Chevy, gas-friendly to gas-freeAir Force base in Nevada goes solar with 14-megawatt array
Correction: Spokespeople from SunPower and MMA Renewables said the size of the installation at Nellis Air Force base has been revised to 14.2 megawatts, not 15 megawatts as the Air Force and those companies originally said.
Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, the land of lots of sun and plenty of land, will be home to a 70,000 solar-panel installation which, at 14 megawatts, will be the largest in North America.
The U.S. Air Force on Tuesday said Nellis and SunPower have finished the first phase of the project, which will save the base $1 million a year and roughly $83,000 a month, when fully commissioned.
Nellis Air Force Base solar panels
(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Airman 1st Class Nadine Y. Barclay)The project, started in July of this year, will bring the final two-thirds of the panels online in the next two months.
The SunPower solar panels will be installed on 140 acres of Nellis Air Force base land and use trackers that move the mounted panels to follow the sun during the course of the day. The trackers improve output by 30 percent.
A different view of Nellis' SunPower panels
(Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Larry E. Reid Jr.)The 15-megawatt installation will be one of the biggest solar farms in the world. The Bavaria Solar Park in Germany is a 10-megawatt plant, and the Serpa Power Plant in Portugal is 11 megawatts.
But those solar parks act as power plants, whereas the Nellis installation will power only the base, which employs between 12,000 and 14,000 people, according to a representative. By comparison, Hewlett-Packard installed a relatively large corporate solar array in its San Diego facility last month that can generate 1 megawatt of electricity.
Under the contract, the base will pay a less expensive rate for electricity over the life of the panels, which typically have a 25-year warranty.
Update: The deal is financed by MMA Renewables, which includes equity investments from Citi and Allstate and debt provided by John Hancock Financial Services.
It is a purchase power agreement, or PPA, where Nellis will purchase electricity that the panels generate at fixed rates. The panels themselves are owned by the financiers.
In a release from April of this year, Nellis said that the installation will supply over 25 percent of the power used at the base.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin.
This 140 acre solar farm only outputs enough power for ~10,000 households, or as the article states, enough power for 25% of one Air Force Base's electricity consumption.
Not bad, but not great either. Keep in mind that this only works in Nevada. And only in the daytime.
People need to get real about their expectations for solar power. No matter how cheap it gets, there is a very finite amount of solar power available and that amount doesn't come close to satisfying our voracious energy consumption.
Solar power will be one part of future energy supplies, to be sure, but more attention should be paid to less sexy, but equally important advances in energy EFFICIENCY.
e.g. A new coal plant that is 10% more efficient at converting coal to electricity is every bit as impressive as a solar farm.
Also, any decrease in energy consumption will be at least as important as finding new energy sources. One of the most hopeful advances will be the widespread use of CFL and LED lighting in conventional (i.e. household and businesses) applications.
1) 140 acres site producing 15 megawatts of electricity.
1 acre =4047metres; Energy from sun on 1 square metre = 1.3 kwat
So total energy falling in 140 acres=140*4047*1300 watts=736megawatts
So efficiency of this power station =15/736*100 percent=2%
So I expect to see lots more power to come from this area
2) I cannot find the area of the nevada desert but from the maps I believe it to be at leastb100km by 100 km or 10000sq km or 10billion square metres . So that equals 10 *1300 giga watts= 13 terrawatts of sunligh energy.
Thus is all the desert were used at an efficiency of 10% 1.3 terrawatts could be generated
Electricity consumpution for the year in the USA is less than 4 pettawatt hours per year or 4/365X12pettawatts per hour= 9.13Terrawatts per hour assumming the power is generated over 12 hours not 24
This desert on its own could generate a substantial proprortion of the energy required by the USA. (This by illustration, Solar power will be a very useful source of energy in the future but I would not try to take all the power one desert could supply for other reasons)
3) Electricity is not used efficiently; we use incandecent lighting; we do not insulate; we light & heat areas that do not need to be we are generally wasteful. It should without a great investment be possible to reduce our energy usage without affecting our quality of life.
So I think Solar has great future; It is non polluting, Available for as long as the sun exists and has the potential by itself to provide all our energy needs.