U.S. Army Continues To Go “Green”

The U.S. Department of Defense has just commissioned Clark Energy Group to develop a large scale solar power project at Fort Irwin in California. The Clark Energy group will be assisted by Acciona Solar Power for construction and management of the facility.

The project is being commissioned by the U.S. Army Corp’s Enhanced Use Leasing (EUL) program which is aiding Fort Irwin and the Army in the Fort Irwin solar energy project.

The project will utilise several different new solar technologies to create a system which will generate up to 1,000 MW of power. Photovoltaic and concentrated solar thermal technologies will be used to generate this amount of power. The completed project will hopefully yield up to 1,250 GW of renewable energy per year using 500MW of installed solar power. The energy is expected to be able to provide enough electricity for the Fort Irwin facilities. 

The solar project at Fort Irwin is part of a test project for the Secretary of the Army’s Senior Energy Council. The council was formed to arrange and execute new means of securing sustainable energy resources for the United States Army. 

The EUL will function as a means to lease Army land on a long-term basis in exchange for private capital and expertise on installation maintenance and such.

The solar plant is being constructed at Fort Irwin Army base, which is located in the California desert near Las Vegas.  The base is famous for housing the National Training Center which the Army uses to train soldiers in combat, as well as NASA’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex which organizes space missions.