Don:

Believe it or not, that question was the subject of a federal government study done in the late 1970s. At that time, the Department of Energy was heavily funding research into solar electric power (Reagan put an end to that in 1981). They were comtemplating building a huge photovoltaic array similar in power output to a typical fossil fuel power plant - perhaps one thousand megawatts. The initial investment would have been very large but the money would have been largely recovered over twenty to thirty years from the electricity generated. But, it was feared that a natural disaster could wipe out the array long before the money was recovered.

So, they initiated a study to see where in the U.S. they could build it with the least chance of destruction by a natural disaster. They studied the history of earthquakes, tornados, hurricanes, volcanos and maybe other things. The answer? Among the locations with sufficient sunshine, Southern Utah had the smallest probability of a natural disaster large enough to destroy the project.

Bev and Jerry