White Sands Missile Range, a military installation and weapons test site in southern New Mexico, plans to install solar panels in a step toward achieving energy independence by 2020.

“You’re going to see this kind of thing across the board at military installations,” said White Sands spokeswoman Monte Marlin. “It’s part of an initiative to get all military bases off the grid.”

The Missile Range already has an energy-efficient new $70-million facility for its energy battalion, she said.

“Now, we’re looking at retrofitting older buildings,” she said.

Drew Hamilton, spokesman for the Range, said the next project is still in its planning stages, but the goal is to install carports in the parking lot of the headquarters building that are covered in solar panels.

The solar photovoltaic panels are expected to produce about 400 kilowatts, which would be enough to fully power one of the medium-size office buildings on the Range for a year, Hamilton said.

The contract that the military installation is currently working on will also include making energy-efficiency improvements to various buildings on the Range, Hamilton said.

This is a small start toward the energy independence goal established by the U.S. government last year.

Hamilton said the military installation will use this project to gauge the feasibility of future solar-array installations for providing electricity to the base.

The facility is situated in a particularly harsh environment at the base of a mountain range, where winds can whip through at speeds up to 100 miles per hour.

“Anything we install here has to be hardened in order to survive,” Hamilton said.

The area is rich in sunlight, which makes solar an obvious first choice when considering renewable sources, Marlin said. The area is also rich in geothermal options, and the company is exploring those as well, she said.

Building renovations and solar-panel installations are expected to get underway by the end of the year, according to press materials.

The military is also considering installing wind and nuclear power generation facilities in order to meet its energy independence goal.

“We are really in the infancy of our endeavors,” Marlin said.

Image courtesy of Igougo.com.