Didn't 3 of these deals just go tits up in the last month?
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein
by Lauren Craig, September 6th, 2011
Back in September 2010 the Genesis Solar Project, a parabolic trough concentrating solar power (CSP) facility, was approved by the California Energy Commission. Then, in November, the project earned approval from the U.S. Department of the Interior (because it was being developed on federal lands). Now, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently announced that the DOE has finalized a partial guarantee for an $852 million loan–bringing the Genesis Solar Project one step closer to breaking ground on nearly 1,950 acres of public land in Riverside County, California.
Once complete, the 250-megawatt (MW) project will increase the nation’s installed CSP capacity by 50%. The DOE emphasizes that loan guarantee will “support a utility-scale deployment of proven and scalable parabolic trough solar thermal technology that has been used commercially for more than two decades.” (This stands in contrast to the gigantic Blythe solar power project, which recently ditched the DOE’s loan guarantee offer in favor of a commercial loan so it could use PV technology.)
A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon we're talking...Ahh hell, you know.