Sounds like something the Federal Reserve would propose.

Via Daily Caller:

A renewable energy company touted publicly by President Barack Obama which lists Google as an investor is requesting a $539 million federal grant to help pay off part of a $1.6 billion federal loan it received to build a solar plant in the Mojave desert.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which is owned by Google, NRG Energy and BrightSource Energy, uses nearly 175,000 mirrors, called heliostats, and sprawls 3,500 acres in California.

“It’s going to put about 1,000 people to work building a state-of-the-art facility. And when it’s complete, it will turn sunlight into the energy that will power up to 140,000 homes,” Obama said of Ivanpah in a weekly address in Oct. 2010, touting a new clean-energy investment initiative he said would stimulate the economy.

But since going operational in February, Ivanpah has failed to meet its own expectations, generating only 254,000 megawatt-hours of power, about one-fourth of what it predicted, Fox News reported this weekend.

NRG Energy said fewer sunny days than predicted are responsible for the deficit.

To help keep the project afloat, NRG Energy, which holds the largest stake in Ivanpah, has applied for federal grants through the Treasury Department.

The bailout was initially reported in September by The Wall Street Journal.

The $1.6 billion federal loan came through the Department of Energy’s 1705 loan guarantee program and helped finance the plant’s construction, which began in 2010. Tech giant Google also invested $168 million in the project.

HT: Junk Science