Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is a solar thermal power project with an installed capacity of 110 megawatt (MW) and 1.1 gigawatt-hours of energy storage located near Tonopah, about 190 miles (310 km) northwest of Las Vegas. Crescent Dunes is the first commercial concentrated solar power (CSP) plant with a central receiver tower and advanced molten salt energy storage technology at full scale (110 MW), following the experimental Solar Two and Gemasolar in Spain at 50 MW. As of 2023, it is operated by its new owner, Vinci SA, and in a new contract with NV Energy, it now supplies solar energy at night only, drawing on thermal energy stored each day. Startup energy venture company SolarReserve (created via seed funding), US Renewables Group, and United Technologies were the original owners of Tonopah Solar Energy LLC, the owner and operator of the Crescent Dunes plant. The Crescent Dunes project was subsequently backed by a $737 million in U.S. government loan guarantees and by Tonopah partnering with Cobra Thermosolar Plants, Inc. The overall venture had a projected cost of less than $1 billion. The plant suffered several design, construction and technical problems and, having not produced power since April 2019, its sole customer, NV Energy, subsequently terminated its contract. Bloomberg reported that NV Energy was not allowed to sever its agreement with the plant until after the DoE took over the shuttered plant in August 2019. Since the initial failure of the Crescent Dunes project, SolarReserve took down its website and is believed to have permanently ceased operations. Upon the developer's silence as the involved parties sought legal recourse, the plant's exact status was publicly unknown for some time and was left to conjecture. While proceeding through its subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, Tonopah Solar Energy stated that it had hopes for a restart of the Crescent Dunes plant by the end of 2020. According to court documents, Tonopah is owned by SolarReserve, Cobra Energy Investment LLC, a division of Spanish construction company ACS Group and Banco Santander, S.A. On September 11, 2020, the bankruptcy court approved Tonopah Solar Energy's disclosure statement. On December 3, 2020, the Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan was confirmed by the court. As one result of this plan's confirmation, Cobra now has operational control of the plant. In July 2021, the project restarted production for NV Energy.