Massive solar project garners protests from solar energy industry

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/960031696.html

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Massive solar project garners protests from solar energy industry

Aug 14 2008 11:24AM

Southern California Edison came up with an economical and scalable plan to encourage solar energy use and also delay building conventional energy generating plants in Southern California: Install solar panels on the acres of industrial rooftops in LA and use these as supplemental energy sources during daytime peak energy demand. Here are the specs: The project that will place 250 megawatts of advanced photovoltaic generating technology on 65 million square feet of roofs of Southern California commercial buildings – enough power to serve approximately 162,000 homes. It will be the nation’s largest solar cell installation.

What’s not to like with this plan? It doesn’t require environmental impact reports or installation of a new power transmission infrastructure, and with some retrofitting and strengthening, can be done over existing structures.

Not so fast, say a group of solar companies, industry trade groups and others who argue it would give Edison too much of a monopoly on California's solar market.

…

"Recurrent Energy believes ratepayers, property owners, California residents, the solar industry and its employees are best served by an open, competitive marketplace for the development of distributed solar-generating projects," Harris said.

…

[XemaSab]

1. .

:popcorn:

[Auggie]

2. Seems to me there'd be enough demand for solar power to satisfy everyone.

[Regret My New Name]

3. And how much land will this massive complex take up?

I think people are missing the point. Shouldn't the focus be on removing the need for more environmentally damaging projects? Sure, it's better than burning coal, oil, or nuclear, but it's not better than NOTHING...

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. None, nada, zilch

… 65 million square feet of roofs of Southern California commercial buildings …

[EC]

6. None

it says on the roofs of existing industrial buildings.

[Regret My New Name]

9. Damn you. Damn you all. Stop ruining my negativity...

:P Ohh ok, well how about this? They could have planted gardens on those roofs instead... ;)


Yeah, I dunno... I just hate making things easy.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Any idea how much dirt weighs?

(They probably couldn't plant gardens on many of them.) ;-)

[EC]

5. Then why don't the other companies set up a plan

to rent solar systems to homeowners? I say rent because homeowners aren't going to want to do the maintenance and that could be the companies responsibility.

[phantom power]

7. Deregulation of electricity is the answer!

I could swear I've heard that before. It's on the tip of my tongue...

[Auggie]

8. The fucking GREED in the country is driving me INSANE!!!