Pacific Gas deal will nearly double USA's solar power

Source: USA Today


Pacific Gas and Electric (PCG) in California announced last week it will buy 800 megawatts of solar-generated electricity from two companies, enough to light 239,000 homes. Within three years, PG&E will buy its solar energy from OptiSolar and SunPower, which plan to build the world's two largest solar farms in California as part of the deal.

It would nearly double the USA's entire solar-panel capacity. Driving the trend are solar's falling costs and state alternative-energy mandates.

Solar power has grown but still makes up well under 1% of U.S. power generation. More than 90% of solar panels have been installed on rooftops by maverick consumers and businesses. Utilities' embrace of solar energy will help push it to about 10% of power generation by 2025, predicts Ron Pernick, principal of research firm Clean Edge.

"Just a handful of utilities doing something big changes the scale of the entire market," says Julia Hamm of the Solar Electric Power Association.



Read more: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x168386

good to know that PG&E can see the writing on the wall about renewable energy

It would be nice to see a drop below $3/watt for finished panels.

Look at www.nanosolar.com. They are currently producing utility solar panels at $1/watt which they have installed in a few locations. They are currently targeting the low hanging fruit (municipal power plants), but will be producing residential panels eventually. 5 cents/kwh is competitive with coal. According to their company blog, http://www.nanosolar.com/blog3/?p=11 , it looks like you need about 5 acres per megawatt. I wish they would put one of these in my town instead of the biomass (garbage) power plant a.k.a. dioxin factory that also produces power.

There's your answer.

The so-called "Public" Utilities kept Congress from enacting any meaningful legislation to give individual Americans incentives and significant tax breaks so we could go solar or use other alternative energy sources. They have been trying to save the big piece of solar pie for the BIG BOYS, so they can sell it to us at a whopping profit just like the gas companies and electric companies have been doing all along.

What you never hear is how inefficient it is to move electricity around the grid. A tremendous amount of power is lost over those miles and miles of transmission lines that literally spider-web our continent. And, while they do provide us with power, it is at a much greater cost than if power were generated at local power plants (can you say local solar farms or wind farms?) and distributed on a much shorter local grid. Coupled with power purchased from individual homeowners and businesses who install their own solar power generating systems we could quickly ramp up the power generated by alternative, clean energy sources. This would also serve to make our power grid less vulnerable to the ever-present, evil, lurking terrorists who are trying to sabotage our almost unprotected power grid. Only a few short years ago, there was a major multi-state blackout due to a mechanical failure. This can be avoided, but it won't be as long as megacorps like PG&E and their lobbyists control how power is generated and distributed.

There is probably no way we can outfit every home in America with solar, wind, or geothermal power in the short term, but we could surely make at least 50% of them energy independent in a very few short years--if we applied the technology and THE FUNDS to the problem.

What we need is another WPA-style project similar to the ones that helped us to develop our infrastructure during the depression era. Call that Clean Energy for America program what you want, but let's put our dollars, our minds and our hearts into a GRASSROOTS EFFORT TO SOLVE OUR ENERGY PROBLEMS.

Just simplifying the process of putting power back into the grid would be a big help. Right now, at least in some states, there are a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through just to get a windmill hooked up (planning permission to put another building on your property, for instance, which isn't allowed in many places because of how they're zoned).

And the bureaucratic beatdown we took was awesome to behold. Duke Energy stalled, delayed, kept making requests for inane crap. This went on for months. I think mostly to cheeze off our contractor who is in the process of installing a butt-load of systems in the area and hoping we would take it out on him.

He says demand for systems is so high he can't get any of the stuff he needs til after the first of the year.

We are selling back to DE. When we get into a financial foothold where we can do it, we are looking to get a storage system and tell Duke to FUCK OFF entirely.

Keep it going....

Wish someone in west Texas would realize the sun shines here, too. (ALL the time!)

800MW is nada. Zilch. Especially in California.

I find it hard to imagine what would drive someone to criticize solar power generation ... Yeah: It wont fulfill ALL power needs ... Yes: It can only provide a limited sector of public need .... but it would provide SOME needed power at near ZERO emissions ....

Your focus on industrial needs are noted, but perhaps overblown and one sided ....

I am not completely against nuclear generation, and I certainly think coal fired plants MUST be shutdown in the near future ... but solar power can fill a need, and should be pursued; whether or not they provide all the power your favored users think they require ....

WE need it .....

It's great, and clean, and actually fairly efficient in a place like Southern California. The problem is that it simply cannot pump the wattage right now. It's just not ready for prime time.

We need a big, powerful energy source free of carbon emissions, and we need it yesterday. GW is a problem that needs to be solved now, today. Solar can play a part, as can wind, but it's a bit part. It's the backup singer.

Nuclear fission energy generation is a proven, off-the-shelf technology that can simultaneously wipe out the carbon problem while transitioning us to a fossil-fuel-free future. Nuclear waste sucks, but it's containable, eminently so. Did you read my post in the other thread about the Oklo fossile reactors and their waste, stable for a billion+ years? One wishes the waste of our other energies could be dealt with as simply.

Every moment we hesitate and make overblown statements about nuclear waste is another moment we pump insane amounts of a far deadlier waste into our air, poisoning the Earth and and cooking ourselves in the bargain. Every dollar spent on solar is a dollar better spent on nuclear.

I could be convinced ....

Global PV production capacity is currently 10 GW per year and will ramp up to 15-20 GW per year by 2010 - and solar thermal electric is not far behind.

In contrast, global nuclear additions are barely keeping up with plant closures and in 2006 suffered a net reduction of 760 MW.

Solar will leave nuclear power, which is in decline, in the dust - and how.

Oh yeah - and Yucca Mountain will cost taxpayers $96 billion to build and operate - whoopty shit.

default = coal or natural gas.

I hate being the slow country.

lulz... :P



Come on, there has to be at least one naysayer.