Contractor leaving Crescent Dunes solar plant in Nye County
Cobra, one of the contractors on SolarReserve’s Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project outside of Tonopah is set to leave the project, officials said.
Cobra, a Madrid, Spain-based construction contractor, has been working on Crescent Dunes for a number of years.
Mary Grikas, spokeswoman for SolarReserve, said in an email that the plan has always been that once their construction-related tasks were completed, they would leave the job site, as it works with all construction-related subcontractors and activities.
“The original general contractor at the Crescent Dunes project, Cobra Thermosolar Plants, Inc. (CPI), completed construction in 2016, and has a contractual requirement to complete all of the punchlist items on the project by December 2017,” Grikas said in an email last month.
Grikas didn’t say exactly when the company is going to leave the project.
Crescent Dunes is one of the projects featured on Cobra’s website.
The company employs 33,000 employees in 45 countries, according to the website.
Among other contractors working on Crescent Dunes are Salt Lake City, Utah-based Brahma Group, which has performed the mechanical erection of equipment and piping of the power block; Atlanta-based PIC Group Inc., who works as a contractor for the permanent operations and maintenance jobs related to Crescent Dunes.
The Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project, 15 miles away from Tonopah, is a 110-megawatt solar energy thermal power plant. The power plant is the first utility-scale facility in the U.S. that has molten salt power tower energy storage with integrated energy storage.
The plant was offline for eight months due to a leak in one of the molten salt tanks in October 2016 before it started generating electricity in July.
Cobra’s representatives didn’t return a request for comment.
Contact reporter Daria Sokolova at dsokolova@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @dariasokolova77
