After less than a year of construction, the Sierra SunTower Plant that’s touted the first of its kind in the USA was finally officially launched by eSolar.

Located in Lancaster, California, this is the first eSolar concentrating solar thermal power plant with 24,000 mirrors instead of the company’s usual 12,000. The entire plant was built less than a year through the use of eSolar’s pre-fabricated components. Within that span of time, the plant’s heliostat mirrors have been utilized in various occasions, not to harness energy, but to greet the company CEO on his birthday and celebrate USA’s Independence Day. As was intended by Southern California Edison and eSolar, the 5-megawatt Sierra SunTower plant was connected to the grid this August 5 to power 4,000 homes in California’s Antelope Valley.

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Solar venture investments hit a three-year low in the second quarter, the Cleantech Group said Wednesday. According to Brian Fan, senior director of research for the group, solar startups in North America, Europe, China and India raised a total of only $113.8 million for the quarter, which is down 7 percent from $365.7 million in the first quarter and down 86 percent from $834.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

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