Trump and Biden both want the California solar plant shut down. The state has other plans

The electricity it produces is expensive, its technology has been replaced, and it burns thousands of birds in flight each year. The Trump administration wants to see this unusual power plant shut down, and in an unusual case of alignment, the Biden administration has too.

But the state of California insists that the Ivapah power plant in the Mojave Desert stay open for at least 13 more years. It’s an indication of how much intelligence electronics and data centers demand.

Ivanpah’s owners, including NRG Energy, Google and BrightSource, had agreed with their main customer, Pacific Gas & Electric, to end their contract and largely shut down Ivanpah. But last month, the California Public Utilities Commission unanimously rejected that deal, citing concerns about the reliability of the grid to deliver electricity. The decision will force two of Ivanpah’s three units to continue operating rather than close this year.

PG&E and the federal government had argued that the shutdown would save taxpayers and ratepayers money compared to paying for Ivanpah’s electricity until 2039, when the contract expires. But some experts and stakeholders agree with the government’s request, noting that the troubled power plant is still supplying electricity while the state is empty.

“We’re seeing a huge demand for electricity, especially because of the huge demand for data centers, and we’re seeing grid reliability issues, so overall, I think this was a smart move,” said Dan Reicher, a senior scientist at Stanford. “Having said that, I think reasonable people would differ on this – it’s a close call.”

Ivampah was the largest plant in the world when it opened to much fanfare in 2014. The 386-megawatt facility uses a massive array of about 170,000 mirrors to focus sunlight on the towers, which generates heat that rotates turbines to generate electricity. This is known as solar thermal, because it uses the sun’s heat.

But this plant has been plagued by problems almost from the beginning. Mirror and tower technology that once seemed more promising than flat photovoltaic solar panels, soon proved cheaper and more efficient and became the industry standard.

Ivanampah has none on site battery storage, which means it mainly generates power when the sun is shining, and relies on natural gas to fire up its boilers every morning.

This plant also had a reputation for being a killer of wildlife, with 2016 report from The Times to find as many as 6,000 birds die each year after colliding with the 40-story Ivapah towers – or from heatstroke as they fly into its concentrated rays of sunlight.

Despite these problems, the CPUC decided that the facility should remain online to help the state meet the “strong electricity conditions” expected in the coming years, including the growing demand for data centers and artificial intelligence, electrification of buildings and transportation, and hydrogen production. Ivanpah qualifies as clean energy and California has it committed to 100% clean energy by 2045.

The latest Integrated Resources Plan, which looks ahead to how it will meet energy needs, “will determine that Ivampah should remain online due to the current uncertainty regarding reliability,” the CPUC wrote in its December decision.

The five-member decision came despite PG&E’s assertion that ratepayers would save money if it shuts down, a conclusion that is generally supported independent review.

It came despite support for Ivampah’s shutdown from both Biden and Trump officials, who rarely see eye to eye on the energy issue. Construction of the $2.2 billion plant was supported by a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee that has not yet been fully repaid.

How much is left on that loan has not been disclosed, but an internal audit reviewed by The Times suggests it could be as much as $780 million.

In the final weeks of his term, Biden’s Energy Department helped negotiate the termination of the contract between PG&E and the owners of Ivanpah. Trump’s Department of Energy – which has been the opposite about renewables like wind and solar — he urged California to adopt that deal.

“Continued operation of the Ivapah Projects is not in the best interest of California or its customers, nor is it in the interest of the United States and its taxpayers,” Gregory Beard, senior counsel at the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Dominance Financing, wrote in a Nov. 24 letter to the CPUC.

Yet the California agency cited Trump’s policies among its reasons for keeping Ivanampah open. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs will raise the prices of new energy technologies and could slow the expansion of the nation’s power grid, the agency said. Trump also ended tax credits for solar, wind and other renewable energy projects in a move that could reduce up to 300 gigawatts of nationwide construction by 2035, the CPUC said.

In August, Trump’s Interior Department effectively halted wind and solar development on federal land in favor of nuclear, natural gas and coal. That decision could affect Ivampah, which lives on about 3,500 acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management near the California-Nevada border.

These “changing government priorities” are creating uncertainty in the market, the CPUC noted in its decision. California taxpayers have already paid more than $333 million to upgrade the grid to support the Ivanpah project, and terminating their contracts “risks inflated infrastructure costs,” it said.

The Ivapah Solar Electric Generating System anchored a solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert in 2023.

(Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Stanford expert Reicher, who also served at the Department of Energy under the Clinton administration and as director of climate change and energy programs at Google, said that from an energy perspective, the decision makes sense.

“I believe in keeping it online, using it well and improving it, especially since we are facing a problem of electricity shortage that we have not seen in decades,” he said.

Reicher noted that while concentrated solar is no longer popular in the US, it was seen as an attractive investment at the time. Some places are still building concentrated solar facilities, including China, Mexico and Dubai, and they may have some advantages over photovoltaics, he said. For example, many new concentrated solar plants have a high capacity feature, meaning they can produce electricity for many hours of the year.

Stakeholders such as Pat Hogan, president of CMB Ivanpah Asset Holdings and an early investor in the industry, also applauded the CPUC’s decision. Although Ivanampah has never met its goals of 940,000 megawatt-hours of clean energy per year, it is still providing electricity, he said. The plant produced approx 726,000 MWh by 2024, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the California Energy Commission.

“It’s not working as well as it was originally modeled, but it’s still generating electricity for 120,000 homes in California,” Hogan said.

Hogan said that the termination of power purchase agreements will leave investors and taxpayers in the dust, benefiting the company and equipment owners. The plan would have turned a “partially performing corporate loan into an almost total loss event,” he wrote in a statement. formal complaint filed in the Department of Energy’s Office of the Inspector General.

Some say solar photovoltaic and battery storage is the best, most cost-effective way to secure California’s energy future. The kingdom has gone it is heavily invested in both, but the administration of Gov. Gavin Newsom and the CPUC should work to ensure more is brought online quickly, said Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Assn., a national trade group.

At the same time, the administration in Washington, DC, must work to stop the decline of federal solar, which has up to 39% of California’s planned new position for the next five years is “in enabling limbo,” Gallagher said.

“The CPUC’s decision highlights California’s dangerous energy situation, as electricity prices and demand for electricity are rising at the fastest rates in history,” he said.

But Beard, of the Department of Energy, criticized the decision as “a continuation of California’s bad policies that are driving up energy bills.”

“California’s decision to keep this uneconomic and expensive utility open is bad for taxpayers and bad for taxpayers,” Beard said in a statement to The Times.

He declined to say whether the federal government plans to challenge the decision, but said his office has been “working closely with stakeholders to ensure maximum return on US taxpayer dollars while maintaining access to customer savings.”

Meanwhile, PG&E said the company is now evaluating next steps.

Thousands of software-controlled heliostats focus sunlight on a boiler mounted on a series of three towers at the Ivampah power plant in 2014.

(Mark Boster/Los Angeles Times)

“Ending these agreements will save customers money compared to the cost of keeping them until their terms expire,” spokeswoman Jennifer Robison said in an email.

NRG spokesman Erik Linden said Ivanpah’s ownership continued to invest in the facility and “remain steadfast in their commitment to providing reliable renewable energy to the state of California.” The existing power purchase agreements are still valid and the plant will operate under their terms during the terms of the agreements, he said.

This is not the first time California has delayed the retirement of a power plant due to concerns about system reliability. Last month, the California Coastal Commission reached a landmark agreement with PG&E that will extend the life of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo until at least 2030. It was originally expected to close last year.