A flight crew experienced a very bright; intense light from three solar complexes which interfered w...

Narrative:

During the initial climb after a VFR departure from bvu (boulder city airport) via GPS to the dag VOR on an approximately heading of 225 the co-pilot and I were distracted and momentarily blinded by the sun reflecting off of mirrors at the solar power plant facility located near the ca-nv border near the town of primm. This solar power plant which I believe is still under construction consists of three massive circular arrays of thousands of mirrors oriented inward toward a central tower. As soon as we cleared the mountains southwest of bvu from 6;000 to 12;000 ft MSL still climbing there were three very bright reflections (one from each solar array) of the sun into the pilots and copilots eyes. The reflection from the northernmost array was the brightest and the largest and grew in size as we flew closer to the facility. The flight path of our aircraft passed overhead of this facility. At its brightest neither the pilot nor co-pilot could look in that direction due to the intense brightness. From the pilot's seat of my aircraft the brightness was like looking into the sun and it filled about 1/3 of the co-pilots front windshield. In my opinion the reflection from these mirrors was a hazard to flight because for a brief time I could not scan the sky in that direction to look for other aircraft.

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A flight crew experienced a very bright; intense light from three solar complexes which interfered with their ability to scan for traffic while climbing westbound between 6;000 and 12;000 feet along J60/V12 southwest of NATEE Intersection.

Narrative: During the initial climb after a VFR departure from BVU (Boulder City airport) via GPS to the DAG VOR on an approximately heading of 225 the Co-pilot and I were distracted and momentarily blinded by the sun reflecting off of mirrors at the solar power plant facility located near the CA-NV border near the town of Primm. This solar power plant which I believe is still under construction consists of three massive circular arrays of thousands of mirrors oriented inward toward a central tower. As soon as we cleared the mountains southwest of BVU from 6;000 to 12;000 FT MSL still climbing there were three very bright reflections (one from each solar array) of the sun into the pilots and copilots eyes. The reflection from the northernmost array was the brightest and the largest and grew in size as we flew closer to the facility. The flight path of our aircraft passed overhead of this facility. At its brightest neither the pilot nor co-pilot could look in that direction due to the intense brightness. From the pilot's seat of my aircraft the brightness was like looking into the sun and it filled about 1/3 of the co-pilots front windshield. In my opinion the reflection from these mirrors was a hazard to flight because for a brief time I could not scan the sky in that direction to look for other aircraft.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of July 2013 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.

Attributes
ACN	1109473
Time
Date	201308
Local Time Of Day	1201-1800
Place
Locale Reference	BVU.Airport
State Reference	NV
Environment
Flight Conditions	VMC
Light	Daylight
Aircraft 1
Make Model Name	Small Transport
Operating Under FAR Part	Part 91
Flight Phase	Initial Climb
Route In Use	Direct
Flight Plan	None
Person 1
Function	Pilot Flying
Qualification	Flight Crew Commercial Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Experience	Flight Crew Last 90 Days 100 Flight Crew Total 4500 Flight Crew Type 75
Events
Anomaly	Inflight Event / Encounter Other / Unknown

A flight crew experienced a very bright; intense light from three solar complexes which interfered with their ability to scan for traffic while climbing westbound between 6;000 and 12;000 feet along J60/V12 southwest of natee intersection.