According to the largest utility company in California, it plans to purchase more solar power from businesses and individuals.
A few weeks back, Governor Schwarzenegger said that he wanted California to get at least a third of its power supply from sustainable and renewable sources such as wind, solar, and hydroelectric power.
Keeping this in view, Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), which is the biggest utility company in California, suggested acquiring more solar power, in order to increase the practice of residential rooftop solar panels.
Last year, one percent of the electricity in California was generated by solar power. Gov. Schwarzenegger has encouraged people to do everything they can to put solar on the roof.
PG&E said that it is going to buy 500 megawatts of power from NextEra Energy Resources and Abengoa. Solar plants will be built on federal land. The project, called Genesis, will be functional by 2013 and 2014. According to NextEra, it will spend about $1 billion on Genesis, which will be built near the Coachella valley in Southern California.
The project, which has been approved by Gov. Schwarzenegger and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, will provide power to around 80,000 homes.
This is good. With a positive outlook, we can be sure that we’ll change the world drastically and in a good way.
I agree with Richard, this is a great idea. What would be equally great is if the next candidate for governor does something drastic like taking half of their campaign proceeds and building a solar farm out on some “federal land/ native american land” and selling that power back to the utility just like PG&E. And each month, with the sale of electricity proceeds, taking that money and buying more solar panels to grow the solar output, and constantly doing that until it is generating enough power to supply the state!
Of course that would take some time, but it would be a great long term goal.
If a team of members from a solar company volunteed to train a few state employees on how to maintain and grow this, it could be some of the best news the state ever had.
Well, I have to say, for this to happen, we need to overcome the following obstacles:
1) The hesitance of legislators and politicians in putting these projects into action;
2) The unbelief in a changing world, climate-wise and;
3) The conventionality of most people in terms of using energy.
Ontario has adopted a Green Energy Act, with numerous elements to encourage conservation and renewables, including a right to connect, a feed in tariff, and a streamlined approval process. This is intended to kickstart a major shift to renewable energy. For details, go to http://envirolaw.com.
Thanks for the link. It was informative. Everything starts one step at a time and we really can’t expect to have it all done in one fell swoop, right? We can say that the green revolution is coming up with good results after all.