The U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground encompasses 831,173 acres, and has nearly 3,000 military, civilian and contractor personnel actively engaged in testing and evaluating a wide range of military equipment and ordinance systems.
Energy costs are a major concern due to extremely high summer temperatures.
Substantial amounts of air conditioning are necessary for most of the occupied buildings for a large part of the year. However, some amount of heating is needed during the winter months. Yuma does not have access to pipeline natural gas, so almost all heating, cooling and domestic hot water requirements are met using electricity. In 1979, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers installed a solar system for one of the buildings at Yuma to supply thermal energy for operation of an absorption cooling system, to provide space heating, and to produce domestic hot water. The solar system is indirect, using 140 parabolic trough solar collectors totalling 12,820 square feet.