Aerial view of the Crescent Dunes solar field: thousands of mirrors arranged in rings around a central tower in the Nevada desert.

Sustainably powering the future

We concentrate sunlight into heat, store that heat in molten salt, and keep generating long after the sun goes down.

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The technology

How is this different from solar panels?

Solar panels turn light directly into electricity, and they stop the moment the sun sets. We do something else entirely. We use sunlight to make heat, and heat can be stored.

Overhead view of the solar field: more than ten thousand mirrors in concentric rings around the central tower and salt tanks.

1
Concentrate

10,347 mirrors track the sun across the sky and aim its light at a single receiver at the top of the tower.
2
Store

That concentrated light heats molten salt. The salt holds the energy as heat, in insulated tanks, until it is needed.
3
Generate

When power is called for, the hot salt boils water into steam, and the steam drives a conventional turbine.
4
Dispatch

Because the energy is stored as heat rather than sunlight, generation is not tied to the moment the sun is shining.

A solar panel stops at sunset. A tank of molten salt does not.

By the numbers

Built at desert scale

10,347 Sun-tracking heliostats
640 ft Central receiver tower
110 MW Nameplate capacity
10 hrs Storage after sunset

The lit receiver tower reflected in a still water basin at the edge of the solar field.

A thermal battery, 1,600 acres wide

The receiver at the top of the tower runs hot enough to melt salt and keep it liquid. That salt is the storage medium, and it is what separates this plant from every field of photovoltaic panels in the desert around it.

It is one of a small number of utility-scale molten salt power towers ever built, and one of the few operating anywhere in the world.

How it works

Looking down on the center of the plant: the base of the tower, the molten salt tanks and the power block, ringed by heliostats.

Who we are

Tonopah Energy Center

Tonopah Energy Center LLC operates the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, a concentrated solar power plant on the high desert of Nye County, Nevada.

The plant came under new ownership in July 2026, when it was acquired by Sons of Liberty Construction, Inc. It is run today by a team based at the site, on the same ground the plant sits on.

Our focus is straightforward: run the plant well, run it safely, and get the most out of an asset that took a decade and a great deal of engineering to build.

Our history

A hard road, honestly told

Crescent Dunes was one of the most ambitious solar projects ever attempted in the United States, and it did not have an easy first decade. That record is public, so here it is plainly.

2011
Construction begins

Ground is broken outside Tonopah on a first-of-its-kind plant: a central receiver tower ringed by more than ten thousand tracking mirrors.
2015
The plant comes online

Crescent Dunes begins generating, one of the first utility-scale molten salt power towers in the country.
2016 to 2021
Setbacks

A leak in a molten salt tank takes the plant offline for roughly eight months. Output falls short of what the plant was contracted to deliver, the utility power purchase agreement ends in 2019, and the project enters Chapter 11 in 2020 before restarting the following year.
2026
New ownership

Sons of Liberty Construction acquires the plant, which now operates as Tonopah Energy Center. The mirrors still track, the tower still lights, and the work now is to run it well.

The solar field stretching to the mountains on the horizon, with the tower at its center.

Where we are

Tonopah, Nevada

The plant sits on the high desert of Nye County, about 190 miles northwest of Las Vegas, on roughly 1,600 acres of open ground with some of the best direct sunlight in North America.

Tonopah is a small town with a long history in Nevada mining and industry. The plant is part of that community, and the people who run it live there.

The steam turbine and generator inside the plant's power block.

Operations and safety

Run carefully, every day

Behind the mirrors is a conventional steam power block: heat exchangers, a turbine, a generator, and the pumps and piping that move hot salt between the tower and the tanks.

It is industrial plant, and it is operated as such. Safety governs how the site is run, and the crews who work here are the reason the plant runs at all.

Plant performance figures will be published here as they are made available.

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The plant