The Blythe Solar Power Project is a solar power

Solar power

Solar energy, radiant light and heat from the sun, has been harnessed by humans since ancient times using a range of ever-evolving technologies. Solar radiation, along with secondary solar-powered resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for most of the available...

 station under construction in Riverside County, California

Riverside County, California

Riverside County is a county in the U.S. state of California. One of 58 California counties, it covers in the southern part of the state, and stretches from Orange County to the Colorado River, which forms the state border with Arizona. The county derives its name from the city of Riverside,...

. The project is being developed by Solarhybrid/Solar Millennium

Solar Millennium

Solar Millennium is a German globally active company in the renewable energy sector founded in 1998 in Erlangen, Germany, which is specialized in the designing and implementation of solar thermal power plants...

's subsidiary Solar Trust of America

Solar Trust of America

Solar Trust of America is an integrated solar industrial solutions company based in Oakland, California. The company is developing the Blythe Solar Power Project, the largest solar plant in the world in the Mojave Desert, among other projects...

, in a joint venture with Chevron Energy Solutions

Chevron Corporation

Chevron Corporation is an American multinational energy corporation headquartered in San Ramon, California, United States and active in more than 180 countries. It is engaged in every aspect of the oil, gas, and geothermal energy industries, including exploration and production; refining,...

.

In August 2011, Solar Trust of America announced that the first half of the project would use PV instead of solar thermal power.

Solar thermal version

Originally, Blythe Solar was to be a $6 billion parabolic trough

Parabolic trough

A parabolic trough is a type of solar thermal energy collector. It is constructed as a long parabolic mirror with a Dewar tube running its length at the focal point. Sunlight is reflected by the mirror and concentrated on the Dewar tube...

 solar thermal plant, comprising four 242 MW units, located on 7025 acres (28.4 km²) of Bureau of Land Management

Bureau of Land Management

The Bureau of Land Management is an agency within the United States Department of the Interior which administers America's public lands, totaling approximately , or one-eighth of the landmass of the country. The BLM also manages of subsurface mineral estate underlying federal, state and private...

 land, about 8 miles (12.9 km) west of the city of Blythe

Blythe, California

Blythe is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, in the "Palo Verde Valley" of the Lower Colorado River Valley region, an agricultural area and part of the Colorado Desert along the Colorado River. Blythe was named after Thomas Blythe, a gold prospector who established primary...

.

The California Energy Commission

California Energy Commission

The California Energy Commission is California’s primary energy policy and planning agency. Created in 1974 and headquartered in Sacramento, the Commission has responsibility for activities that include forecasting future energy needs, promoting energy efficiency through appliance and building...

 unanimously approved the project on September 15, 2010 with the first phase of the project expected to start generating electricity by 2013. The Bureau of Land Management cleared the project to go ahead on October 25, 2010.
In April 2011, the U.S. Department of Energy

United States Department of Energy

The United States Department of Energy is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government concerned with the United States' policies regarding energy and safety in handling nuclear material...

 (DOE) offered a $2.1 billion conditional loan guarantee to Solar Trust, to reduce the interest on the $2.8 billion cost of building the first half of the project.