Solar Power Pros and Cons: California Opens Biggest Solar Power Plant in the World With Enough Energy to Power 160K Homes

A new power plant in the California desert is making history. The solar power plant near Joshua Tree National Park in Desert Center, California opened on Monday and is now the world's largest solar power plant.

USA Today reports the power plant is coined the Desert Sunlight solar project, the plant is 550-megawatts. That amount of power is capable of providing enough energy to give electricity to 160,000 homes.

Desert Sunlight received a sizable federal loan, nearly $1.5 billion. U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said the loan program to get the project done was very important and paid off.

"When you are stepping out with new technology, when you are trying something that has been untested before, a loan guarantee program from an organization like the Department of Energy is what provides you, as a lender, that certainty that you can step up and support the project," Jewell said.

Some critics and lawmakers disagreed with the loan program. They pointed at the failed solar panel company Solyndra. Solyndra received $535 million from the same loan program and then filed for bankruptcy in 2011.

The Department of Energy is standing behind their decision to provide these loans and say they will make a profit of $5 billion to $6 billion from the loans. The Department of Energy has funded five large-scale solar farms, the Desert Sunlight project being the most recent.

"They're all rock-solid, money is good, living up to every kind of condition we put in the loan documents in terms of performance, in terms of commercial operation," said Peter Davidson, executive director of the Department of Energy's loan programs office, in an interview last week.

To build Desert Sunlight 440 employees were needed over the past three-plus years. Now the company has only about 15 full time employees.

Power coming from the plant will be provided to Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric Company.

California has committed to renewable energy and has installed more renewable energy sources than any other state.

The almost-always sunny conditions in Desert Sunlight mean it will produce more energy than the Topaz project, another 550-megawatt solar plant in San Luis Obispo County, California.