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California's Power From These Three Towers

15 years ago one of those went up in Coalinga, out where Los Gatos Creek Rd (South end of Los Gatos/Coalinga Rd off H25) comes into town/Derrick Ave. Pretty amazing to see in person; https://www.google.com/maps/@36.1765968,-120.3863345,1355m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1?entry=ttu ,- this image shows the surrounding mirros that articulate directing their beams into the collector tower. I think they use it for making steam to get more oil.

(I seem to recall something went wrong and it was out of commission, but could be wrong about that.)
 
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It's called the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility. It looks really cool from the air.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert. It is located at the base of Clark Mountain in California, across the state line from Primm, Nevada. The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts (MW). It deploys 173,500 heliostats, each with two mirrors focusing solar energy on boilers located on three 459 feet (140 m) tall solar power towers. The first unit of the system was connected to the electrical grid in September 2013 for an initial synchronisation test. The facility formally opened on February 13, 2014. In 2014, it was the world's largest solar thermal power station.
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Pretty cool to see in person. I think last time I was in Coalinga the one there seemed to be working, in so much as the mirrors were definitely concentrating light on the collector.
 
There's been one of these, I'm guessing maybe the earliest incarnation, out there east of Barstow for a very long time. At the time I understood it to be experimental. Perhaps they figured it out and made the production units farther east.
 
Is it simply used as a heat source, how much useful power does something like that generate?
 
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