The first U.S. manufacturing plant for solar thermal power systems will be build in Las Vegas, Nevada by Ausra.

Ausra's power plants drive steam turbines with sunshine. Locally manufactured solar concentrators made of steel and glass focus sunlight to boil water, generating high-pressure steam that drives conventional turbine generators.

Ausra's core technology, the Compact Linear Fresnel Reflector (CLFR) solar steam generation system, was originally conceived in the early 1990s by founder David Mills while at Sydney University. Mills later worked with Graham Morrison to develop the idea between 1995 and 2001.

Ausra’s solar power plants use a simple Rankine cycle system. Pipes in the absorber carry water which boils and can reach over 545 degrees F (285 C) at about 70 times atmospheric pressure. This highpressure steam drives a steam turbine generator, then is recondensed to water and used over and over. This power system is common to conventional types of power plants; what is different is that sunlight, not burning fuel or splitting atoms, produces the heat to boil the water.

Through this method, Austra produces electricity without pollution and more important thanks to the innovations brought by the company in solar concentrators the price of solar power is closed to the level of gas-fired power today and will soon reach prices associated with coal-fired generation. Solar thermal power plants can store energy as heat to continue power generation at night and during cloudy periods.

The Las Vegas factory is expected to begin operations in April and will be able to produce up to 700 megawatts of solar-thermal equipment annually when it's fully ramped up.

“Ausra can fill four square miles with solar collectors every year from this one factory, enough to provide market-priced zero-pollution power to 500,000 homes. Americans want clean power, and are tired of the market fluctuations, price increases, and pollution from fossil power plants. With market-priced solar power, we are entering the Solar Decade, in which massive construction of solar plants will take place. We are investing now in the systems and capacity to serve that need,” said Bob Fishman, president and CEO of Ausra.

Nevada was chosen for Ausra because it has as massive solar resources, available land and a growing demand for clean energy, with huge markets next door in California and neighboring states projected to demand many thousands of megawatts over the coming years.