World's Largest Thermal Solar Plant Opens in California's Mojave Desert

A sea of 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors is rippling across the Mojave Desert, reflecting solar energy onto 40-story towers and blazing a path for the growing solar industry as the world’s largest solar power plant of its type. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, located along five square miles of federal land on the California-Nevada border southwest of Las Vegas, officially opened Thursday.

But the achievement for renewable energy has some downsides: Besides costing more per household than conventional coal or natural gas plants, it jostles a balance between clean-energy and harming wildlife and its habitat. The technology is killing birds with the scorching heat it bounces upward and threatens desert tortoises and bighorn sheep by tapping scarce water sources.

The $2.2 billion “power tower” solar-thermal plant, owned by NRG Energy Inc (NYSE:NRG), Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and BrightSource Energy Inc., received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. Mirror panels reflect sunlight onto boilers on three towers, heating water into steam that drives power generators to light up about 140,000 homes in a year and avoiding 400,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, equal to removing 72,000 vehicles from the road.