NV Energy is going to be purchasing thirty two MW of renewable energy from a geothermal plant in Central Nevada. A twenty year purchase agreement was signed between this company and Clayton Power 1.
A subsidiary of the Ram Power Corporation, Clayton Power 1 feels that the construction of this Geothermal Project on Clayton Valley is going to start in the beginning of the year 2012 and is going to be comlpete latest by 2014. This is only one a five geothermal leases that have been acquired by Ram Power from Esmeralda Couty’s Bureau of Land Management with the help of which they are hoping to be able to generate up to a maximum of 160 MW of electricity. The terms under which this electricity purchase agreement was made has not been disclosed to anyone and is also subject to approval by Nevada’s Public Utilities Commission. The President and CEO of NV ENergy has said, ” We are very pleased to have added more sources of clean, renewable energy into the supply portfolio and are also happy to have expanded the use of geothermal power by us.” Geothermal energy has gained so much popularity in front of the utilities as it is not very expensive when compared with the other renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind and also because it is a very reliable source of electricity and can produce energy for twenty four hours a day irrespective of the weather conditions.
Nevada ranks second in the country when it comes to talking about producers of geothermal energy. The number one state which produces geothermal energy is California.But, one very interesting point to note here is that the state of Nevada has a lot of open areas and this means that the future of this state is very bright when talking about generation of electricity from renewable sources of energy. Be it, solar, wind or geothermal, this state has the best possible weather conditions and land mass for having all these projects succeed. This might also be a reason why, out of the fifty states of America, this is the state which has the largest number of geothermal energy generating projects in their planning stages.