"World’s First 24/7 Solar Power Plant Powers 75,000 Homes" for 3 hours per day.

So, at 135/MWh and a cost of $975,000,000 (and assuming no additional maintenance costs), once they’ve produced 7,222,222 MWh, they will have broken even.
At 481,800 MWh/yr, that would be 14.9 years.
Doesn’t sound so bad, except…
if it doesn’t generate more than about 10 percent or so instead, the break even point won’t be until 149 years, again not taking into consideration maintenance.

Cyclone Power Technology has developed an off the grid 10 Kw Solar Powered steam driven genset. Here in the US.
http://cyclonepower.com/cyclone-power-technologies-inc-kicks-off-247-solar-project-with-license-and-development-agreement-with-g2e/

Here is a treatise on another CSP (Ivanpah) comparing it with the truly clean energy source –
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) plants plants were promoted by the Department of Energy (DOE) from the time the Dep’t was created under Pres. Carter. Several were built over the decades and none performed adequately. One burned up in 1986 and was rebuilt, enlarged, DOE arguing that the plants have to be big to take advantage of economy of scale.
Following that logic, this latest 392 MW (name-plate) giant was built on 13 km2 of land in Mojave Desert at a cost of 2.2 billion dollars. It generated disappointing .4 billion kWh [sic] thus producing at an average rate of 46 MW the first year and just a little more the next.
Note: It is typical for renewable energy projects to show different units for input, rated output and actual output. This practice makes performance and efficiency comparisons cumbersome, and therefore not pursued allowing misinformation to flourish. In the above paragraph, the former value is in “W” but the latter in “Wh.” The author wishes that such reporting use the same unit (preferably W, as with the 392 MW and 46 MW above) or it states, as an example, “…. the plant has been producing 12 % of its name-plate power.”
Rather than focusing on the poor performance of the plant thru its, so far, two years of operation, the following text and numbers show how the planned-for performance, capital and operational expenses, and earnings compare with those of another electricity producing plant.
The designed-for Capacity Factor of 31 % at Ivanpah indicates 120 MW to be the expected actual average output. That wattage was to justify the billions dollars investment, and it is the basis for this analysis.
The 2200 M$ price per 120 MW represents 18 $/W investment. By way of comparison, another nonpolluting source of electricity, nuclear power plant, the Millstone reactor No. 2 in Connecticut, operating at 880 MW since 1975, cost 0.5 $/W; Ivanpah is thus 36 times more expensive (inflation excluded).
With about 1000 employees receiving salary and benefits, the annual outlay for that alone is roughly 100 M$. Selling the annual 3.8 EJ at the projected 0.028 $/MJ yields 106 M$. Ouch – only 6 M$ left for other expenses, notably for natural gas whose burning produces some 8 % of the total output.
For comparison again, the Millstone nuclear plant complex employs also about 1000, and its two reactors have been producing 1870 MW actual electrical output. Assuming the same salaries, benefits, and the electricity selling price, the operating expense is 15 times higher at Ivanpah.
Note that the above two outlays are 35 and 15 times, not percent, higher and that this huge expense gap exists in an industry where a difference of just a few percent means the difference between success and bankruptcy. The magnitude of the gap hints also at the reason why the so-called “free” solar electricity is so expensive.*
As for the occupied land comparison, those 120 MW spread over 13 km2 represents 9.2 W/m2. In contrast, ground based nuclear plants produce some 2000 W/m2 thus utilizing the land area some 200 times more effectively. And they can be erected in any climate and in proximity to users.
If the purpose of the CSPs is to cut CO2 emissions, that expectation is unrealistic. The construction, operating, maintaining and eventually dismantling this plant will at best match the amount of CO2 claimed to be saved in non-burning fossil-fuels for that relatively small amount of electricity. And producing intermittent electricity causes CO2 generation elsewhere.
We must be either excessively rich or ignorant to be building power sources of the type that produce electricity we cannot afford.
Is anyone accountable for approving this already-on-paper deficient project? And for the other CSP projects in existence, being built, or planned?
It should be also pointed out, that the above ratios apply to a plant delivering its planned-for output. In contrast, the plant has averaged only 1/3rd of the plan to date meaning that those ratios are in fact three times worse. This is unusually bad even for a CSP although none of them performs to industry standard, an often heard excuse being that they are still “experimental” (for ½ century?).

How many birds does it fry an hour????

I wish everybody doing the calculations here were using the power unit when considering power. All those kWh per day, MWh per months, per decade, per week, per year – those are simply expressions of power and so the watt applies. Who wants to be converting? Let’s apply the KISS principle. Furthermore, when speaking about the actual power of any renewable source, a whole year must be accumulated before its output becomes comparable. Spring, summer, winter, … the output differs seasonally. Therefore, until the whole year, better yet 5 years, yield is accumulated, judgments are guesses.
To help: 1 kWh/y = 0.114 W; 1 MWh/y = 0.114 kW; 1 GWh/y = 0.114 MW.
Similarly, avoid the “elastic units” such as the “home.” It means what anyone wants it to mean. Here in the US, the EPA coins 1.5 kW for the average US home that uses electricity for all except heating (the local number, of course, varies – from Florida to Alaska). An all-electric home, on the other hand, 7.5 kW (again, anywhere from 5 kW to 10 kW depending on the region). Gas heating alone is about 5 KW in the cooler regions.
Lets uncover the way-out claims such as “enough to power 10,000 houses” (or homes?).

Saw a TV news item the other day praising an experimental solar plant here in OZ in which heliostats focused on a PV panel to vastly increase the electricity production. To prevent the panel from melting a refrigeration unit provide cooling. I could not help wondering how much power was consumed in the cooling, hopefully less than the device produced.

regarding education, I just noticed this: http://priceonomics.com/why-did-san-francisco-schools-stop-teaching/