EDITORIAL: Solar power burning up your wallet

The good news: Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Plant is in full commercial operation and can generate power day or night. The bad news: Now, we really start paying for it.

As reported by the Review-Journal's Henry Brean, electricity from the plant near Tonopah has begun flowing to homes in Southern Nevada, according to NV Energy. The plant can generate enough power to supply about 75,000 homes. But it cost almost $1 billion to build, including $737 million in federal loan guarantees — from the same program that left taxpayers on the hook for $535 million when solar panel manufacturer Solyndra went bankrupt.

So Crescent Dunes, owned by California-based SolarReserve, needs to make money and lots of it to avoid that same fate. Indeed, NV Energy has agreed to pay 13.5 cents per Kilowatt hour — twice the cost of power from a natural gas-fueled plant — to buy the plant's entire output for the next 25 years. That means Nevada customers will be paying through the nose for Crescent Dunes, at every level, for decades to come.

This again shows that renewable energy can't exist without massive subsidies and equally massive price distortions. It's a sham. Stop all the subsidies and power premiums, and let the solar industry stand on its own.