Solar Photovoltaic Power
The Copper Mountain Solar Facility is a 48 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic (PV) power plant in Boulder City, Nevada. Sempra Generation began construction of the plant in January 2010 and on December 1, 2010, the company announced that it had finished the project and the facility was generating electricity.
The 32 MW Long Island Solar Farm (LISF) is the largest photovoltaic array in the eastern U.S. It earned the Best Photovoltaic Project of Year Award from the New York Solar Energy Industries Association. The LISF is made up of 164,312 solar panels which provide enough electricity for roughly 4,500 households. Additionally, the project will cause the abatement of more than 30,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
The 25 MW DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center in Florida consists of over 90,000 solar panels.
The Nellis Solar Power Plant was completed in December, 2007. It is located at Nellis Air Force Base in Clark County, Nevada. It includes approximately 70,000 solar panels and the peak power generation capacity of the plant is approximately 15 megawatts.
There are also many large plants under construction. The Desert Sunlight Solar Farm is a 550 MW solar power plant under construction in Riverside County, California, that will use thin-film solar photovoltaic modules made by First Solar. The Topaz Solar Farm is a 550 MW photovoltaic power plant, being built in San Luis Obispo County, California. The Blythe Solar Power Project is a 500 MW photovoltaic station under construction in Riverside County, California. The Agua Caliente Solar Project is a 290 megawatt photovoltaic solar generating facility being built in Yuma County, Arizona. The California Valley Solar Ranch (CVSR) is a 250 megawatt (MW) solar photovoltaic power plant, which is being built by SunPower in the Carrizo Plain, northeast of California Valley.
Many schools and businesses have building-integrated photovoltaic solar panels on their roof. Most of these are grid connected and use net metering laws to allow use of electricity in the evening that was generated during the daytime. New Jersey leads the nation with the least restrictive net metering law, while California leads in total number of homes which have solar panels installed. Many were installed because of the million solar roof initiative. California has decided that it is not moving forward fast enough on photovoltaic generation and in 2008 enacted a feed-in tariffs. Washington state has a feed-in tariff of 15 ¢/kWh which increases to 54 ¢/kWh if components are manufactured in the state. Hawaii and Michigan are also considering feed in tariffs.
Read more about this topic: Renewable Energy In The United States
Famous quotes containing the words solar and/or power:
“Senta: These boats, sir, what are they for?
Hamar: They are solar boats for Pharaoh to use after his death. They’re the means by which Pharaoh will journey across the skies with the sun, with the god Horus. Each day they will sail from east to west, and each night Pharaoh will return to the east by the river which runs underneath the earth.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
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—Lester Cole (1904–1985)