Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project - , Nevada

Jack E.

Just flew over this. Bright af from an airplane. Impressive. 10/10 would recommend if you need reflections at 36,000ft.

Martin S.

The experiment did not go well and cost of electricity produced is 8X more than standard photovoltaic solar farm. Plug has been pulled.

My experience is with the provider of medium in the tank. UTC/Pratt Whitney, CSD or whatever name they used, thought they'd found a use for some of the less toxic byproducts from the 40 years of making rocket fuel next door. This is one day of having them for neighbors. Sometime around 2009 the finale left 2 craters where labs had been mostly underground, body count 3 or 5. They packed there gear and now are part of, or took over Rockwell. Bit long and was not that uncommon; Bunker likely was where serious design and mission overseers from USAF monitored up close. Had missile fuel plant next door with test pads for Titan lifters. They'd point it at ground in gantry with some way to measure thrust and viability. Bunker style control ran the testing. Sometimes the result was a crater. Others it was a blast wave full of flaming shrapnel and fuel. Think raw power with +/- 8000 miles worth of fuel. One that didn't go as planned sent a blast wave dropped into a valley with their 'lake' and our lake then climbed over a ridge around 900', dropped into the next valley, blew door out of frame sending it across living room and took out a dual pane slider. Lol, and THEnnnnnn runs into the next ridge just E of San Felipe Creek. This goes up to the top of Diablo range causing the wave to turn about 70 degrees left/North for another 1.5 miles following San Felipe Creek. Then it got to my house and blew out every damn window. Living room is 3 walls glass, exterior brick and stone. Internal with glass panes, gone. Hallway one side is glass, gone. Master bedroom 2 walls glass, gone. French doors and living room door into back porch... Umm, what was the question, oh yeah, why a bunker, grin.

Rudy D.

The project is a huge failure the cost the taxpayers 1 billion dollars and kills millions of migratory birds. Not only that, it is ugly and unnatural and it releases toxins into th e ground.

Bill A.

Good to see that someone is willing to give this technology a try. I suspect photovoltaics will turn out to be a better solution but if we don’t give alternatives like this a chance to succeed we’ll never know. Unfortunately, the day I was there was cloudy so the plant was not operating. Normally the black thing on the top of the tower would be too bright to look at!

John W.

Outdated unreliable energy source, I did see 2 hawks getting fried in mid air. 🍗🍗🍗🍗

Les S.

Very bright, if the sun will burn out your retnas. The mirrors focus the light onto the tower. They should build a light shield so it's not so blinding from the road.

I'm glad the technology is being tried. It's impressive. It may not prove to be viable in the long run.

Jamie A.

I was hiking to the peak of one of the local mountains in Tonopah, i crossed over to the top.... and boom!!! I see this creation. So intreaging. It looked like a prism refracting light at about 2pm, with all the sun beams. I am very impressed Tonopah, Good work on this solar project!

Bruno S. B.

It’s awesome to see this from above (and I would bet from anywhere really)... I have read about this after seeing it from the plane (JFK - SFO). Seems to have been a huge science project full of good intentions albeit doomed from the start. For some reason it never had the proper scientific basis to have been put to the making. I still love that they attempted to make it and it is obvious (you see this by analyzing the history) that many people really wanted to have this working properly. I hope that this can be an important project to be learned from; maybe future scientists will build over what was done here and create an innovative way of harnessing solar power!