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In Nevada, plans are being made for a 475-megawatt solar array with a 540 megawatt-hour battery system. The plan to build the massive installation north of Las Vegas is the largest ever for Nevada.
Brian Eckhouse reports for Bloomberg:
Clean-power companies are racing to develop solar projects with batteries capable of providing grids with power after sundown. A key reason is more and more states — including Nevada — have committed to ban fossil fuels from power generation over the next several decades, but they’ll need more than intermittent solar and wind power to do it. Solar complemented by energy storage can help.
It helps that battery prices have fallen sharply. Plus, in some instances it’s cheaper to build a solar project with batteries than a new gas-fired power plant, including in parts of the U.S. Southwest.
8minute’s Southern Bighorn Solar & Storage Center is expected to begin construction in 2022 and be operational the following year if approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada. It would be the fourth solar project developed on the Moapa River Indian Reservation.
Read more here.