It's been a hot, hot day...

And I've had the A/C on for most of it.

Where's the power coming from? The Las Vegas Sun reported today that the Nevada Power Co. is retiring a number of older natural gas generation units and is replacing them with three new and much more efficient "peaker" units, also gas-fired:

Over the past year the power company has demolished old gas-burning units capable of providing enough power for 130,000 homes and replaced them with 600 megawatts of state-of-the-art gas “peakers” that can generate enough electricity for 450,000 homes. They’re called peakers because they are intended to kick in and provide a boost of electricity during peak use times — on the hottest days of the year, for example.

Although they will provide more than three times the electricity of the old units, they will emit less pollution, according to the company.

Instead of running constantly in a sort of stand-by mode, the peakers will shut down when they’re not needed, saving on fuel costs, which are passed on to consumers. The new units take only 10 minutes to turn on, compared with half a day for the old plant, which was unable to start up in a hurry if demand suddenly spiked on a spring day....

Overall, between the new construction and upgrades, air pollution from the plant will be reduced by 46 percent and its energy production will increase by 65 percent, officials said. Before upgrades and new construction, the plant coughed out about 15,000 tons of federally regulated pollutants each year. Once all three sets of peakers are online at the end of this year, the plant will release 8,100 tons a year of those pollutants, including nitrogen oxides and tiny dust particles.

The utility also installed three solar panels at the same power plant. And given the amount of sun we get, we're perfectly positioned here in Vegas to take advantage of improved solar plants coming to market soon. Nevada already has the third largest solar plant in the world, SolarOne, in Boulder City.

MEANWHILE IN TEXAS, T. Boone Pickens is backing wind energy, investing billions of dollars in order to build what will likely be the world's largest windfarm, producing enough electricity for 1.3 million homes.