[Narrator] We're here at the

Crescent Dunes Solar Energy Project

that utilizes molten salt for energy storage.

Given that the plant is the first of its kind

of this technology in the world,

there's an urgency to get this plant up and running.

It's a very exciting opportunity

to bring new technology online.

(bright upbeat music)

[Man] The construction period

from first shovel in the ground

to kind of electricity delivery to the homes

is about a 30-month process.

(bright upbeat music)

[Brian] We have about 600 construction workers on site,

all working very long shifts to complete the process.

We've completed all the heavy civil work

and all the pieces are in place.

(bright upbeat music)

My name is Emily and I'm a resident of Tonopah, Nevada.

I work out here at the solar reserve

and we assemble the heliosestats.

[Brian] Right now, we're standing

in the heliosestat assembly area.

It's similar to any kind of car assembly plant.

The frames come from the back of the shop,

and we assemble the mirrors at the front.

(drills whirring)

The final part of the assembly is the calibration process.

There are screws in the backing plate

of the heliosestat mirror, and these screws are adjusted

by technicians in the assembly process

to bring this calibration of this mirror

and the tolerances within a millimeter.

Once the heliosestat has completed the calibration process,

it is rolled out of the building, loaded on a trailer,

and delivered out to the field behind me.

Once it meets its position,

it takes a approximately 11 minutes to install.

(bright upbeat music)

The heliosestat mirrors have been

given fairly rigorous testing:

ice, hailstorms, wind, sand, dust, that sort of thing,

and they will go for the life of the planet.

The size of the facility really is dictated

by the efficiencies of the edge of the mirror.

(bright inspirational music)

You really look at the economics

on building one more ring of mirrors.

Are you getting enough electricity

or enough energy out of that to justify making it bigger?

Probably one of the more significant challenges

in building these power plants,

they were built in remote areas.

So logistics become a big piece of the puzzle

in actually getting the delivery

and the people to the site to install the equipment.

How can we do it more cost effectively?

What can we do on the next project?

This technology really is designed

for large-scale facilities, utility-size.

We do have scaled down versions

that we're looking at for large industrials.

Once we go into commercial operation,

we'll have a whole new set of lessons to learn

that we'll be able to capitalize on

to get to that next facility

and continue to get our cost curve going down

to meet future energy demand.