World's Largest Solar Plant Opens

The tortoises and coyotes that once roamed Nevada's Mojave Desert have been replaced by hundreds of thousands of solar-generating mirrors. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System opened on Thursday after $2.2 billion in funding and a potential to produce 400 megawatts of power for 140,000 homes, making it the world's largest solar power plant of its type. The plant's opening ushers in "a dawn of a new era in power generation in the United States," says Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association,