Sempra Generation's 10 megawatt solar power-generation facility in Boulder City, Nevada, with 167,000 solar panels on 88 acres, is the largest thin-film, solar-power project in North America, generating enough electricity to power 6,400 homes. (Photo courtesy PG&E) |
Four California utilities ranked in the top 10 installers of new electrical-grid-tied solar power in 2008, with Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, New Jersey, Arizona and New York filling out the ranks. According to the annual
Utility Solar Electricity Survey of the Solar Energy Power Association, the 10 utilities added 195 megawatts of generating power last year. SEPA surveyed 92 utilities nationwide.
The survey also found that a slightly different group of utilities now rank in the top 10 for cumulative solar power-generating capacity totaling nearly 900 megawatts:
Southern California Edison – CA (441.4 MW)
Pacific Gas & Electric Co. – CA (229.5 MW)
NV Energy – NV (77.9 MW)
San Diego Gas & Electric Co. – CA (49.3 MW)
Public Serv. Co. of CO (Xcel Energy MW) – CO (28.5 MW)
LA Department of Water & Power – CA (13.6 MW)
Public Service Electric & Gas Co. – NJ (13.2 MW)
Arizona Public Service Co. – AZ (10.6 MW)
Sacramento Municipal Utility District – CA (10.2 MW)
Long Island Power Authority – NY (7.7 MW)
Three of those utilities, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Long Island, are municipally owned.
Taking all U.S. utilities into account, 292 megawatts of new solar electricity-generating (PV) capacity was installed in 2008, with an additional 50 megawatts not tied to the grid. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association’s annual report released in March:
... 1,265 megawatts (MW) of all varieties of solar power were installed in 2008, bringing total U.S. solar power capacity up 17 percent to 8,775 MW. ...
"The growth of solar manufacturing jobs in the U.S. was a breath of fresh air for communities hit hard by the recession. The recently enacted manufacturing tax credit will give further incentive to manufacturers, such as my company Suntech America, to invest in new operations in the U.S." said Roger Efird, chairman of SEIA and president of Suntech America Inc. "With the right policies, solar deployment will continue robust growth and thousands of new green-collar jobs in manufacturing will be created in states where jobs are needed most."
No new concentrating solar power plants came online in the United States this past year, but projects now in the pipeline add up to more than 6 gigawatts (6,000 MW). Among these are projects planned for California’s Mojave Desert, Arizona and Florida. |
The SEPA survey stated:
In short, the industry is growing rapidly, moving beyond the iconic vision of a residential solar rooftop future. The growth is still predicated on incentives, as much of the electricity industry is, in one way or another. The passage of the eight-year federal solar investment tax credit, with utility utilization included, will go a long way toward providing market certainty for utility and utility-scale projects, as well as manufacturing investment, job growth, and associated benefits. Certainly the economy, financing markets, transmission, and permitting are significant risks that can impact implementation. But the impressive list of solar projects in the queue provides a significant amount of market activity in the coming years, even utilizing conservative estimates. |
The rescue begins below and continues in the jump:
burghpunk asked Who doesn’t like Clean Water?: "The Clean Water Restoration Act is a pretty simple bill – it simply restores the scope of the 1972 Clean Water Act to what it was prior to 2001 (and again in 2006) when the Supreme Court ruled that isolated streams and wetlands were not eligible for protection from pollution and destruction. Obviously, as anyone who has taken note of gravity or basic plumbing, all water runs downhill and ends up somewhere – and even wetlands that look out in the middle of nowhere are connected to the groundwater supply, and streams that are dry in the hot summer months can be raging torrents in the spring and fall. Pollutants in any of these will eventually taint our drinking and irrigation water, spreading heavy metals like arsenic and carcinogenic chemicals across our food and out of our faucets. So clearly this is a bill that is based in reality, addressing the need to protect these waters – who could be against that? Apparently, a lot of people."
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The Overnight News Digest is posted and includes the story, Arab Students Respond to Obama.
Patricia Taylor urged the Obama family to take note that the EPA isInvestigating Your Playground Surface: "This is my fourth diary on the issue of rubber mulch, which has become part of the White House playscape, where Sasha and Malia Obama and their friends play.Their playground surface was made from 1,400 used tires. The tires were ground up and dyed green and called rubber mulch. Rubber mulch is not good for children or gardens because ground up rubber tires have lots of toxins in them. There is NEW news about this topic."
Eternal Hopereviewed four web sites of The Climate Change Denial Industry: "While the science is clear, the Climate Change Denial Industry is in full blare mode, claiming that the earth has not warmed for the last ten years, that the sun will offset any warming that does take place, and that we are in a cooling phase. But it seems that these people have mastered the art of the non-sequitur -- the fact that the sun has an influence on our weather does not mean that man does not also have an effect as well."
Anima wrote a Renewable/Alternative Energy Round-Up.
Jill Richardson evaluated Monsanto’s thumbs down to the film Food Inc: Monsanto’s view: Food Inc is wrong to say the US produces too much corn and subsidizes overproduction. Jill’s view: "Again, I'll have to disagree with Monsanto. It's nice of Monsanto to point out that the U.S. is the largest corn exporter in the world but that does not negate the accusation that we produce too much corn. Food, Inc. calls out the corn that isn't exported for contributing to a food supply of unhealthy, cheap food. The converse problem of this unhealthy, cheap corn-based food is that healthy foods are (by comparison) expensive and consumers select against them when shopping, particularly those on a tight budget."
In the diary CCS ... An invitation to cheat? A Siegel said that when he considers carbon capture and sequestration, he has "a basic problem. No, it is not the utter uncertainty as to whether it will work at large enough scale. Nor is it questioning when (or if) it can become a substantive reality nor even the question of the risks of potential carbon burps from stored carbon. No, not those. Nor is it the continuation of mountain top removal, nore even the 100,000+ new wells required (in the US alone) to inject carbon into the ground (and the near doubling of the current natural gas & petroleum extraction infrastructure including pipelines, etc ...). Whenever considering CCS, I find it hard to get past a simple conumdrum: there will be quite real motivation for cheating at multiple levels."