Solar Power In The Desert

Vast open lands roughly equal in size to the entire state of new mexico with an endless bounty of heat from the sun.

Solar power in the desert. It is located at the base of clark mountain in california across the state line from primm nevada. The ivanpah solar power facility is a 370 mw facility which consists of three separate solar thermal power plants just off interstate highway 15 on the nevada california border in the mojave desert. The ivanpah solar electric generating system is a concentrated solar thermal plant in the mojave desert. This is again a big number that requires some context.

Our solar panels have successfully passed the most important test report blowing sand. It has been said that all of the us could be powered by a solar array covering 100 x 100 square miles in the desert linked to storage batteries covering 1 x 1 square mile. A similar claim is that covering 0 6 of the nation s land with solar panels could power the entire country. If every drop of sunshine that hits the sahara was converted into energy the desert would produce enough electricity over any given period to power europe 7 000 times over.

By kyla mandel the mojave desert straddling california and nevada has been called the saudi arabia of solar power. The plant has a gross capacity of 392 megawatts mw. It means that a hypothetical solar farm that covered the entire desert would produce 2 000 times more energy than even the largest power stations in the world which generate barely 100 000 gwh a year.