Zeno Swijtink
01-01-2010, 01:41 PM
New Solar Energy Plant Adds Salt To The Mix (https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34611316/ns/local_news-las_vegas_nv/)
HETTY CHANG - KVBC-TV
A new solar power plant is coming to Nevada and the project will use two unlikely sources, the sun and salt, to create green energy in a brand new way.
On not-so-sunny days, Las Vegas could only wish for some way to bottle up the sun and save it for a day in the future. And therein lays the challenges with solar energy.
Enter SolarReserve, a California-based company that says it has the answer: technology that uses salt to store the sun's energy. And it is making its debut in the form of a solar plant just outside of Tonopah, Nevada.
NV Energy's Director of Renewable Energy Procurement David Hicks explains why salt is one of solar power's key ingredients.
"It can store heat and it could store it efficiently. And by efficiently I mean the retention of the heat is for a long period of time. So once you heat that salt up, it loses that heat content on a very slow basis. It doesn't lose it quickly so it allows you time to shift that energy."
So even on a not-so-sunny day, Hicks confirms that the technology will still work.
"When a cloud, even a whisp of a cloud, passes over a photovoltaic panel, within less than a minute, the PV panel will lose less 80 percent of its power output until the cloud passes over."
There are currently 40 renewable energy projects in Nevada either in operation or in the works. And California-based SolarReserve says it has staked its claim on Nevada early on.
"Nevada is a tremendous solar resource and with the political support from Senator Harry Reid and the rest of the congressional delegation, that made it a good spot to initiate some of our projects," says Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve.
Although it will take years to meet all of the environmental and financial hurdles, if all goes as planned, this molten salt technology will make Nevada a global leader in green energy. SolarReserve claims that its project will supply power to 75,000 homes.
And before it does this, partner NV Energy claims that the project will create thousands of jobs.
This project still needs approval from the Public Utilities Commission and the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency which owns the majority of Nevada's land.
Construction could begin at the end of the year and the plant could be up and running within two to three years.
HETTY CHANG - KVBC-TV
A new solar power plant is coming to Nevada and the project will use two unlikely sources, the sun and salt, to create green energy in a brand new way.
On not-so-sunny days, Las Vegas could only wish for some way to bottle up the sun and save it for a day in the future. And therein lays the challenges with solar energy.
Enter SolarReserve, a California-based company that says it has the answer: technology that uses salt to store the sun's energy. And it is making its debut in the form of a solar plant just outside of Tonopah, Nevada.
NV Energy's Director of Renewable Energy Procurement David Hicks explains why salt is one of solar power's key ingredients.
"It can store heat and it could store it efficiently. And by efficiently I mean the retention of the heat is for a long period of time. So once you heat that salt up, it loses that heat content on a very slow basis. It doesn't lose it quickly so it allows you time to shift that energy."
So even on a not-so-sunny day, Hicks confirms that the technology will still work.
"When a cloud, even a whisp of a cloud, passes over a photovoltaic panel, within less than a minute, the PV panel will lose less 80 percent of its power output until the cloud passes over."
There are currently 40 renewable energy projects in Nevada either in operation or in the works. And California-based SolarReserve says it has staked its claim on Nevada early on.
"Nevada is a tremendous solar resource and with the political support from Senator Harry Reid and the rest of the congressional delegation, that made it a good spot to initiate some of our projects," says Kevin Smith, CEO of SolarReserve.
Although it will take years to meet all of the environmental and financial hurdles, if all goes as planned, this molten salt technology will make Nevada a global leader in green energy. SolarReserve claims that its project will supply power to 75,000 homes.
And before it does this, partner NV Energy claims that the project will create thousands of jobs.
This project still needs approval from the Public Utilities Commission and the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency which owns the majority of Nevada's land.
Construction could begin at the end of the year and the plant could be up and running within two to three years.