--- title: The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy description: Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-06-13T09:45:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-18T14:53:03.482Z article:section: Science og:title: The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy og:description: Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab9084ada137c5cb/6998b5c983ec379137c78b9f/20130323_zaf_w66_011adjusted.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: Ivanpah Solar Project og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy twitter:description: Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab9084ada137c5cb/6998b5c983ec379137c78b9f/20130323_zaf_w66_011adjusted.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Science](/section/science/) # The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 13, 2013 9:45 AM UTC  March 23, 2013 - San Bernardino County, California, U.S. - San Bernardino County, California - Brightsource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Project, a solar thermal electric generating facility in the Mojave Desert. The project's 300,000 mirrors focus sunlight on three towers where water is turned to steam to generate 377 MW of electricity. (Credit Image: © Jim West/ZUMAPRESS.com) March 23, 2013 - San Bernardino County, California, U.S. - San Bernardino County, California - Brightsource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Project, a solar thermal electric generating facility in the Mojave Desert. The project's 300,000 mirrors focus sunlight on three towers where water is turned to steam to generate 377 MW of electricity. (Credit Image: © Jim West/ZUMAPRESS.com)ZUMAPRESS.com—Jim West by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Jun 13, 2013 9:45 AM UTC Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but we’d rather they stay out of the way. The Ivanpah solar thermal plant is something different. Soon to be completed in California’s Mojave Desert, Ivanpah will provide nearly 400 megawatts of electricity. It will do so with the sun, but the not the way you might expect. Solar photovoltaic panels—the sort usually seen on rooftops—convert sunlight directly into electricity. That’s elegant, but limited—each panel produces only a little bit of power, and that power stops flowing as soon as the sun disappears. The solar thermal technology behind Ivanpah—which is being jointly developed by BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google—uses thousands of mirrors to reflect sunlight. That light is collected in one of Ivanpah’s three solar towers, where the intense heat transforms water into steam. That steam is piped to a turbine that generates electricity. It’s the same basic technology behind a coal or natural gas plant—only the sun provides the heat. Ivanpah also has the advantage of producing electricity on a much smoother curve than solar PV, which means it can keep generating power later into the day. But Ivanpah, which should go fully online before the end of the year, has something else: sheer beauty. The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/"},"headline":"The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy","datePublished":"2013-06-13T09:45:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-18T14:53:03.482Z","description":"Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab9084ada137c5cb/6998b5c983ec379137c78b9f/20130323_zaf_w66_011adjusted.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltab9084ada137c5cb/6998b5c983ec379137c78b9f/20130323_zaf_w66_011adjusted.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Ivanpah Solar Project","caption":"Ivanpah Solar Project","creditText":"ZUMAPRESS.com—Jim West","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7219108/the-power-and-beauty-of-solar-energy/","name":"The Power—and Beauty—of Solar Energy"}}]}] ```