CleanBeta

Inyokern: North’s America’s Solar Power Capital

Inyokern is an 11-square mile stretch of largely empty land in the Indian Wells Valley near the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in southern California’s Kern County. The extremely arid desert town receives more sunlight (or higher intensity solar insolation) than any other comparably-sized place in North America.

Not surprisingly, solar energy companies have big plans for this little town. In March, FPL Energy announced plans to build a utility-scale solar thermal power plant in the area. The new plant will is called the Beacon Solar Energy Project and will occupy roughly 2,000 acres of eastern Kern County. The project will feature 500,000 parabolic mirrors arranged in rows for concentrating the solar energy and funneling the heat into steam powered turbines that generate electricity. The electricity will be delivered to a nearby electric grid. Construction on the project is scheduled to begin in 2009 and last about two years.

In 2000, the town had a population of 984, according to the 2000 census. Characterized by extreme aridity, Inyokern’s rugged mountains climb more than 10,000 ft. high. The annual rainfall in Inyokern is less than 3 inches. Inyokern frequently appears in world climate surveys because it has the highest insolation of any place on the North American continent, receiving over 355 days of sunshine each year.

Inyokern was founded as a small agrarian community near the edge of the Mojave Desert in the mid-19th century. During World War II, the Department of the Navy located its new warfare center in Inyokern, which is the primary reason the town has an airport. Inyokern is small bedroom community for those who cannot afford to the cost of housing in nearby Ridgecrest. Ironically, they appear to be sitting on some highly valuable real estate.

Siting renewable energy systems is a critical component of maximizing the project’s return on investment. The trouble is that siting a solar energy system depends on the local patterns in solar radiation. Daily weather changes and seasonal position movements can improve or diminish a system’s performance. In addition, earth’s atmosphere is a continuously changing filter modifying the sunlight that travels through it and computes how changes in the atmosphere affect the distribution of solar power or photon energy for each wavelength of light is extremely difficult. Optimum system siting is a challenge, but not a very difficult one in Inyokern.