Ongoing Waste, Fraud and Collusion in the California Solar Industry

In 2012, I wrote a blog article about the “New Industrial Desert.” The article included mention of the Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Station (ISTS), then under construction in Ivanpah Valley, California. Backers touted the ISTS as the newest and most promising technology for large-scale solar energy production. Until commissioning of the ISTS, Israel’s small-scale demonstration plant was the only solar-thermal plant in the world.

BrightSource Energy, Bechtel Corporation, Google (now Alphabet), and our federal government invested $2.2 billion in what turned out to be the world’s largest bird fryer. Estimates are that over 6,000 birds annually fly into the solar flux generated at the ISTS, there to die instantly in flight. Because of the tiny smoke trails the dead birds make in the sky, plant workers call them “streamers.”

Not only were desert bird species decimated by this “new technology,” but 3,500 acres of desert tortoise habitat fell to bulldozers as well. With battery storage and low-cost passive solar arrays just a few years away, it was a case of “birds and tortoises be damned.” At that time, Southern California Edison (SCE) and Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) were racing to “go green” with energy production. PG& E signed a fifteen-year contract to buy electrical production from Units One and Three. SCE contracted for power generated by Unit Two.

Not wanting to risk financial exposure, both Google’s $168 million investment and Bechtel’s undisclosed investment in Ivanpah garnered a $1.3 billion Department of Energy loan guarantee. In other words, you and I, the U.S. taxpayers will now pay for this incipient failure.

Over the years, I authored several articles about the Ivanpah project on this blog. As a lifelong environmentalist, I was amazed at the reckless speed in which this half-baked idea materialized. I will not detail all my criticisms here, but a quick reading of my previous articles will update you.

Now, in March 2025, NRG Energy (which sounds redundant to me), is the current operator of the ISTS. Recently, it announced that Units One and Three would cease operation in 2026. Under an undisclosed agreement, PG&E will terminate its power purchases before the end of its fifteen-year contract. SCE, for its part, continues to buy overpriced electrical power from Unit Two.

In 2018, faulty SCE equipment caused Southern California’s Woolsey Fire, creating liability for property damage of $2.2 billion. As of this writing SCE transmission lines are under investigation for causing the January 2025 Eaton Fire. Is SCE whistling past the “graveyard of birds” known as Ivanpah? They are afraid to take a financial write-down on their ill-conceived purchase agreement with ISTS.

Even as Ivanpah became a financial and environmental disaster, the federal government continued promoting construction of passive “solar farms” throughout the Desert Southwest. In the Ivanpah/Primm Valley, the Stateline Solar Farm and the Silver State North/South projects have come online since 2016. The three projects combined, all within view of the ISTS, have a footprint similar in size to the failing solar-thermal plant.

To compare net energy production between the solar-thermal plant and its three passive solar neighbors is an exercise in frustration. Since the ISTS requires a gas-fired generator to get it started each morning, the net energy produced by the plant is far lower than the amount it supplies to the grid. Meanwhile, since the addition of 3,500 acres of passive solar near the ISTS, no other solar-thermal plant has materialized anywhere in the world. If BrightSource, Google, Bechtel, and the federal government had waited less than a decade, the ISTS would never have happened.

In California, the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) continues to promote large scale “solar farms” throughout the Mojave Desert. This ongoing industrialization of the desert will require additional electrical transmission lines and further destruction of fragile habitat.

In 2023, the PUC ended “net metering”, which allowed rooftop solar owners to buy and sell electricity to the grid at market rates. Newer home connections buy at full price but sell excess power to the grid for a pittance. Now, the PUC has plans to scuttle net metering, even on older rooftop solar installations. To add contractual insult to financial injury, the PUC plans to allow utilities to charge all rooftop solar owners additional fees. These fees shall be for the honor of connecting to a costly, inefficient, and often dangerous electrical grid.

To finance large-scale additions to the New Industrial Desert, investor-owned utilities, major corporations, and land developers will rely on those fees. As such, the unelected California PUC will continue their financial punishment of all homeowners who have installed rooftop solar.

After thirteen years studying the Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Station, here is my prediction for its future. The reflectors, towers, and their attendant infrastructure will all go to a desert landfill. In its place will arise 3,500 acres of passive solar arrays, providing electrical power to the grid. Next time someone tells you that they have a  revolutionary way of producing New Energy, be skeptical of their assertions.

Email James McGillis

Warren Buffett's NV Energy and the NVPUC Conspire to Destroy Rooftop Solar in Nevada - 2016

 

Warren Buffett's NV Energy and the NVPUC Conspire to Destroy Rooftop Solar in Nevada

In February 2016, I traveled from Los Angeles to my home state of Nevada. For the past three years, new hires in the rooftop solar industry have been an engine of job creation in the Golden State. Economists up and down California cite the solar industry for its 20,000 new jobs in 2015 alone. Those jobs went mostly to the young and able. Able to sell door to door; able to handle thorny customer service issues; able to mount rooftop solar panels.

As I traversed Interstate I-15 North from the Los Angeles Basin to the Mojave Desert, I anticipated that Nevada, the Silver State, would be keeping pace with California in New Energy production. Arizona, which is Nevada’s more populous neighbor to the east, had already killed rooftop solar in favor of “Clean Coal”, Nuclear and Natural Gas fired electrical production. Surely, the State of Nevada could do better than their troglodyte cousins who live across the dwindling stream of the Colorado River.

As I left Baker, California, I could not wait to see the Ivanpah Solar-Thermal Station, near Primm, Nevada. The Mojave is a large desert, so one must remember that the Ivanpah Valley is still within the borders of California. There, where developers thought that no one would notice, California’s Governor Gerry Brown had authorized the most destructive “green energy” plant in the country. Famous for the displacement and killing of many desert tortoises and the continued flash frying of countless birds, this ill-conceived power plant helps no one other than the old Google Corporation (Now “Alphabet” Soup) and its other ultra-rich investors.

With its three grandiose towers glowing brighter than the sun, Brightsource Energy’s solar folly in the desert is a defining boondoggle and tax-dodge for the rich and infamous. On my outbound trip, all three towers shone like molten pillars of salt. On my return trip, one tower was dark. If you pass that way, do not stare at the lighted towers. More than several seconds of exposure could damage your retinas. Along I-15 there are no solar-thermal warning signs, although there should be. The unearthly scenery at the power plant makes you feel like you are already in Las Vegas.

Several days later, while attending a rally for Bernie Sanders in Henderson, Nevada, I met a (former) crew from SolarCity, Las Vegas. They were campaigning hard for the public to realize that the Nevada Public Utilities Commission (PUC) had recently killed the rooftop solar industry in Nevada. It had also killed 550 SolarCity jobs in Nevada. Through the application of an onerous negative "net metering" structure, the PUC made it impossible for even industry leader Solar City to continue installing rooftop solar.

When one thinks of the West, they often think of sunny Southern California. We also recall that Southern Nevada and Southern Arizona are deserts. Almost anyone could tell you that those two states are “hot, dry and sunny” on most days. As with California, both Arizona and Nevada are perfect places for rooftop solar installations. For reasons of fear and conservative orthodoxy, Arizona killed rooftop solar several years ago.

So, what happened recently in Nevada? Why would the Nevada PUC nix the development of such a natural and benevolent power source? Look no further than NV Energy, the private utility that provides electrical power to 2.4 million of Nevada’s 2.8 million residents. On May 29, 2013, NV Energy announced its acquisition by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company (now Berkshire Hathaway Energy). In other words, NV Energy is now a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. whose chairperson and primary stockholder is billionaire Warren Buffett.

Apparently, Warren Buffett was still smarting from the ongoing decrease of coal shipments on his Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railroad. With coal in decline all over the country, Warren Buffett seized on solar as easy prey. The rooftop solar industry as we know it is less than a decade old. In a classic “Old Energy” vs. “New Energy” struggle, Old Energy won. “New energy be damned”, I picture Warren muttering under his breath. “Coal and natural gas are the energy stocks of the future”, he said to himself. Whether Warren Buffet lobbied directly or indirectly with the Nevada PUC, they got his message and destroyed the rooftop solar industry in the state.

Think about it. Once you have solar panels on your roof, with minimal cleaning and maintenance, you just sit inside your home and enjoy low cost energy produced by the sun. Under the Warren Buffett, Old Energy scheme, you will sit inside your home and pay for massive coal or gas-fired power plants hidden far out in the desert. Fossil fuel power plants require a steady stream of carbon stock, which in turn creates a steady stream of revenue for Berkshire Hathaway.

With Buffet’s monopoly control over electrical energy in Nevada, there was no contest. As expected, the PUC bet on what they believed was a long-term winner. If that winner created higher consumer costs, increases in global warming and more money for the billionaire class, so be it. Warren Buffet did not acquire his current wealth of $71 billion by playing nice. With his wan smile, the 85 year-old hustler might as well be telling all Nevada electrical consumers to “shove it where the sun doesn’t shine”. In their boldfaced destruction of the rooftop solar industry, that is what he and the Nevada PUC did.

If California and many other states can promote rooftop solar installations as the backbone of a new industry, why should Nevada kowtow to a billionaire and his cadre of wealthy stockholders? If Nevada were to allow a public referendum on the issue, rooftop solar would return to Nevada in a heartbeat. Pro solar advocates collected over 18,000 signatures during the recent Nevada Caucuses. Only days later, a political action committee (PAC) named "Citizens for Solar and Energy Fairness", designed to "advocate for, or oppose" net metering programs filed a legal challenge to the pro-solar referendum. In a recent statement to Politico, NV Energy admitted that it is "supporting" the new anti-solar PAC.

Residents of Nevada, it is time to put an end to this tomfoolery and allow a vote for Nevada to Bring Back Solar.

Email James McGillis

 

By James McGillis at 04:04 PM | Environment | Comments (0) | Link