Monday, Jan. 13, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.
Some strange-looking saucers behind the UNLV campus have been grabbing the sun's rays -- along with a lot of attention from a national energy lab.
According to the National Renewable Energy Lab, a 100-mile-wide spot in the Southern Nevada desert has the potential to generate enough solar energy to play a big role in providing for the nation's energy needs.
The problem is finding a cost-effective way to harness the sun's power.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is working on technology that would help achieve that goal -- and if all the stars align, the school could become a powerhouse in the field of renewable energy research.
"UNLV is quickly becoming one of the leading solar researchers in the country, and then you have this great solar resource there in Southern Nevada," said Mary Jane Hale, a senior engineer for the National Renewable Energy Lab in Colorado. "If politicians make the right decisions and make sure that there is enough funding, dramatic things could happen, not only within the state of Nevada but in the nation."
The solar panels being tested by UNLV, which border East Flamingo Road, are called parabolic dishes. The two dishes track the sun, and inside the mirrored surface is a tube filled with hydrogen gas that heats up and then drives pistons of an engine. The unit, which has been in operation for about a year, produces 25 kilowatts of power, or enough power for 250 100-watt lightbulbs per second.
UNLV researchers are trying to find an affordable way to make energy using the sun's power. The parabolic dish is the researchers' attempt to make that happen.
If it works, the technology could be used on the 100-mile-wide bright spot in the Nevada desert that the national lab sees as the future of solar power.
Lab officials see promise in UNLV's project and in the future of the solar project, which would be put on Bureau of Land Management land.
"It is the technology that is the most viable, it is the cheapest compared to (traditional solar panels) and we know how to do it," Hale said. "Putting solar collectors on that land is a very real possibility."
Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., helped secure $1 million in federal funds in 2002 for UNLV's research on solar-power generation. The University of Nevada, Reno also received $1 million of research money for geothermal energy.
But solving the nation's energy needs is no simple feat. First there is the not-so-small problem of the country's reliance on fossil fuels, and then there is the high cost of the technology.
Other solar technologies are being tested, including a Duke Energy project in Boulder City that uses oil, not hydrogen, to power the engine.
"What we have is a (presidential) administration right now that's not really high on this kind of stuff," said Bob Boehm, director of UNLV's Center for Energy Research. "They are high on oil."
While the dishes soak up 30 percent of the sun's rays that hit them -- three times as much as conventional solar panels -- it would cost the average user triple the price of traditional power sources, according to NREL officials. With continued research and use of the technology, those costs are expected to go down, officials said.
Another benefit of UNLV's renewable energy program is that it is training experts in a field where there aren't many experts to go around, Boehm said.
The hope is that UNLV's projects will help make the state a mecca not only for the collection of energy but also the manufacturing of energy collectors, Boehm said.
"It's not unreasonable that this could lead to some sort of industry here," Boehm said. "We are in a prime location for using the sun and manufacturing these types of things."
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