Following up a previously stated desire to run off green and renewable sources, the city of Las Vegas, Nevada has effectively reached their goal.
Utilizing a vast array of solar panels, the 100-megawatt solar plant near Boulder City (named Boulder Solar 1) provides most of the energy needed to power the city's public sector -- that is, not including people's homes and businesses. That too, however, is on its way forward as solar panels are placed on homes and company rooftops; several casinos have also announced plans to move toward renewables (MGM Resorts, Wynn, and Las Vegas Sands as of reading the article sourced below). For some frame of reference on what the state normally produces, please look at the documentation on Nevada energy generation. The city has a 25-year contract to purchase 100 megawatts annually to feed into the grid. There also appears to be plans for the city to tap into the Hoover Dam, which despite being in the same state, Las Vegas has apparently never done so before.
Additional Source: The Independent
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @03:41PM
Watch out for the BoS then...
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday December 26 2016, @08:33PM
Blocking of Sun?
Buildings on Sand?
Bunch of Stupids?
Boneheads of Soylent?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @09:14PM
Brotherhood of Steel?
(Score: 3, Touché) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday December 26 2016, @04:22PM
Better to waste renewable energy on useless lighting than fossil fuel energy...
Seriously, if LV just curbed the waste of energy a bit, they wouldn't need giant solar farms.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday December 26 2016, @04:47PM
If I had to guess, the city public works of Las Vegas doesn't participate in much of the wasteful glowiness, besides maybe the famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.
But yeah, good luck convincing the president elect he needs less than 8 15000 lumen spotlights on his name on his casino.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday December 26 2016, @08:43PM
Look at the way the city hall is lit.
http://www.yesco.com/specialtylighting/ [yesco.com]
https://player.vimeo.com/video/48598738 [vimeo.com] (Flash required)
http://cdn.archinect.net/images/1200x/no/nos00p5awgidn56n.jpg [archinect.net]
http://cdn.archinect.net/images/1200x/z0/z0tgto5dqcwh7n1v.jpg [archinect.net]
http://cdn.archinect.net/images/1200x/r3/r3qck53igfru5mpl.jpg [archinect.net]
https://web.archive.org/web/20161226203708/http://www.lasvegas360.com/?s=city+hall [archive.org]
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Monday December 26 2016, @08:45PM
From the last page I linked:
[...] its blue waterfall of LED lights, makes it look like water is pouring down the front of the building.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday December 26 2016, @08:51PM
Well, damn. I suppose that pretty much completely invalidates my argument, as it sticks a giant spiky fork in one of the core propositions.
Los Vegas government: the GGP was right, stop being so wasteful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @02:27AM
Most of the casinos on the strip want to use solar. The ROI is probably *very* quick for them. They have been fighting it in court for years. At this point they are arguing only about cost.
http://www.inquisitr.com/3557507/las-vegas-goes-green-strip-casinos-leaving-nevada-power-grid/ [inquisitr.com]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-10/buffett-s-power-play-pits-las-vegas-casinos-against-energy-unit [bloomberg.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @04:11AM
Thanks for these links, the Bloomberg article was a good read. Looks like NV hasn't done much to drain the swamp of lobbyists?
Like MGM and Wynn, casino operator Las Vegas Sands secured regulatory approval last year to leave NV Energy, but says it intends to stay—for now. Regulators determined Sands would have to pay $23.9 million to leave NV Energy, a sum the company indicated it thought was too high. Instead, Sands, controlled by Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, is backing a November ballot measure that would amend the Nevada constitution to deregulate the state’s energy market, doing away with NV Energy’s monopoly.
The rest of the article provides the necessary context...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @04:50PM
From another article [popularmechanics.com]:
Las Vegas began its renewable energy project in 2008, reducing electricity usage through sustainability programs and installing solar panels on city buildings. Las Vegas will also receive power from Hoover Dam for the first time in its history, starting at the end of 2017.
The city has reduced its electricity usage by more than 30 percent due to these initiatives. Estimates place the city's yearly energy savings at approximately $5 million.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Leebert on Monday December 26 2016, @05:12PM
Aside from the "not the whole city, just the municipal facilities" thing, what bugs me about this story is that it makes people think about the Las Vegas "Strip", with its power-hungry glowing bright lights everywhere. Except the strip isn't even *in* the city of Las Vegas -- it's in an unincorporated town called "Paradise".
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Monday December 26 2016, @05:32PM
Just got a little closer to reality.
Now all we need are giant lase beams on the top of the Wynn or something...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @01:53PM
Well there's already that beam that comes out of the peak of the Luxor.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 26 2016, @07:46PM
It's still OK for you alt-rights to go there though, since they still shit on the earth by wasting a lot of water.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday December 26 2016, @10:53PM
You misspelt fascist
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 27 2016, @02:45AM
Ah the illusion of being smart when they really have not bothered to find out what those 'alt-right' guys are pissed off about with a touch of not knowing what a fascist is.
If you look at most fascist societies the world currently has you will find 'benevolent communists' at the center of them.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by jmorris on Monday December 26 2016, @08:34PM
Stop with the preening and virtue signaling. The more Proggies brag about how Holy they are as they spend other people's money to buy green grace, the more convinced normal people are that it is just a scam. You want 'green energy' widely adopted it is easy, wait until it becomes price competitive. There are already (very) limited use cases where wind and solar can compete, these should grow over time as tech does what it always does and improves and fossil fuels remain a finite resource, even if we use tech to tap previously uneconomical sources like we have with fracking.
And when somebody installs a wind farm or solar array because it is cheaper, there won't be any glowing articles about how wonderful everyone involved with the project, which is the stuff that makes us out in flyover country gag as coastal elites waste so much page and screen time congratulating each other over how superior they are because of how much money they wasted. No, by then the elite green opinionmakers will have evolved to hate solar and wind and be out protesting the new construction. That is in point of fact when we will know it is the right technology at the right time.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday December 28 2016, @06:59PM
The price won't drop without R&D and without scaling up production, and neither of those can happen if people aren't buying the product to provide the money to do so. Sure, there's those "very limited" use cases where it's already worthwhile, but that alone never would have gotten us to the current scale and panel efficiency this fast.
So in your mind people should be hated for sacrificing their personal comfort to try to do something good for the world, and they should be congratulated for refusing to do anything good for the world unless it's also profitable to them personally? You can get paid in PR, or you can get paid in cash. You don't get both. Stop pretending you're entitled to get paid twice for the same job.
And remember that technology doesn't evolve in a vacuum. It's influenced by the economy, it's influenced by our culture. So if you're going to say you won't push for new technology economically or culturally what you're actually saying is that you just don't want new tech. Just push that oil refining as far as it can possibly go, then when we're on level 10 oil refining and we run out of oil, we've gotta drop back to level 1 solar tech because nobody bothered to research that yet because oil was more cost-effective.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Thursday December 29 2016, @01:22AM
The price won't drop without R&D and without scaling up production, and neither of those can happen if people aren't buying the product to provide the money to do so. Sure, there's those "very limited" use cases where it's already worthwhile, but that alone never would have gotten us to the current scale and panel efficiency this fast.
We have been subsidizing solar for about forty years now. Could you tell me exactly where the cutoff is where it stands on its merits or perishes? And no, let me reject your premise a bit. R&D is required for advancement, mass manufacturing at a loss and deployment via subsidy is not. It is doubtful much of the knowledge of production efficiency from the 1980s is doing much good now and certainly won't in another twenty years or so when wide scale solar will actually be cost effective.
Aviation went from the Wright Brothers to jets in the time scale solar has been subsidized. And does anyone believe solar will be installed at a profit anytime in the next decade? We will continue to see a lot of press releases making claims but if you look you can always find the subsidy. If the whole world used solar it would be a much poorer place.
And who says getting it here faster is even the best option? The government has a very poor track record for picking winning technology. Ethanol anyone? Still requires more energy to create a gallon of the stuff that most engines can recover by burning it. And removing all that corn from the world food markets had some nasty side effects. Our government in action. But we are told it is ok, they meant well. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; judge results not intent.
So in your mind people should be hated for sacrificing their personal comfort to try to do something good for the world
Not at all. Go, do good. Or at least try to. I might think your plan is daft but I also think everybody has a Right to be Wrong and don't want anyone to have the power to tell folks who aren't hurting others they are Wrong and must stop what they are doing. But do it with your own goddamned money! What I object to is stealing -my- money, pissing it away on pointless projects so the ones doing the pissing away can feel good. Sorry chum, don't work that way. You only get karma for your own contributions, you can't order somebody else to contribute and claim the karma. Bill Gates funding research is wonderful. His money, his pet project, no possible objection.
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Monday December 26 2016, @10:39PM
There also appears to be plans for the city to tap into the Hoover Dam, which despite being in the same state, Las Vegas has apparently never done so before.
Someone's history is faulty if they believe that. The FIRST place transmission lines went from Hoover (then called Boulder Dam) was to Vegas.
Its no longer the major supplier of power for Las Vegas but it surely was the first and the largest for a long time. Las Vegas currently gets 15.58% of its power from Hoover/Boulder Dam.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.