Startup Hyperloop Technologies has started shooting magnetically levitated capsules along a track in Las Vegas to demonstrate their idea for the future of freight and mass transit.

Their first demonstration was performed a few weeks ago and met with limited enthusiasm. Tech Review declared it "The Hyperloop’s Underwhelming First Public Test". The Guardian asked "Hyperloop or over-hyped? Latest demo does little to ease doubts. TreeHugger got a little romantic, saying "The Hyperloop is transportation's mysterious new girlfriend".

Regardless of the limited excitement engendered by the first demo, interest in the idea is still growing with both Russia and Scandinavia exploring the idea.

David Roberts at Vox points to this video on Enel Green Power's Stillwater hybrid geothermal and solar thermal and solar PV power plant in Nevada.

Digital Trends has an article on Solar Reserve's Crescent Dunes solar thermal power -project in Nevada - Take a peek inside Nevada's new solar farm that generates power 24/7 with molten salt.

Todd Woody at Forbes has a post on a new, dispatchable solar thermal power plant planned for Nevada - Obama administration grants $737 million for a 24/7 solar power plant

The Obama administration on Thursday offered Santa Monica solar startup SolarReserve a $737 million loan guarantee to build a 110-megawatt solar thermal power plant in Nevada that can generate electricity 24 hours a day.

That’s the holy grail for intermittent sources of carbon-free energy such as solar and wind and the SolarReserve loan guarantee is a sign that the United States Department of Energy is willing to gamble on a technology untested on a commercial scale.
SolarReserve literally was founded by rocket scientists from United Technologies’ Rocketdyne division in 2007 and licenses its molten salt technology.

Like rival BrightSource Energy, SolarReserve will deploy massive arrays of mirrors called heliostats around a very tall tower – in this case, one that tops 640 feet – with a boiler attached. BrightSource’s heliostats focus the sun on a water-filled boiler to create steam that drives an electricity-generating turbine.

SolarReserve fills its boiler with millions of gallons of molten salt. Some 17,500 heliostats heat the salt to 1,050 degrees Fahrenheit. The liquefied salt then generates steam to drive the turbine before returning to the receiver. The salt retains heat that can be released at night or when the sun is not shining to continously to produce power.

“This solar technology is a genuine alternative to baseload coal, nuclear or natural gas burning electricity generation facilities," Kevin Smith, SolarReserve’s chief executive, said in a statement.
The Nevada project, called the Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, will be built on federal land in Tonopah, Nev., about 220 miles northwest of Las Vegas. SolarReserve said the molten salt can extend Crescent Dunes’ daily operation by 10 to 12 hours and the project can power 75,000 homes at peak output. Whether the utility that has contracted to buy the Crescent Dunes’ electricity, NV Energy, will want the plant to actually run around the clock depends on how it balances demands placed on the grid.

SolarReserve, which also has a license to build a 150-megawatt solar farm in the Southern California desert, is counting on the ability to provide carbon-free power when the sun isn’t shining as a competitive advantage. Rivals are also offering solar storage – Abengoa’s federally funded Solana solar trough power plant in Arizona, for instance, will feature up to seven hours’ storage.

CleanTechnica reports a new geothermal power plant has come online in Nevada - New Geothermal Power Plant Shows What the U.S. Can Do About Climate Change.

A new 15 megawatt, utility scale geothermal power plant has just come online in Jersey Valley, Nevada.The project is significant because according to its host company, Ormat Technologies, it was the only utility-scale geothermal plant to be completed in the U.S. within the past year or so. Geothermal is reliable, renewable, clean energy produced right here in the U.S., and it’s not subject to global market fluctuations or political turmoil overseas — say, shouldn’t we be building these things at a rate of more than just one per year?

Geothermal energy from the new plant in Nevada will be purchased by NV Energy, which already has an extensive geothermal energy portfolio dating back to the 1980′s. The portfolio currently includes 400 MW and the company expects to give it a big bounce up to 570 MW in the near future. That’s just one utility company, and it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the U.S. potential. The Department of Defense recently estimated that the geothermal potential on U.S. military facilities alone is a cool 926 gigawatts. Along with massive new wind power projects and solar installations, geothermal could play a significant role in our domestic energy future.

MSNBC has an article on the land grab for potential solar thermal power sites in the US south west - Wall St. firm behind slow solar pace on federal lands?.

Not a light bulb's worth of solar electricity has been produced on the millions of acres of public desert set aside for it. Not one project to build glimmering solar farms has even broken ground.

Instead, five years after federal land managers opened up stretches of the Southwest to developers, vast tracts still sit idle.

An Associated Press examination of U.S. Bureau of Land Management records and interviews with agency officials shows that the BLM operated a first-come, first-served leasing system that quickly overwhelmed its small staff and enabled companies, regardless of solar industry experience, to squat on land without any real plans to develop it.

At a time when the nation drills ever deeper for oil off its shores even as it tries to diversify its energy supply, the federal government has, so far, failed to use the land it already has — some of the world's best for solar — to produce renewable electricity.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Nevada, where a Goldman Sachs & Co. subsidiary with no solar background has claims with the BLM on nearly half the land for which applications have been filed, but no firm plan for any of the sites. ...

Congress in 2005 gave the Interior Department a deadline: approve 10,000 megawatts, or about five million homes' worth during peak hours, of renewable energy on public lands by 2015. Reaching that goal was left to the BLM, which oversees federal land and knows oil, gas and mining leases but is new to solar.

The Bush administration, however, kept BLM's focus on oil. BLM's database of solar applications shows many languished for years while the agency approved more than 73,000 oil and gas leases in the last five years. BLM has yet to give final approval to one solar lease.

BLM's solar leasing system ended up allowing developers to lay claim to prime sites — many located in the deserts that span California, Nevada and Arizona. All developers had to do was fill out an application, pay a fee and file development plans. ...

An AP review of BLM's applications database found Cogentrix has staked more development claims in the Southwestern deserts than any other company. In Nevada alone, Cogentrix has applied for exclusive development rights on nearly as much federal land as all other companies combined. Its active lease applications cover about 120,000 acres — the equivalent of more than eight Manhattans.

"Goldman Sachs was one of the first applicants to dot the map with potential projects, and since then they haven't moved on any of them," said Gregory Helseth, the BLM's new renewable energy project manager in southern Nevada. "You can't hold the land forever. You can't be a prospector and hope somebody down the road wants to buy."

A Goldman representative defended the firm's solar investments, saying the Wall Street titan has since gained experience through its 2009 purchase of an aged solar facility in San Bernardino, Calif., that it was moving forward in good faith and was not blocking anyone. The company also announced this month it had reached a deal to build a small, 250-acre project in Colorado on private land.

"While we continue to pursue development of projects utilizing public lands in the Southwest, we have not held land reservations if they are determined not to be viable for future solar development," company spokesman Ed Canaday said in an e-mail.

The Obama Administration has identified 14 promising "fast-track" projects targeted for approval by year's end so they can qualify for stimulus funding. None of Goldman's claims are among them.

When completed, these facilities could generate 6,000 megawatts, enough electricity for several million homes during peak hours. There is a ready market for big plants, with California's strict climate change laws creating a huge demand among utilities for solar power.

Companies that hold BLM solar development applications are prohibited from selling them, but the companies themselves can be sold along with the potentially lucrative applications.

Tempe, Ariz.-based First Solar, an industry leader and a maker of solar panels, bought two smaller companies, including the companies' land rights and power agreements with utility companies. First Solar paid about $400 million for OptiSolar and $285 million for NextLight. Analysts say the sale value of both companies likely was increased because they held BLM solar development applications. ..

In September, at least two of the "fast-track" projects — by Oakland, Calif.-based Brightsource Energy and by First Solar-owned Nextlight — are expected to get the first solar permits issued by BLM. Bringing plants online however will likely take years.

These fast-tracked sites are located on either side of the dormant Goldman lease near Roach Dry Lake, located about 35 miles south of Las Vegas, and will utilize the same Southern California Edison transmission lines that pass over Goldman's site.

Greentech Media has a post on the geothermal power boom in Nevada - Nevada’s Big Bet on Geothermal.

Most of Nevada remains sparsely populated, but the state now generates more geothermal power than all but eight of the world's nations, according to the Geothermal Energy Association (GEA). And that's only an indication of geothermal's potential as a player at the renewables table.

"It was only five or six years ago that people had no idea what geothermal could be," Karl Gawell, the Executive Director of the GEA, said. "There was tremendous uncertainty and utilities were totally skeptical."

During the renewables expansion that has taken place from 2005 to 2010, geothermal's installed capacity in Nevada doubled from 200 megawatts to over 400 megawatts. Projects currently in development could add as much as 3,000 megawatts to Nevada's grid.

"Some of the major utilities, like NV Energy, have become real believers," Gawell said. "A few years ago, geothermal was in just four states: Utah, Nevada, California and Hawaii. Now every state from Alaska to Texas has geothermal projects."

A lot of money is being bet on geothermal, particularly in the upfront equity financing of test wells. Though the science of identifying geothermal's deep pockets of hot water is improving, a geothermal exploration well remains a bet of as much as half the project cost, made on the presence or evidence of a hot spring.

But large and small companies alike are making that bet. Calpine, a veteran independent power producer in the natural gas industry, is active. So is CalEnergy Generation, a part of Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy. Nevada Geothermal Power, a company on the Canadian stock exchange, is playing. So are startups U.S. Geothermal and Ram Power.

The recession slowed, but did not stop, development. A developer cannot get bank financing today until 80 percent of the work to prove the resource has been done. Just a few years ago, Gawell said, bank financing came with as little as 30 percent of the work done.

Asked why Nevada's geothermal industry has held up so strongly, Gawell listed three reasons. "Strong state policies," he said, specifying a Renewable Energy Standard dictating that 25% of the state's energy come from renewable sources by 2025, among the nation's most ambitious. "Tax incentives from Congress, particularly the tax incentives passed as part of the stimulus package," citing the Treasury's cash grant-in-lieu of tax credits program that has sustained all the renewable industries through the recession. Lastly, Gawell singled out the federal government's support of research at the University of Nevada, Reno, "to help them do the scientific and technical work to identify and find geothermal reservoirs."

"The U.S. Geologic Survey estimates that as much as 80 percent of all the resources are still undiscovered," Gawell said. "We simply don't have the science and technology to help us find them without drilling holes in the ground -- and that's pretty expensive."

Geothermal developers, he said, are like pre-World War I oil wildcatters looking for seeps. "We are still finding geothermal mainly because there's a hot spring. But there may be 80,000 megawatts of undiscovered resource. That's what we really need to figure out how to get to." ...

Gawell also expects an expansion of smaller-scale, distributed generation projects. And he foresees major breakthroughs in water conservation. "Water is always an issue," he said. "Every plant brought on line last year uses a binary power system. And we're seeing an increasing trend toward air-cooling." Geothermal developers are motivated, even more so than others, to conserve water, because the water they lose to cooling comes from their own reservoirs. "In the long run, all power technologies will have to move away from using fresh water for cooling," Gawell said. "It's becoming too rare of a commodity in the West."

Inhabitat has a post on investment in geothermal power in Nevada - DOE Loans to Make Nevada the “Saudi Arabia of Geothermal Energy”.

Of all the ‘mainstream’ forms of renewable energy, it seems that geothermal power is always left in the shadows compared to solar and wind power. However, that looks set to change with news that the US Department of Energy will fund geothermal projects in northwestern Nevada and southeast Oregon. With funds from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the DOE has stated a “conditional commitment” to provide a partial guarantee for a rumoured $98.5 million loan to the Nevada Geothermal Power Company (NGP).

The Silver State-based company has developed the Faulkner 1, a 49.5 MW geothermal power project at NGP’s Blue Mountain site in northwestern Nevada. Currently, the project is planning two new injection wells to enhance the distribution of injected fluids and further augment the plant’s power output. As such, the DOE is acting as loan guarantor for up to 80 percent of the $98.5 million loan to NGP for the scheme.

As part of the Obama administration’s Recovery Act, alternative energy has seen a real increase in investment with projects such as the Cape Wind Farm being finalized. Recent tragedies such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill have only solidified support for alternative energy.

Geothermal projects haven’t dominated headlines like solar and wind projects have, but US Senator Harry Reid hopes to see that change. Speaking about the DOE’s support, Senator Reid said, “I am glad to see economic recovery funding being used to put Nevadans to work on a project that will help us achieve energy independence” He went on to say, “Northern Nevada is the Saudi Arabia of geothermal energy.”

EcoGeek reports that the land rush for prime solar thermal power sites in the US southwest is continuing - Energy Companies Competing for Desert Land.

Not since the Gold Rush has there been such a stampede to stake out land in California and surrounding states, except this time, solar energy is the prize. The Bureau of Land Management has been swamped with applications for solar projects across millions of acres of desert since July.

The bureau has seen a 78% increase in applications, now totaling 223. The applicants are all looking to capitalize on desert land in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, with California leading with 107 applications alone. All of the projects are 10 MW or larger, with many proposing hundreds of megawatts. All together the projects would take up 2.3 million acres of land and would generate many, many gigawatts (the 75 projects listed on the BLM website total 51.6 GW and that's only a third of the applicants).

Out of the 223 applications, only 2 projects have progressed to the stage of environmental reviews, the real "make or break" when it comes to issuing permits (one is a 400 MW solar-thermal plant proposed by BrightSource, the other a 750 MW solar-thermal plant proposed by Stirling Energy). This is partly because many projects don't ever get past the application, but largely because the BLM is understaffed for this kind of demand and the bureau can't keep up. The BLM is looking to the new administration to increase their budget so more employees can be hired to process these requests.

This is a great example of where the new administration could back up their "green jobs" agenda. Not only would the BLM be hiring, but imagine the jobs created by these large solar projects that would likely take years to get up and running. If even a few of these projects end up getting approved, this could mean lots of jobs and lots of new solar energy.