Big solar's big surge

Silence generally reigns across California's Carrizo Plain, about 160 kilometers northwest of Los Angeles. But for much of the past three years, this expanse of grassland and farms was anything but silent, as up to 880 people trucked out each day to the plain's sparsely inhabited northern end to build a hefty power plant. On a bright October afternoon, only a handful of construction workers remain, and the nearly completed plant is generating at close to full tilt. And yet it makes naryas it pumps hundreds of megawatts of electricity into California's power grid. a click, buzz, or whir, even