Nevada Solar One

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Nevada Solar One is the third largest solar power plant in the world, generating 64MW, as of June 2007, and is the second (Arizona Public Service's' Saguaro Solar Facility opened in 2006) solar thermal power plant built in the United States in more than 16 years.^[1] And the largest CSP plant built in the world since 1991.^[2] Nevada Solar One is on the southeast fringes of Boulder City, Nevada. It was built by Acciona Solar Power (formerly Solargenix), a partially owned subsidiary of Spanish conglomerate Acciona Energy. [1]. Acciona purchased a 55 percent stake in Solargenix and owns 95 percent of the project.^[3] Nevada Solar One is unrelated to Solar One, aside from having a similar name. Nevada Solar One produces enough power for more than 14,000 households^[4].

1 History
2 Technology
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] History

The plant went online for commercial use on June 27, 2007.^[5] It was constructed over a period of 16 months. The total project site covers approximately 400 acres, while the solar collectors cover about three fourths of that area - the size of 200 football fields.

[edit] Technology

Nevada Solar One uses 760 parabolic troughs (using more than 180,000 mirrors) that concentrate the sun's rays onto tubes running laterally through the troughs and containing a heat transfer fluid (solar receivers), in contrast to the power tower concentrator concept that California's original Solar One project uses. These specially coated tubes, made of glass and steel, were designed and produced by Solel Solar Systems[2] as well as by Schott Glass.^[6] Motion control was supplied by Parker Hannifin, from components by Ansco Machine Company. The plant uses 18,240 of these four-meter-long tubes.

Solar thermal power plants designed for solar-only generation are well matched to summer noon peak loads in areas with significant cooling demands, such as the southwestern United States. Using thermal energy storage systems, solar thermal operating periods can be extended to meet even base load needs.^[7] Given Nevada's land and sun resources the state has the ability to produce more than 600GW using solar thermal concentrators like those used by Nevada Solar One.^[8]

Nine parabolic concentrator facilities have been successfully operating in California's Mojave Desert commercially since 1984 with a combined generating capacity of 354MW for these Solar Energy Generating Systems. Other parabolic trough power plants being proposed are two 50MW plants in Spain (see Solar power in Spain), and a 100MW plant in Israel.^[9]