TIME

Utility power plants are many things—sprawling, expensive, often polluting—but one thing they are not is beautiful. Power plants are the engines of modern society, but we’d rather they stay out of the way.

The Ivanpah solar thermal plant is something different. Soon to be completed in California’s Mojave Desert, Ivanpah will provide nearly 400 megawatts of electricity. It will do so with the sun, but the not the way you might expect. Solar photovoltaic panels—the sort usually seen on rooftops—convert sunlight directly into electricity. That’s elegant, but limited—each panel produces only a little bit of power, and that power stops flowing as soon as the sun disappears.