We recently told you why the world's largest solar thermal plant, located in Death Valley, California, is already irrelevant: The world is moving away from centralized, industrial-scale facilities and towards distributed photovoltaics - aka rooftop panels.
Now, the Daily Caller reports that pilots are complaining of a blinding glare coming off the site's 3,500 acres-worth of mirrors:
The Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation Safety Reporting System (ASRS) got two anonymous complaints in August that mentioned a "blinding glare" coming from the Ivanpah solar facility. One complaint came from a Los Angeles air traffic controller and the other from a small transport plane pilot hat took off from an airport in Boulder City, Nevada.
Ivanpah only went live last month, and the FAA told the Caller it is exploring the problem. The expense - the plant cost $2.2 billion - of creating giant fields of mirrors are part of the reason why the world is moving away from solar thermal, so this likely won't be a problem in the future.
But it's kinda disappointing, because the plant looks so cool:
