Nevada Owes Debt to Concentrated Solar

A 64-megawatt concentrated solar power plant will be built near Las Vegas at the cost of $266 million. According to Wells Fargo & Company, one of the financing companies, this is the largest solar facility to be built in 16 years and will cover 400 acres.

Acciona Energy is building the Nevada Solar One facility which is described as "182,000 parabolic trough-shaped mirror panels that track the sun throughout the day and concentrate solar radiation onto receiver tubes. This heats a special fluid in the receiver tubes to create steam that drives a conventional steam turbine generator to produce electricity."

If any city in the world should be using solar energy it is Las Vegas, with its 24-hour lights and non-essential use of electricity. By relying on non-polluting renewable energy for casino power, Las Vegas will greatly reduce its carbon emissions. Recently coal and gas-burning plants in the area were cited for spewing bad air.