Million Solar Roofs Initiative in California
by Michael Graham Richard, Gatineau, Canada on 08.25.05
Yesterday, Akeena Solar released a white paper titled "The Economics of Solar Energy for California" to the public. It shows that the Million Solar Roofs initiative would save the state of California about 6.1 billion dollars. "Supported by Governor Schwarzenegger, the Million Solar Roofs Initiative is an ambitious plan to install 3,000 Megawatts of solar electric power on roofs throughout California by 2016." The bill is two votes away from being passed: "The 26th is the deadline for all fiscal bills to clear Appropriations Committee. If the bill clears Appropriations, it will head to the Assembly Floor where it must pass by the last day of session, September 9th." Come on, politicians! How can you be against that project?
::California to Save Over $6 Billion, ::California Million Solar Roofs Update
I think the politicians are going to be usurped by the technology. The Nano-solar people claim they are going to be able to mass produce a solar panels that can pay for itself in 3 weeks by end of 2006. They say will cost about 50 cents a watt for the panels. Even if California doesn't pass the law to help, it will be hard to convince people not to add the systems at those prices. The California law would make it faster and easier to pull it off, but the technology will change the rules. With this kind of technology we might see the rise of distributed power grid.
Jamison - in addition to the broken images on Nanosolar's page (and a lot of news articles that aren't about them), I see in Red Herring that they claim to be *ten times as efficient* as standard solar panels. What on earth does that mean?
...am really curious about this nanosol stuff... (especially the pray-on one, but that is suposed to take another 8 years to be commercial) r u sure about this 2006?? will be awesome! especially sicne right now if you want panels you have to wait and wait and wait...... (who knew there would be a SoG Silicon shortage?? ok well actually peeps in the industry have been saying it since '96 but why listen to them....)
Ben, broken imagines? What browser are you using, I use only FireFox and I've never seen a broken image on their site. As for the news stories perhaps you should be using the search feature of the browser, I did a quick check of the 10 most recent articles on their site and their company name shows up in everyone, it doesn't always have the hyphen in it's name, but it's there. And I have no idea what 10 times as effective means. I'm assuming it's based off some sort of cost benefit analysis formula. That's how I would do it, if I were making such a claim.
LC, The Red Herring article has the 2006 date "The company is expanding its management team to help make a push toward commercializing 120-MW-capacity cells by 2006." They have a graduated release schedule so something's won't be out for years. And of course, your going to have generations of the panels. I expect that they won't able to deliver all the performance they promise, but the cost savings alone because of mass production will off set that until they get the technology developed. It's hard to know anything for sure with these start ups, but the science is good, the business model may be an entirely different animal. The good news is the Japanese and Europeans are on the same trail, so even if they don't get it here, someone is going to find a way to make it work.
Roses are red, violets are blue, I want the economy green, how about you? Unions are fine and legal too, but they may not be right for the state, me, or you. Why then must they antagonize something so precious and true, to simply be included in something thats profitable too? The health of the nation, California at least, is more important than the wallets of the Unions' legal beast. The governor's madea smart move for once, but now it's the unions who are today's dunce. Please forgive this crude prose, it's not as bad as the oil dependency posed.