The U.S. Army on Friday detailed what it expects to be the Department of Defense's largest solar energy project--a 500-megawatt installation at the Fort Irwin base in the Mojave Desert in California.

The solar power will be generated by both photovoltaic panels and solar concentrators, which make heat that is converted into electricity through a turbine. The equipment will be installed in phases, according to Clark Energy Group, which was chosen along with Acciona Solar Power to do the installation. By comparison, the generating capacity of a natural gas or coal power plant could be between 600 megawatts and 800 megawatts.

Ultimately, the base's solar power plant could supply 1,250 gigawatt hours per year at Fort Irwin, which among other things has facilities for training and for communicating with NASA missions. The average U.S. home consumes about 11,000 kilowatt-hours per year so the full Army installation could power well over 100,000 homes.

The location of the base in the high Mojave Desert, midway between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, is ideal for solar generation, both of the photovoltaic and concentrating kind. There are a number of large solar installations at military camps which have available land and a well understood electrical load.

The Fort Irwin project is the first step in what the Army calls a far-reaching strategy to make energy supply of military installations more secure. The Army is spending over $1 billion on energy projects, including almost $700 million in stimulus funds. It did not say how much the Fort Irwin project itself would cost.

The Army earlier this year began reporting its "carbon bootprint," and military experts often cite the importance of alternative energy to the security of military installations and personnel.

The Army considers it a pilot project to meet its energy policy, which calls for conservation and the promotion of alternative energy generation. Like the U.S. Department of the Interior, which is setting aside land for solar power development, the military also intends to make some of its vast land holdings available for all types of renewable energy generation.

The project is still in the early stages of planning. The Army announced the two developers only Thursday. Clark Energy and Acciona will be charting out an attack plan for securing the necessary permits, equipment and crews to start construction, which is expected to start in 2011.

Arlington, Va.-based Clark Energy is part of the Clark Enterprise, which also includes real estate and construction companies. Acciona, headquartered in Spain, is a development and construction firm that has built solar thermal power plants and other types of renewable energy projects.

In the United States, Acciona is known for building a 64-megawatt solar thermal project called Nevada Solar One in Boulder City, Nevada in 2007.

The two developers plan to install both photovoltaic and solar thermal power plants at Fort Irwin, where the Army carries out combat training, and at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. The solar project would have to be done without interfering with the fort's operations.

The Army will lease land to Clark Energy and Acciona for the project and receive in-kind services in return. The lease, which could last 50 years, will be based on the fair market value of the land, and the rent would be paid in services such as building roads and paving airstrips, he added.

The project could expand by another 500 megawatts.

Image courtesy Acciona Solar Power

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