The big picture

Why solar, why now

With rising fuel costs, climate change concerns and a growing demand for electricity, renewable energy resources such as solar power are becoming an increasingly valuable part of the world's energy mix. Governments around the globe are recognizing the potential that solar power provides and are aggressively analyzing and adopting renewable energy.

The world over, businesses and homeowners are harnessing the power of the earth's most abundant natural resource – sunlight – to provide energy using solar power.

Utility-scale solar power

Nevada Solar One uses proprietary technology to track the sun’s location and concentrate its rays during peak demand hours. The plant employs 760 parabolic concentrators with more than 200,000 mirrors that concentrate the sun’s rays onto more than 18,200 receiver tubes. Fluid that heats up to 735°F flows through these tubes and is used to produce steam that drives a conventional turbine, which is connected to a generator that produces electricity. This is CSP – concentrating solar power – and we excel at it.

ACCIONA Solar Power recognized the potential for CSP generation in the Southwestern U.S. and built Nevada Solar One to demonstrate that this technology could perform on a utility scale. The building of CSP plants in the U.S. could help contribute to a lower carbon-emitting electricity grid in just a few decades.

As a clean, reliable and cost-efficient technology, CSP offers enormous potential, and ACCIONA Solar Power is leading the way in making it a reality.

What people are saying

“Thirty-five miles southeast of Las Vegas is a 280-acre shining oasis on a parched desert plain: the power plant called Nevada Solar One. Every two minutes its 220,000 giant glass mirrors rotate imperceptibly with a barely audible click, tracking the sun's path across the sky.” —Claire Cain Miller, Forbes