Utah's $600 Million Solar Power Plant Coming Soon!

        A multimillion dollar power plant will be soon built in Central Utah. The solar farm will be nestled near the small town of Delta, but it won't be generating clean energy for Utah. Instead, it will be sending its energy to California, but it'll prove to be a big boom for rural Utah's economy. At the same time, the Provo-based company contracted to do the project is placing the solar panels next to one of the worst polluters in the Western United States. Josh Case is the CEO of Energy Capitol Group, and he said that's a good location. 

       "We think we have the ideal location," he said. "We're adjacent to the Intermountain Power Plant and the transmission infrastructure and we're developing a 300 megawatt solar plant. We're leasing 1,754 acres from SITLA." The vacant landscape will become a sea of 800,000 solar panels spanning nearly 2,000 acres. Because the land belongs to SITLA, school children will also benefit from the energy harvested from the sun.

Honda Sells Renewable Energy in Japan, 2015

          The new Honda facility, located in Sakura, Japan, is where the automaker is planning to install a "mega solar system" that can produce 10 megawatt a year on a new test course. After installing a total of 70,000 solar panels on 82 acres, the track will cover approximately 62 acres, which will be used for testing "advanced safety technologies." Honda currently does not have any plans for much electricity use in Sakura but hopes to also join the green community by building a biotype on the property so that members of the local community may come and enjoy it.
           Honda's 82-acre solar farm is planned to be larger than Hyundai's 50-acre solar field in Korea and Volkswagen's 33-acre solar farm in Chattanooga, Tennessee,  which are both shown below.

Hyundai's 50-acre solar field in Korea

Volkswagen's 33-acre solar field in Chattanooga, Tennessee

Apple Inc. Planning Solar Farm for Reno Datacenter

          As part of Apple's plans to meet all power needs with renewable energy, Apple is setting its eyes on its third solar farm. The new farm is planned to power Apple's data center in Reno, Nevada and also aims to provide energy for the surrounding community. Apple currently has two solar farm projects underway at a datacenter in North Carolina. 

         Working in partnership with the Nevada utility company NV Energy, the solar farm should be able to produce "approximately 43.5 million kilowatt hours of clean energy, equivalent to taking 6,400 passenger vehicles off the road per year," according to a statement released by Apple. NV Energy CEO Michael Yackira responded in a statement, "We're excited to be in partnership with Apple on a new solar energy project, the first project under our new Green Energy Program. This program allows customers such as Apple to choose to have a greater proportion of their energy coming from renewables than the law requires, without having a cost impact on our other customers."  

Uruguay Plans Cheap Solar Energy!

       The South American nation, Uruguay, is offering contracts to buy power equivalent to 200 megawatts of solar farms at the world's cheapest rates. Ramon Mendez, a director of energy at the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Mining, has remarked that President Jose Mujica is planning to sign a decree that will require Uruguay's national power utility to purchase electricity from projects at a set rate of $90 a megawatt hour. The nation plans to produce some of the world's cheapest energy, referring mostly to solar and wind energy projects.
         China is offering Uruguay $160 a megawatt hour while Germany offers $154.33 a megawatt hour. Four months after the decree is passed, developers have the opportunity of proposing offers at a first-come first-serve basis. Mendez recalls that three companies have already proclaimed in selling at the price of $90 a megawatt hour. However, if the offers fail, they will plan to wait another couple of years until the equipment prices drop and they will try again.
        The decree that is to be issued also calls for a bid of developing a 1-megawatt and a 5-megawatt plant. Both these projects are to provide the national power utility power for 25 years at a price. Though this decree is currently in circulation, 80% of the nation's electricity is derived from hydroelectric power plants, costing on average $80 a megawatt hour. In a 2011 auction, Uruguay was offered a contract of  power at $63 a megawatt hour from wind developers. This nation has many projects in development to sustain their population as a low-cost nation.