Nellis to put the sun to work by 2008

By Phoebe Sweet

Saturday, April 21, 2007 | 7:08 a.m.

Nellis Air Force Base will break ground Monday on a solar power project that is expected by this time next year to generate more than a quarter of the base's electricity needs - enough power to serve 11,000 Las Vegas homes.

The project, called Solar Star, is promoted as the country's largest photo voltaic solar project. It will use the same technology that's strapped to residential roofs across the valley.

Solar industry experts say they're glad the government is taking the lead in deploying the technology.

"We have a long history of the government, in particular the Department of Defense and NASA, developing and implementing technologies that were later transferred into commercial markets," said Noah Kaye, a spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association.

California-based MMA Renewable Ventures will lease 140 acres on the western edge of the base and finance the $100 million-plus project, which will be built by California-based SunPower Corp.

The project will use 70,000 ground-mounted solar collectors that will rotate to face the sun throughout the day, allowing it to capture as much energy as an 18-megawatt stationary photo voltaic installation. The electricity will be delivered directly to the base for use, rather than stored in batteries.

Nellis will buy the power from the project at an estimated savings of $1 million a year compared with buying electricity from Nevada Power. MMA and its partners will sell the renewable energy credits to Nevada Power and its parent, Sierra Pacific Power, for 20 years to help the utilities meet their renewable energy portfolio standards.

Thomas Fair, Nevada Power's renewable energy executive, said once the Nellis project and a 64-megawatt solar thermal power plant in Boulder City are completed, Nevada will have the highest per capita solar energy production in the country.

MMA will receive a 30 percent federal tax credit on the project.

The project would not have been economically feasible without those incentives, officials note.

Industry experts say the solar power business will continue to rely heavily on subsidies and tax incentives to compete financially with traditional power plants until the industry gets off the ground.

Solar energy costs 18 to 25 cents a kilowatt hour to produce - about double the cost of generating electricity with coal or gas-fired power plants, according to Kaye.

The tax credits are to expire this year, but an unlikely coalition of utility and environmental groups lobbied Congress on Thursday to extend them for a decade.

Nevada Democrats Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Shelley Berk ley support the extension.

Kaye said states that encourage clean energy development are not only doing the right thing for the environment, but also the economically smart thing.

Extending tax credits for the projects will create 55,000 jobs nationwide and spur more than $45 billion in investment in the industry, he said.

The cost of producing solar power should eventually drop by 50 percent and become competitive with traditional power generation methods, according to George Douglas, a spokesman for the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

Lisa Frantzis, managing director of Navigant Consulting and head of the company's renewable energy practice, said Solar Star is an important project for the United States because it's among the first large-scale photo voltaic projects in this country.

"The fact that the military is taking a big leap into the renewables arena is significant," said Don Soderberg, chairman of the Nevada Public Utilities Commission. "I've always looked at solar as an investment in our future."

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