Mar 27 2008

SoCalEd goes up on the roof for big solar power system

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Southern California Edison will install 250 megawatts of solar panels on the roofs of commercial buildings to generate electricity for 162,000 homes, an $875 million project that SCE says will be the nation's largest solar system.

"This project will turn two square miles of unused commercial rooftops into advanced solar generating stations," John Bryson, CEO of SCE's parent company Edison International, said in a statement. "We hope to have the first solar rooftops in service by August. The sunlight power will be available to meet our largest challenge - peak demand on the hottest days."

SCE's announcement comes a day after FPL Energy said it plans to build a 250-megawatt solar thermal power station in the Mojave Desert. FPL Energy has not disclosed a buyer for the electricity but Green Wombat reported that the project will connect to the transmission grid operated by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. Construction is expected to begin in 2009. FPL has nine solar trough plants in the Mojave Desert.

Edison said its rooftop power system will be installed during the next five years and will cover 65 million square feet of leased roofs on more than 100 buildings in the "Inland Empire" east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the fastest-growing urban region in the United States. The project requires approval by the California Public Utilities Commission.

The rooftop system would be one of the first major projects in California for distributed generation - locating small power modules close to utility customers and feeding electricity directly into neighborhood distribution circuits, eliminating the need for new transmission cables. 

It's an interesting business model.  Recurrent Energy, a start-up in San Francisco, has had some success in the "solar as a service" space.

The announcement will also serve as a boon for solar panel manufacturers and could be a driving force in lowering the cost of photovoltaic solar energy, which has been faced with polysilicon constraints.  A controversial paper recently released by UC Berkeley's Severin Borenstein calls into question photovoltaic energy's economic benefits.

California has directed Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and PG&E to make renewable energy 20 percent of their energy supplies by 2010 and 33 percent by 2020. Edison's energy portfolio has about 16 percent renewable power.  PG&E is currently at 12 percent and recently announced that it signed an agreement to reach 20 percent for future energy delivery to come online in the 2011-12 time frame.

PG&E is a leader in solar energy with more than 20,000 customers, representing 175 megawatts - the most of any utility in the nation. The company has added 740 megawatts of solar power to its energy portfolio, including utility-scale solar thermal and photovoltaic projects. During the 2007 Clinton Global Initiative, the company committed to adding 1,000 megawatts of solar thermal electricity by 2012.

 

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