Florida’s Solar Power Shines Bright
There’s big news for solar power coming out of Florida. Florida Power & Light (FPL) – one of the nation’s largest utilities and the largest producer of wind power – announced at the Clinton Global Initiative conference that it will spend $1.5 billion to build solar thermal energy in Florida, California, and other states. In addition, the utility plans on investing nearly another billion dollars nationwide to cut carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, a big contributor to global warming.
Solar thermal power makes electricity by converting solar energy to heat that drives a thermal power plant.
The utility’s plan is to build at least 300 megawatts (MW) of solar thermal in Florida; that’s enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes. It will also help the state reach its goal of cutting CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and get 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by that same year.
California will get a 200-MW plant that will cover 2 square miles with flat mirrors that track the sun.
FPL’s CEO Lew Hay told Reuters: "The thing we’ve got to make customers understand is that any fossil fuel has a hidden cost that society is paying every day, and that is the cost of carbon. We need to put a price on carbon, by doing so the illusion that coal-produced energy is low-cost will go away."
The project FPL has planned will start out as a 10MW pilot project and eventually grow to be the largest solar plant in Florida. But besides the solar investment, the company is also upgrading all 4.5 million electricity meters used by Florida customers. The replacements will be "smart network" meters that show a digital read-out of electricity consumption, and even give an hour-by-hour record of power use. This will allow customers and businesses to monitor their energy use more closely, and experiment with the most effective methods of efficiency. Other investments will go towards promoting these efforts.
As exciting as this news is, it’s easy to feel down when you learn that FPL’s solar plans for Florida only amount to about 1 percent of the state’s power plant capacity. But clean energy supporters and FPL are still optimistic. Hay pointed out that relatively large commitments to clean energy, like FPLs, will really drive the cost of the technology down.
Already the largest wind power provider, FPL now has its sights on leading the solar market.
Associated Press, via Orlando Sentinel
Reuters, via Planet Ark
October 3rd, 2007 at 4:44 am
This page helps calculate the electricity that could be generated by solar power given adequate funding.
http://www.davidjarvis.ca/essays/solar-energy-calculator.shtml
The default values below show what could be accomplished if the funds allocated to the Iraq War were spent, instead, on solar panels: 6% of the United States’ energy needs could be met.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Although I see this as a step forward, I believe the state of Florida missed a huge opportunity to excel as the leading purveyor of solar energy. Hundreds of thousands of homes needed reroofing due to the hurricane activity. Power companies, insurance companies and local governments could have seized the moment to install solar panels on this huge collection of available square footage. They could have cooperatively subsidized the installations as well as to provide tax and insurance premium incentives to their customers. The resulting wattage either aleviated from being supplied by the power grid as well as the possibility of surplus being fed back into the power grid could have reduced the states carbon based foot print significantly. It seems like this could have been a win-win for everyone and the environment.