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Google-Backed Solar Plant Catches on Fire (pv-tech.org)
An anonymous reader writes:"The world's largest solar plant just torched itself," read the headline at Gizmodo, reporting on a fire Thursday at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System. Built on 4,000 acres of public land in the Mojave Desert, the $2.2 billion plant "has nearly 350,000 computer controlled mirrors -- each roughly the size of a garage door," according to the Associated Press, which reports that misaligned mirrors focused the sunlight on electrical cables, causing them to burst into flames, according to the local fire department. The facility was temporarily shut down, and the fire damaged one of the facility's three towers, according to the Associated Press, while another tower is closed for maintenance, "leaving the sprawling facility on the California-Nevada border operating at only a third of its capacity."
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
The New York Times reported that by 2011 Google had invested $168 in the facility.
HOLY FUCK!
The "invested $168 in the facility" link's URL is fucked up.
It is currently:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/16/05/21/236254/green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort
When it should obviously be:
http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/google-pulls-the-plug-on-a-renewable-energy-effort
And it's not "$168", for crying out loud. The article clearly states (emphasis added),
Google still has invested $168 million in the venture
I don't expect a lot from the editors here, but holy fucking moley, this is just inexcusably bad! Fix the goddamn link URL! Fix the goddamn amount of money!
It's all done with smoke and mirrors.
Google is a minority investor in the project. Why not mention the main investor????
From Ivanpah Solar Power Facility NRG has invested $300 million, Google $168 million and the US government has provided a $1.6 Billion load guarantee.
In fact why mention the investors at all? Did they have something to do with the day to day running? Did someone from Google sneak out one night and mis-align the mirrors?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
You may wish to rethink your offer — you and I have already sunk much more into this failed enterprise. The submitter's write-up and TFA both concentrate on Google's puny $168 (million), for which Google would've gotten a solid return, had the project worked, while strangely omitting the $1,600 million, which Obama's DOE gave them in loan-guarantees without any hope of earning a profit.
Think of what useful things could've been funded with the money, had it been done the fair — Capitalist — way. You know, when the people making investments a) dispense their own monies, rather than those of captive taxpayers; b) face personal losses from failures and rewards from successes...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.