In the United States, solar-powered energy plants are starting to come into their own. San-Diego based Sempra Generation finished construction on the largest photovoltaic solar power plant in the country, located in Boulder City, Nev., about 40 miles southeast of Las Vegas. The 48-megawatt Copper Mountain Solar facility has 775,000 thin-film solar panels, which should be able to power about 14,000 homes, on average.
Construction on Copper Mountain Solar began in January 2010 at the 380-acre desert site. About 350 construction workers at peak installed nearly 775,000 thin-film photovoltaic solar panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity.
First Solar of Tempe, Ariz., supplied the solar panels and served as the engineering, procurement and construction contractor.
The power from Copper Mountain Solar and Sempra Generation’s adjacent 10-MW El Dorado Solar plant has been sold to Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) under separate 20-year contracts. California utilities are required to procure 20 percent of their energy supply from alternative sources by the end of 2010, increasing to 33 percent by 2020.
Sempra Generation expects to begin construction on the first phase of a 600-MW solar project in Arizona next year, and recently received approval to build a 200-MW solar farm in Kern County, Calif. The company also recently announced that it has become an equal partner with BP Wind Energy in the development of a 250-MW wind project in Colorado that is currently under construction.
– from discovery.com
Which power plant can be built with this speed? So why wasting time and money with Nuclear, Coal and gas