Located in the Mojave Desert right outside Las Vegas in Boulder City, Nevada is the Nevada Solar One Project; we visited the siteon June 19. We were all a little tired and stumbled out of the van because the day before we hiked out of the Grand Canyon.
The entire facility takes up 400 acres of land. It is a solar concentrator site and consists of 180,000 parabolic mirrors. The suns rays reflect off of mirrors and heat pipes of oil. The super-heated oil then passes into water towers that then heat water and creates steam. The steam then spins turbines that produce energy. The plant produces about 64 megawatts of electricity. Compare that power output to the nine sections of mirrors at the plant located in Kramer Junction, California that produces 354 megawatts of electricity.
Parabolic troughs like the ones found at Solar One Project.
Right up the road from the Nevada Solar One Project is Spring Mountain State Park. There are over 80 springs on the mountain hence its name- it a great place to go on a hot summer day to escape the heat of the desert. We met up there with Amy, a conservation biologist, who works for the Fish and Wildlife Service. She spoke about how there are currently 3,000 different types of renewable energy proposals for the Mojave Desert and 80 will probably go through and come to fruition. Most of the proposed facilities will take up to 5,000 to 7,000 acres and that will disturb the desert tortoise habitat.
Awww, arent' desert tortoise cute?
No comments:
Post a Comment