SolarReserve’s first-generation solar power plant is a welcome sign of green progress. Once the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project is completed in 2013, it will generate roughly 480,000 megawatt hours per year of clean, renewable electricity to power 75,000 homes during peak electricity periods.

The company’s unique, concentrating solar-power technology and innovative energy storage was developed by the same Rocketdyne engineers and scientists who designed Apollo rockets, Space Shuttle engines, and the solar power system for the International Space Station.

Harnessing sunlight with concentrating solar power technology

Tonopah Solar Energy, a subsidiary of SolarReserve, manages the project, which is located on 1,600 acres northwest of Tonopah, a historical silver mining town in Nevada. The site selection was based on key elements for optimum solar energy—hours of direct sunlight, altitude (for more intense sunlight), and the strength of direct normal irradiance (the amount of solar radiation from the direction of the sun).

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