Thursday marked the grand opening of a new solar power plant in Churchill County.
Cyrq Patua’s brand new 84 acre solar power plant is a $25 million facility, housing more than 45,000 solar panels. Cyrq Energy CEO, Nick Goodman, says each panel comes together with the geothermal plant next door to produce large amounts of energy for Nevadans and Californians alike.
"If you took 40 megawatts, that's several thousand homes that we're providing electricity for,” said Goodman. “So the energy gets delivered to Sacramento but that's a contractual thing, the actual electrons are going right out onto the grid in northern Nevada."
The geothermal plant in Hazen has been harnessing the hot water that's underground and converting it into renewable energy for more than three years. But Goodman says like any power plant site, there are times when production takes a dip.
“Power plant's like this typically degrade, or make less energy during the day, especially when it gets really hot,” said Goodman. “And then of course that's when this solar plant comes online and makes the most of its electricity.”
At Thursday’s ribbon cutting for the solar plant, Governor Brian Sandoval praised the project as not only the latest in Nevada’s long line of renewable energy sites, but he also applauded the economic impact projects like these can have on rural communities.
“It created a lot of construction jobs which is beneficial, sales tax for Churchill County, so it really is a win, win for everybody,” said Governor Sandoval.
