Yeah, that ineffective solar-power plant you're paying more than a billion dollars for is even worse than you thought

The world's largest solar power plant, which has miserably failed to produce the amounts of power it claimed it could, has added to its aura of failure. Not content with killing thousands of birds or falling so short of production goals that if faces shutdown, the plant upped its fail quotient by setting itself on fire:

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, a concentrated solar thermal in California and the world's largest solar thermal power station, suffered a small fire on one of its three boiler towers Thursday, according to the Associated Press. The fire caused the boiler tower to be shut down while firefighters ascended 300 feet to deal with the blaze, leaving the plant at one third power since another tower is already down for maintenance.

The Ivanpah plant works by using its massive fields of mirrors to direct sunlight towards the top of the three 459-foot boiler towers, which then creates the steam to drive turbines that create the actual electricity. But several misaligned mirrors directed some of this sunlight to the wrong place, starting a fire amidst some electrical cables, San Bernardino County, California fire Capt. Mike McClintock told the AP. Plant personnel had the fire out by the time firefighters on site.

You had one job: generate power. You failed. Did you have to make things worse by setting yourself on fire? Did you have to take a situation where you were figuratively setting fire to $1.6 billion in taxpayer subsidies and make it literal? Apparently, yeah. Still think it's a good idea for government to use your money as venture capital on jackass schemes?