Just across from the Kern River Oil Fields, now lies a different kind of field, Project Brightfield.
Chevron unveiled Project Brightfield Monday morning in Bakersfield. What used to be a refinery is now the site of a 7,700 solar panel experiment by Chevron.
The 740 killowatts of energy generated at the solar power test sight will provide electricity to the oil fields.
"The electricity output of Brightfield is equivalent to about 150 homes here in Bakersfield and will allow us to run about 30 to 40 pump-jacks in our oilfield," said Jerry Lomax, the vice president of Chevron Technology Ventures.
Excess energy will go to the local PG&E power grid.
The panels are from seven different companies.
"These seven technologies have the ability to be the low cost leaders in solar," said Desmond King, the president of Chevron Technology Ventures. Chevron wants to test the different technologies side by side, to see which is the most cost effective on a large scale.
"The world needs all kinds of energy to meet the energy demands over the next several decades. It will need oil, it will need gas and it will need technologies like solar. And Chevron is branching out in these emerging technologies because we realize we may need these technologies to keep up the energy efficiency of our base business," said King.
The facility will operate for about 25 years. In the future Chevron may build fields 25 to 100 times the size of Brightfield in order to power their operations.
