Construction starts on world's largest solar array

A groundbreaking took place at Nellis Air Force Base, just north of Las Vegas, Nevada, in the desolate, arid, windswept Mojave Desert. The ceremony will initiate construction on what will be the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) array in the United States, capable of producing 15-18 megawatts of power. At least for a year or so, say Air Force officials, the plant will also constitute the largest such facility in the world, encompassing an investment of $100 million on 140 acres. The land will largely be covered by silicon wafers that will rotate each day to doggedly follow the sun across the sky.

The facility represents one of the U.S. Department of Defense's (DOD) largest forward leaps in developing renewable energy. It is symbolic of the DOD's efforts to reduce the high cost of fossil-fuel generated electricity that will increasingly, in the years ahead, characterize life in Southern Nevada.

Yet, in many ways, the new facility is a reminder that PV energy remains largely on the sidelines in the larger scheme of energy production in the area. The Nellis plant will produce electricity during the day - not after sundown. Lacking battery storage capacity, its power will constitute a useful supplement, not a primary generating source, for the base's own needs. Some estimates suggest the plant may supply only 25-30% of the base's needs. Those percentages hardly inspire confidence that the plant will produce any spare solar-generated power for Southern Nevada's high-growth communities - notably Las Vegas and Mesquite, traditionally dependent on cheap, abundant electricity, not to mention adequate water supplies from adjacent Lake Mead (currently down 100 feet from normal).

- As I have already noted earlier, these "world's largest solar power plants" are still maxing out below 20MW. On a good day, with the sun shining. Quite some distance from the 24x7 operation, baseload 500-1000MW of the traditional power plants (fossil fuels, nuclear, or hydro).

Perhaps we should consider space solar power. At least, the Pentagon is.

Global warming is the new cold war

peakoil.com -> hamiltonspectator.com :

For many children and young adults, global warming is the atomic bomb of today. Fears of an environmental crisis are defining their generation in ways that the Depression, the Second World War, Vietnam and the Cold War's lingering war games etched souls in the 20th century.

Parents say they're searching for "productive" outlets for their eight-year-olds' obsessions with dying polar bears. Teachers say enrolment in high school and college environmental studies classes is doubling year after year. And psychologists say they're seeing an increasing number of young patients preoccupied by a climactic Armageddon.

The environment is becoming their galvanizing force: Thirty-seven years after the first Earth Day in the United States, the topic is more than an issue. It's personal. "For, like, the whole history of the environmental movement," begins David Bronstein, 19, a freshman at St. John's College in Annapolis, "we've been saying: 'Do it for your children. We have to protect the Earth for them.' But that argument has shifted. I'm fighting for MY future."

Gore is this generation's Bob Dylan; Truth is its Blowin' in the Wind. There was also last spring's effort by David Bronstein - before he graduated - to do 20-minute presentations on "the problem of global warming and how it's the challenge of our generation and what we need to do about it" to about 20 of Sherwood's government, English, social studies and philosophy classes. "This message about global warming is so powerful," Bronstein says. "It gives me hope for the human race because people are responsive to it." He compares enviro-fears to "any suffering in your life: The first step is denial, and then there's a sense of doom, and then you have to get up and shake it off and change something."

(2007-05-18 12:32:13 SGT) [Env] Permalink

Start-up places $79-million order for ZAP electric vehicles

greencarcongress.com :

A Chicago-based start-up, The Electric Vehicle Company, has placed a $79-million order with ZAP for its electric cars, trucks and other vehicles. The Electric Vehicle Company (EVC) was founded with the goal of promoting economical non-polluting electric transportation.

Additionally, the company has the goal of developing the first retail chain committed to the sale of all-electric vehicles. ZAP CEO Steve Schneider noted that EVC would receive an 8% discount if orders were filled within the next 12 months.