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Moapa Band Celebrates Start-up Of First Solar Facility

By VERNON ROBISON

Moapa Valley Progress

Tribal leaders, elected officials and First Solar executives gathered last week for a celebration of the commissioning of the Moapa Southern Paiute Solar Project. PHOTO BY VERNON ROBISON/Moapa Valley Progress.

The Moapa Band of Paiutes and international solar energy development company, First Solar, celebrated the commissioning of a new 250-megawatt solar plant at a special ceremony held on Friday. The plant was hailed as the first utility scale solar project built on tribal land in the U.S.

A long list of elected officials, tribal leaders and industry executives travelled to the remote site of the facility. The plant is spread out over about 2,000 acres of desert, across Interstate 15 from the Paiute Travel Plaza. In attendance were both of Nevada’s U.S. Senators: Dean Heller and Catherine Cortez Masto. Also in attendance were State Assemblyman James Oscarson and Clark County Commissioner Marilyn Kirkpatrick.

In an introduction, Moapa Band Tribal Chairman Darren Daboda expressed delight at the final completion of the project which has been under construction for the past two and a half years.
“It has been a long road to this point,” Daboda said. “I never would have thought that our first big project would be something renewable. This project is not only beneficial for the tribe and the community, but also globally as the clean energy will be good for our planet.”

In a brief address to the gathered audience, Senator Dean Heller congratulated the tribe on the project’s successful completion. Heller said that he was a strong believer in the development of renewable energy sources. He specifically viewed the renewable energy industries as a tremendous economic opportunity for the state of Nevada.

“The northern part of our state has some of the greatest opportunities for geo-thermal energy production that exists anywhere,” Heller said. “And the southern part of the state has some of the most concentrated areas of solar resources anywhere in the country. With that being true, there is truly no state that benefits more from renewable energy than Nevada.”

Senator Catherine Cortez Masto remarked that a focus on renewable energy was fast becoming top of mind to a wide segment of younger U.S. citizens.
“Whenever I have conversations with people of the millennial generation, the first conversation we inevitably have is ‘what are we doing to reduce our carbon footprint?’,” Cortez Masto said. “The concern is widespread across the country. I think it is proof that Nevada should, and can, be the leader in that effort.”

The power generated by the plant will be delivered, through NV Energy transmission lines, to Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) for use in southern California under a 25 year purchase agreement. Operating at full capacity, it is able to power approximately 111,000 homes, according to First Solar officials.

After the remarks, attendees gathered on a hill overlooking the solar facility. There a large switch had been placed for officials to ceremonially set the solar plant into operation. The switch was flipped to the ‘on’ position with enthusiastic applause from the crowd.

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