U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar yesterday approved a 500-megawatt (MW), 6,320-acre solar power facility to be built in Nevada’s Amargosa Desert, just east of Death Valley National Park. Dubbed the Amargosa Farm Road Solar Project, it is the eighth project approved by the Secretary since early October and is expected to stimulate Nevada’s economy by creating both temporary and permanent clean energy jobs.

Shorty after approving the Nevada project, Secretary Salazar commented on the recent slew of approvals.

“Our commitment to the development of clean, renewable energy is creating new jobs that will aid in our economic recovery, protect our environment and transform the way our nation gets our energy.”

According to the Solar Home and Business Journal, the new Nevada solar complex alone will create approximately 1,300 construction jobs and 180 permanent jobs. Overall, the eight approved projects will develop 6,000 construction jobs and 700 permanent jobs.

The Amargosa project will be developed by Solar Millennium, a Germany-based developer and producer of parabolic-shaped collectors that concentrate sunlight using mirrors to make steam and turn electric engines. Solar Millennium will go after federal tax credits and a federal loan guarantee in order to fund the solar power plant, which will be made of smaller solar systems of 250 MW each. A portion of the generated power will help light the billboards and hotel signs along the Las Vegas strip — one of the most electricity-intensive areas  in the world.

The hope is that the Amargosa solar plant will become a model of how to construct future solar thermal plants of similar size. In order for that occur, the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Land management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Parks Service are all working together on a plan in which the solar plant will have zero effect on the surrounding plants and animals.