Sierra Pacific Resources last week said it has signed six contracts
with renewable energy suppliers in an effort to meet regulations
that require utilities to use alternative energy sources.
The contracts cover both of the holding company's power
companies, Nevada Power Co. in Las Vegas and Sierra Pacific
Power Co. in Reno.
The Nevada law requires that utilities increase their use of
renewable energy sources by 2 percent every third year until
solar, wind geothermal and/or biomass account for 15 percent
of the utilities power supplies.
Sierra Pacific will file the contracts with the Public Utilities
Commission to be sure they bring the company into compliance.
The contracts are for 227 megawatts of power. Over half
that is from wind generation, and the rest is from geothermal
sources.
The providers are Desert Queen Wind Limited Partnership
in Clark County; Advanced Thermal Systems, which is building
a Kalina cycle binary geothermal plant in Washoe County;
Earth Power Resources Inc., building a similar plant in Elko
County; subsidiaries of Ormat Nevada Inc., which is building a
flash-steam and binary geothermal plant in Churchill County;
and Ely Wind Co. LLC, which is building a wind generation
plant in White Pine County.
In 2000, Nevada produced 195.7 megawattts of geothermal
power at 10 sites, according to the International Geothermal
Association. In the United States, geothermal energy usage has
dropped since the 1990s, according to the association. In 1990,
capacity was 2,774 megawatts, but fell to 2,228 megawatts in
2000. The association projects that U.S. capacity will reach
2,376 megawatts by 2005.
