Dec 23 2010
SolarReserve, a, California-based company, received the Record of Decision (ROD) approval from the U.S. Department of Interior for its Tanopah, Nevada, located Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project. The construction of the plant is expected to commence during the middle of the year 2011.
The Tonopah project will incorporate an innovative solar energy know-how formulated by Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne, an auxiliary of United Technologies in the USA. The new technology has the capability to store the heat energy of the sun all through the day, offer full fledged power in the afternoon and enough heat to generate power for eight hours after sunset in the evening. The new technology will allow the utilities to draw continuous and stable power from an attached generator that provides on demand power supply with the same consistency of a normal power production devoid of the damaging discharges normally associated with the combustion of natural gas and coal as power production fuel. Tonopah Solar Energy, a fully owned auxiliary company of SolarReserve, has contracted a 25 year power purchase accord with NV Energy to sell the power generated from the project. The solar facility that incorporates a tower plant type construction will produce adequate clean power to electrify nearly 75,000 houses in Nevada.
The Tonopah project is anticipated to produce around 450 direct job positions and over 4,000 indirect and created job opportunities during its construction phase and 50 permanent job positions for maintenance after commissioning the project. The project with an annual estimated budget of around $5.0 million is expected to create over $40 million as sales and property tax income for the state during the period of its operation.