The solar panels at the Solar One facility. Sierra Pacific Solar Facilities Powerlight Corporation A 3.066 megawatt plant located in Las Vegas, NV, owned and operated by the Powerlight Corporation Clark PhotoVoltaic Station The Clark PV Station (owned by Nevada Power) consists of three dual-axis high concentrating photovoltaic tracking arrays that will produce 180,000 kilowatt hours of power that will be fed directly into the local electrical grid.  This is enough energy to power approximately 12 medium-sized homes in southern Nevada Nevada Solar One A 64-megawatt plant located in the Eldorado Valley near Boulder City, NV, owned by Acciona Solar Power, a majority-owned subsidiary of Acciona Energy. Residential Customer-Owned Solar Panels In addition to large solar installations, residential customers throughout Nevada can get rebates for installing solar panels on their homes through the SolarGenerations Program. Procaps Laboratory A 0.1564 megawatt plant located in Henderson, NV, owned and operated by Procaps Laboratory.

Southern Nevada's abundant sunshine combined with Nevada Power's robust transmission grid and ample open land make this an excellent location for the development of solar power.

With the economics of solar technologies continuing to improve, Nevada Power will be expanding its use of solar resources in the years to come.

Nevada Power has a long-term contract to buy the power generated by Nevada Solar One, located south of Las Vegas near Boulder City, Nevada. This 64-megawatt power plant, developed by Acciona Solar Power, is the largest solar plant to be developed anywhere in the world in the past 15 years.

What is Solar Power?

Many power plants today use fossil fuels as a heat source to boil water. The steam from the boiling water rotates a large turbine, which activates a generator that produces electricity. However, a new generation of power plants, with concentrating solar power systems, uses the sun as a heat source. There are three main types of concentrating solar power systems: parabolic-trough, dish/engine, and power tower.

Parabolic-trough systems -- like the one being used in Nevada Solar One -- concentrate the sun's energy through long rectangular, curved (U-shaped) mirrors. The mirrors are tilted toward the sun, focusing sunlight on a pipe that runs down the center of the trough. This heats the oil flowing through the pipe. The hot oil then is used to boil water in a conventional steam generator to produce electricity.

A dish/engine system uses a mirrored dish (similar to a very large satellite dish). The dish-shaped surface collects and concentrates the sun's heat onto a receiver, which absorbs the heat and transfers it to fluid within the engine. The heat causes the fluid to expand against a piston or turbine to produce mechanical power. The mechanical power is then used to run a generator or alternator to produce electricity.

A power tower system uses a large field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the top of a tower, where a receiver sits. This heats molten salt flowing through the receiver. Then, the salt's heat is used to generate electricity through a conventional steam generator. Molten salt retains heat efficiently, so it can be stored for days before being converted into electricity. That means electricity can be produced on cloudy days or even several hours after sunset.