Tonopah Solar Energy, LLC is set for a July 7, 2026 confirmation hearingDkt. 411 before the Delaware bankruptcy court (Judge J. Kate Stickles) on its combined disclosure statement and liquidating chapter 11 plan, the final step in a sale-plus-plan wind-down of the 110-megawatt concentrated solar power tower with molten-salt thermal storage near Tonopah, Nevada. The single-asset renewable energy debtor—a subsidiary of Crescent Dunes Investment, LLC with no employees, operated under contract by ACS Industrial Activities—filed its voluntary Chapter 11 petitionDkt. 1 on January 21, 2026 to implement a December 16, 2025 restructuring support agreement with its prepetition lender and parent and to run a section 363 sale process. The filing was driven by recurring hot-salt-tank leaks in 2016, 2019, 2022, and 2023 that forced operating-temperature cuts and trimmed maximum output from 100 MWh to roughly 55 MWhDkt. 12, layered on NV Energy's 2019 termination of the project's 25-year power purchase agreement and the looming February 21, 2026 expiration of a short-term replacement Switch PPA.
The debtor entered bankruptcy carrying approximately $173 million of first-lien funded debt to Crescent Dunes Finance, Inc.—a $100 million term loan and a revolving line of credit enlarged from $64 million to $73.5 million under an August 2025 amendment and forbearance—alongside a $6 million letter of credit securing contingent CMB litigation exposure. Having already emerged from a 2020 chapter 11 in which the Department of Energy recovered $200 million, Tonopah secured combined postpetition financing and cash-collateral authority through interim and final orders in January and February 2026 and closed the court-approved sale of substantially all assets earlier in the case. A court-appointed Special Committee investigation subsequently validated the CDF and ACS exit credit facility, prompting CDF to , which removed the principal intercompany claims from the confirmation fight.
Solicitation on the combined plan returned unanimous acceptance across every voting class—Class 3 prepetition-lender claims of roughly $184 million, Class 5 former-manager claims of $1.875 million, and the Class 7 convenience class—while the impaired general-unsecured and equity-interest classes are deemed to reject, driving the debtor to seek confirmation under the cramdown provisions of section 1129(b)Dkt. 407. The plan installs Chief Restructuring Officer Yale Scott Bogen as plan administrator for an orderly estate wind-down, folds in a former-manager settlement funded out of secured-creditor collateral, and—per the confirmation memorandum of lawDkt. 409—offers consensual third-party releases by affirmative opt-in. With the July 7 hearing agenda showing the combined plan going forward unopposed—no responses were filed by the June 22 objection deadlineDkt. 411, and supported by the debtor's confirmation memorandum and proposed findings of fact, the case is positioned to exit through plan effectiveness shortly after the hearing.
