MARK WAITE / PVT Valley Electric Ambassadors Patrick O'Brien, at left, and Richard Uncapher, sit next to one of the exhibits at the Valley Electric Association 2008 Energy Symposium. RELATED STORY Tax credit energizes energy meet Advertisement

Nevada is blessed with a lot of renewable energy, but it will require a lot of energy conservation to ensure power supplies are available at an affordable cost in the future, Dena Stoner, vice-president of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association.

Stoner was part of a panel presentation titled "Our Energy Our Future" during a 2008 energy symposium sponsored by Valley Electric Association at the Pahrump Nugget Hotel and Gambling Hall last Saturday.

VEA customers on average use 16,344 kilowatt hours of electricity per year, Stoner said, compared to a nationwide average of 11,030 kilowatt hours and only a little over 6,000 kwh in California. She attributed that to a lack of natural gas in this area and the extreme weather.

"We are going to need, right now given current policy, 30 percent more electricity by 2030. Now 2030 sounds like a long way off, you're thinking about next year. But to the electricity industry that's just a blink of an eye. It requires 10 to 12 years to provide a transmission line, 10 to 15 years to get a power plant up," Stoner said.

"The electricity you're using today was the result of decisions that were made 25 years ago. Now we're looking 25 years in the future and looking at 30 percent growth, and if we manage to do that and hold onto that, it's going to require a lot more efficient use than we're using right now," she said.

The reliability of electric service is threatened in parts of the West by as early as 2009, Stoner said.

The cost of building power plants has gone way up, she said, and those prices are considered underestimates.

"They don't include financing or fuel costs, which is why we were so scared from the economic crisis, because if we begin to get squeezed across the entire electricity grid for capital and interest costs, folks, that just goes right into your electric bill," Stoner said.

She urged the U.S. to get serious about pouring money into research and development for the energy industry.

Valley Electric customers pay 11.42 cents per kilowatt hour right now, she said, but the VEA supply is largely dependent on natural gas. Based on the Valley Electric configuration of fuel, legislation creating a carbon tax would add $261 per year to the cost of electric bills in residences, Stoner said.

"There are folks across the country who have silver bullet promises. They promise that our electricity needs can be met with efficiency and renewables. It might be possible in Nevada because you're rich in geothermal, you're rich in wind, you're rich in a lot of renewables," Stoner said.

But other areas, like the Southeast, don't have the abundant solar and wind power of the desert Southwest, she added.

Shannon Raborn, southern director for U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said 3 percent of the state's energy is from renewable sources, which is expected to grow to 5 percent soon. Twenty percent of the power sold by NV Energy (created by the merger of Sierra Pacific and Nevada Power Co.) is expected to come from renewable sources by 2015.

"Nevada has an opportunity to eliminate almost all of its global warming emissions with renewables while also helping neighboring states reduce their emissions," Raborn said.

The state has about 600 megawatts of renewable energy developed or under development, all of it from geothermal power except about 50 megawatts, she said.

Based on average VEA usage of 16,344 kilowatts per year, a megawatt -- a million watts -- would serve 61 homes.

Twenty-six applications are on file with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for 200,000 acres of land, much of it in Nye County, that would put in production more than 17,000 megawatts of potential generation of renewable electricity, Raborn said.

"Right now the BLM is in the process of improving their capacity to handle these applications. They've said they are going to create special teams to review and approve these right-of-way applications. So far to date the administration has not provided the BLM with adequate resources to do that and so far not one Nevada project has been approved," she said.

Raborn said Nevada can secure its future energy without new coal generation. Besides improving BLM policies on approving right-of-way applications, a north-south transmission tie-in is another way, she said. Also possible is a working group set up by Reid to focus on barriers to developing renewable enrgy in Nevada, such as a map of where wind projects could be developed without U.S. Department of Defense objections, Raborn said.

"The senator last year, in 2007, introduced the Clean Renewable Energy and Economic Development Act. What it would do would be to create a $10 billion bond financing plan to build power lines that would be dedicated mostly to renewable energy," she said.

Tom Fair, who is in charge of renewable energy for NV Energy, said there's a significant role for his company in renewable energy in Nevada. NV Energy serves 1.2 million customers in the state.

NV Energy wants to increase conservation and efficiency programs, increase renewable energy in its portfolio and add cutting-edge technologies to maintain reliability, he said.

Fair said efficiency per kilowatt hours can be used to help meet the 20 percent renewable energy requirement by 2015.

NV Energy has 36 projects under contract that will generate 586 megawatts of renewable energy, Fair said. In the last two years, six projects generating 135 megawatts were brought on line, three solar and three geothermal, he said. Another 80 geothermal projects are in the pipeline for another 280 megawatts.

In addition, NV Electric is looking at building a 280-megawatt wind energy project near Jackpot, on the Idaho-Nevada border, he said.

"There's a huge queue, or list of projects, on file with the BLM. Some of those undoubtedly will be good sites for projects. However, a number of them probably won't. They could be unfeasible for environmental or other reasons," Fair said. "We're looking forward to bringing some projects forward in the next couple years. Hopefully the projects won't take a terribly long time but it is fair for the BLM to review the envirionmental impacts. of these projects."

Solar photovoltaic projects should be spread out, to lessen the impact of passing clouds, Fair said. He's excited about new technology to store energy when there's no sunlight at solar thermal plants.

Geothermal energy is the cornerstone of renewable energy in Nevada, he said. NV Energy has a contract with Ormat Technologies, the successful bidder on a BLM lease for a geothermal field in Big Smoky Valley, to co-develop a geothermal plant.

The Public Utilitlies Commission approved $3.5 million for NV Energy to do some studies on building more transmission lines to link up renewable energy sources, Fair said.

"We have about 500 miles under planning that will help us build that grid out in a more expeditious manner as projects are completed," Fair said.