Home: Renewable Energy News: Wednesday 21 October, 2009

Renewable Energy News

WEDNESDAY 21 OCTOBER, 2009 |

$2 Billion Solar Farm For US Army

Solar farm for Fort Irwin
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has selected Acciona Solar Power and the Clark Energy Group to develop a 500MW solar farm project at Fort Irwin military complex, located in the Mojave Desert, California.

The installations are being designed in a way to allow for the capacity to be increased to 1,000 MW at a later date. The project will involve concentrating solar power (CSP) and solar panels.

The Fort Irwin installations will be the U.S. Department of Defense’s biggest solar project. Currently, the 14 MW solar farm at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, and the 2 MW installation at Fort Carson, Colorado are the Department of Defense’s largest solar power generating plants.

The solar farm is expected to produce approximately 1,000 gigawatt hours of electricity annually, far exceeding Fort Irwin’s 35 MW peak load. Fort Irwin is more than just a military base, but a town of 23,000 inhabitants made up of military personnel and civilians and their respective families. The project will sell electricity that is not used by the Fort Irwin complex to regional public utilities.

The facilities will be installed at five sites covering a total of 21 square miles. While construction will take place over a relatively long period of time, by 2014 the first site development should be sufficiently advanced to cover Fort Irwin’s total energy needs.

Acciona designs, develops and operates large-scale solar farms, including the largest concentrating solar power plant to be completed in the world since 1991, Nevada Solar One (64 MW) in Boulder City, Nevada.

Dell's Car Park Solar Farm

Dell solar farm
The computer giant, Dell, has announced the completion of construction of a new 516-panel solar farm at its Round Rock, Texas headquarters.

The solar farm, which utilises BP Solar panels and was constructed in partnership with McBride Electric Inc. and Envision Solar, will generate 130,000 kilowatt hours of solar power annually. The installation will mitigate around 65 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year.

The structure is located in a parking lot and will provide shade to 50 parking spaces and provide two charging stations for plug-in electric vehicles.

With millions of acres of open air parking lots around the world, many these under-utilised spaces could become solar farms; addressing some of the issues relating to building solar power stations in remote areas such as increased cost of electricity delivery, environmental concerns and line loss; while providing revenue generation and cost saving opportunities for their owners.

According to Dane Parker, Dell’s director of Americas Facilities and Global Environment, Health and Safety, Dell now sources over a quarter of its global electricity requirements from renewable sources, and is committed to doing more through launching solar pilot projects in every region where the company does business.

Last year, Dell met its carbon neutral goal ahead of schedule, achieving a major milestone in its commitment to be the 'greenest' technology company on the planet. Earlier this year, Technology Business Research announced Dell took the No. 1 position in its inaugural Corporate Sustainability Index (CSI) Benchmark Report for 2009.