By Erin Kelly

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Bernie Sanders will spend the week touring solar energy projects in Nevada and New Mexico as he introduces legislation designed to boost the use of solar power.

The Vermont independent, who serves on the Senate energy and environment committees, is scheduled today to visit Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base, which gets about 25 percent of its electricity from solar photovoltaic panels. He also will tour the country's first large-scale solar thermal plant in Boulder City, Nev., which provides power to more than 14,000 households.

Wednesday, the senator will participate in a Senate energy committee field hearing in Albuquerque, N.M., called by chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., to examine the progress of electricity generation from solar power. He will then tour a solar tower and a showcase of alternative energy technologies, including solar, wind and geothermal. Congress is in recess this week for the Independence Day holiday.

"Solar thermal power is a technology that has huge potential, which over a period of years can generate a huge percentage of the electricity we need in America," Sanders said. "It will help us break our dependence on foreign oil, it emits no greenhouse gases, and, as more and more plants come online, it will be comparable in cost to other fuels."

Sanders said he has also spoken to energy company executives in California who plan to build a larger solar thermal plant in the Mojave Desert during the next three to four years that would serve as many people as the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant.

There has been such a dramatic surge in the number of proposed solar thermal plants that the federal Bureau of Land Management has placed a moratorium on new projects on federal lands until it has a chance to study their environmental impact. The bureau has received applications for plants that have the potential to provide power to up to 20 million homes.

Although most large solar energy projects are being built in the sunny Southwest, Vermont would benefit from any decrease in U.S. dependence on high-priced foreign oil, Sanders said.

"These projects could have an impact on energy prices all over this country," he said.

While solar thermal plants won't be built in Vermont anytime soon, homeowners, businesses and towns can still benefit from installing solar panels on their roofs, Sanders said.

The bill he will introduce this week would provide tax rebates to consumers who install solar power. The rebates would cost an estimated $10 billion a year, which is expected to be the major stumbling block for the legislation.

The bill seeks to add 10 million solar panel roofs over a decade. That would be equivalent to the energy output of about 30 average coal-fired power plants, Sanders said.