightSource doesn’t wear its Israeli identity on its sleeve.

“We’re a U.S. company with Israeli engineering, not an Israeli company. It’s a nuance but important to get right,” Keely Wachs, senior director of corporate communications for BrightSource, wrote in an email message.

And with an American President and CEO named John Woolard running the company from Oakland, California it may be hard to guess that most BrightSource executives live in Israel. But when BrightSource pulled its IPO last week, just before its scheduled date on April 11, the company’s American identity became even more important for its existence.

BrightSource’s 392 MW Ivanpah plant in California’s Mojave Desert received a partial loan guarantee of $1.6 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy last April, on top of millions in private sector funding from big-names American companies like NRG Solar and Google.

BrightSource executives decided at the last minute that the company and the market were not ready for the intial public offering, which the company had initially capped at $250 million when it filed for the IPO with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last April.

So for the time being it will continue to rely on its government and private sector funding with the hope that eventually solar will be considered a lucrative stock that any jo-shmo would like to own. Wachs emphasized that BrightSource could have chosen to go ahead with the IPO, but cancelled it from a position of strength.

“During our IPO marketing, we did experience significant interest from potential investors in the US and internationally. We’re also seeing significant demand for our technology in international markets in addition to the strong reception received domestically over the past six years.”

But, she said, various adverse market condition–particularly in the ten days leading up to the scheduled IPO–had BrightSource executives nervous about opening the company for public stock. She cited, among other things, the Enphase (another solar company) pricing that was 46% below range, the Solar Trust bankruptcy on April 4 and the cleantech composite fall of 8.9%.

Nevertheless, BrightSource is marching ahead with several new projects, including a massive 750 MW Rio Mesa plant still waiting approval from the California Energy Comission to be built in the state’s Riverside Country. With the ability to store energy in the form of molten salt overnight and during cloudy days, and with the ability to produce many megawatts of energy more than solar photovoltaic plants, solar thermal companies like BrightSource may prove very profitable in the coming years despite the apparent setback that the IPO withdrawal seemed to mark.

“We are a well-capitalized business. We will use our strong financial position to move the business forward as planned,” Wachs said.

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Abu Dhabi Pioneers Concentrated Solar Thermal A/C With Chromasun

Susan Kraemer — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:35:54 +0000

Breakthrough sustainable clean energy technology gets a field test in forward-thinking Abu Dhabi

In one of Chromasun’s first international pilot projects, the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Authority has arranged for the company to demonstrate its commercial solar-powered air conditioning technology, Solar Thermal Magazine reports.

Chromasun’s unique solar thermal air conditioning system is being installed at a distribution center that manages controls and processes for the utility.

Previously the center’s office air-conditioning was supplied by conventional electric chillers. But these have significant fossil-based peak power demands on hot days. Abu Dhabi is working to green its grid to help in international efforts to prevent climate change. Solar power has zero carbon emissions, and is permanently fuel-free.

In this field-trial, Chromasun is using rooftop-scale solar thermal technology, concentrated with sun-tracking reflectors, to heat a liquid to very high heat – the same way that massive utility-scale solar thermal power plants do.

The Israeli solar thermal pioneer Luz invented the technology 30 years ago, and the formerly Luz-owned big utility-scale SEGs in California still make electricity using this type of solar thermal technology – to focus the sun with mirrors to heat a liquid. It is a proven technology and ideal technology for regions with good insolation. Already, the technology is being pioneered to boost oil field production in the Gulf.

It is the basis for at least nine Recovery Act-powered projects in the US this year. Last year, Iran inaugurated its first CSP solar power plant.

But instead of using the heated liquid to boil water to make steam to drive a turbine to make electricity, like a SEGs-type of power plant, Chromasun will use the super-heated liquid created on a rooftop to power air conditioners, in the commercial building underneath each system.

Chromasun founder Peter Le Lievre has deep experience in utility-scale solar thermal systems, having implemented the first solar thermal add-on to a fossil fired power station at Solar Heat and Power, and as the co-founder of Ausra, which is building a 100 solar thermal MW plant in Jordan. He is scaling-down solar thermal technology to the commercial building market, and using it a new way, to supply air conditioning.

How Solar Thermal Air Conditioning works:

Sealed inside a protective clear cover, Chromasun puts lightweight, highly reflective aluminium mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays between 20 to 25 times, focused on a pipe containing the liquid to be heated. The mirrors pivot in unison to follow the sun. The whole device is sealed inside a clear glass cover to protect the moving mechanism from dust and dirt and any possible objects in motion outside, from wind-driven dust and debris to birds or small animals.

The collectors are put on the roof and they focus the heat of the sun on a liquid, which gets solar heated to 175˚C, and then sent in pipes down to the boiler room in the building, where it is used instead of electrically heated water in a double-effect absorption chiller that converts the heat coming from the panels into chilled water to run through the air conditioning system.

Chromasun already has a 16,000 square-foot assembly plant in San Jose that can put together 10 megawatts of concentrated solar thermal systems per year.

::Chromasun

More on solar thermal air conditioning in the Middle East:
Sunpowered Cooling From Linum Picked by ARPA-E
EWA Technologies Powers Air Conditioning With Solar Energy

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