In the Las Vegas Valley of Nevada, where solar insolation values meet or exceed 6.5 – the highest level in the continental U.S. – a college is considering installing a major solar photovoltaic distributed power system across three of its campuses.
The College of Southern Nevada (CSN) – which includes a 22-year-old, 80-acre campus at 6375 W. Charleston Blvd. in Las Vegas, as well as a 36-year-old building at 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave. in North Las Vegas, and a 29-year-old building at 700 College Drive in Henderson – wants to cut its electricity costs in half via a distributed solar array being designed by Las Vegas-based architectural firm JMA.
If the project comes to fruition, the money saved would pay for the system within 15 years. The distributed solar arrays are also an opportunity for the college to make a public statement about energy use and “green energy” alternatives, according to JMA President Thomas Schoeman.
The solar panels will be placed on rooftops, in parking areas, and around entry plazas, according to Schoeman, who says the design phase should be completed within three months. On the Cheyenne Ave. building, for example – the largest in the college – an outlay of one million square feet of solar panels would deliver 5.2 megawatts, or enough electricity to serve 5,200 average American homes.
The area is currently served by Nevada Energy, formerly Nevada Power (formed by the 1999 merger with Sierra Pacific Resources, during which Nevada Power changed its name).
Nevada Energy currently leads the nation in the use of solar and geothermal energy, but it also has a baseload generation mix of 58 percent coal and 29 percent gas, the first of which is likely to raise utility rates as carbon emission reduction strategies are implemented.
Nevada Energy ratepayers are also paying higher electricity prices thanks to a Nevada PUC-approved rate case that allowed the utility to raise its prices by a whopping 17 percent in two phases, the first kicking in during July of 2009 and the second on Jan. 1 of this year.
This is the “current economic situation” that CSN Vice President Sherri Payne referred to in a recent discussion of the solar proposal. In addition, Payne noted, federal and state incentives make Southern Nevada prime for solar development, including a 30 percent tax credit under ARRA (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which allocates $190 billion to clean energy technologies like solar), and the state’s renewable portfolio standard, which mandates utilities derive at least 20 percent of their power from renewables by 2015 (with at least five percent of that coming strictly from solar power).