California Solar Power Project Took An Unexpected Turn

The relatively expensive solar power projects that took place in California fell surprisingly flat of expectations.

The high-tech solar projects had an estimated price tag of about $2.2 billion, a significantly massive number — especially for a failed solar project.

The billion-dollar solar project, called Ivanpah, was initiated in California’s Mojave Desert. The primary goal of the solar project was to generate more than a million megawatt-hours of electricity a year, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The whole process works like this: mirrors are used to catch rays from the sun, which in turn is used to generate electricity. This entire process is called solar-thermal technology.

However, the amount of solar energy generated since the project began 15 months ago has solar power workers disappointed. Since the project’s beginnings, only 40 percent of the initial 1 million megawatt-hours a year was generated.

In addition, the U.S. Energy Department has released data of the failed solar power project. This isn’t the first solar power project in California. In fact, solar power isn’t a foreign name for the west coast state.

Solar power in the golden state is rapidly increasing due to high insolation, declining solar costs, and support from all its residents. This is the reason why California leads as the state with the most homes with solar panels installed — a whopping 230,000 homes.

And it is all thanks to solar energy corporation giants like SolarCity — which is labeled as the nation’s largest seller of residential solar-power systems. Recently, the social energy giant SolarCity — headquartered in San Mateo, California — had a billion-dollar plan for a new factory that would decrease the manufacturing jobs lost in Buffalo, New York, according to a CNBC report.

Moreover, California has a Renewable Portfolio Standard, which requires 25 percent of California’s electricity to originate from renewable resources by 2016, in addition to 33 percent by 2020, as published by the California Energy Commission.

Now, shifting to other big solar energy news, Senegalese R&B and rapper Akon, made headlines after announcing the launch of a solar academy in Africa. Basically, the award-winning “I Wanna Love You” R&B singer, has huge plans to bring electricity to 600 million Africans.

Equipped with huge online support — as seen with the hashtag: #AkonLightingAfrica — Akon plans to light up the city where he grew up in. Additionally, Akon firmly believes that his solar project will not just bring light to Africa, but will also bring legitimate jobs to the continent.

[Photo Credit: Chris Carlson / Associated Press]