Making Solar Power History at Ivanpah

Energy.gov

On February 13, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz helped celebrate the official opening of Ivanpah, the world’s largest concentrating solar power plant.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, located in the Mojave Desert in southern California, uses a field of mirrors called heliostats to focus sunlight onto boilers at the top of three 459-foot tall towers. The boilers create steam that’s used to spin turbines – generating enough electricity to power nearly 100,000 homes. Yesterday, Ivanpah officially began supplying power to the grid.