A study released by the Department of Defense found that four
miltary bases located in the California desert could generate 7
GW of solar power, the equivalent of seven nuclear power plants.
The department studied nine different bases located in
California and Nevada to uncover the solar energy potential and
found that even though 96 percent of the land on those bases was
unsuitable for solar development, there still existed enough
suitable land on four California bases to generate more than 30
times the electricity used by those bases. That 7-GW potential
also equals about 25 percent of the renewable energy that the
state is requiring utilities to use by 2015. The department is
looking to make distributed installations of solar, wind,
geothermal and other renewable energy sources in order to bring
down cost and also to make the bases more self-sufficient,
hopefully allowing them to run operations for weeks or months if
any interruptions occurred in power from the grid. The four
military bases that will likel