Skip to main content
Donate

Distributed Wholesale Solar Performing Better Than Expected

By Chris Clarke
December 7, 2012
Support Provided By
Sun-power-12-7-12-thumb-600x450-41687

SunPower panels | Photo: Senator Mark Udall/Flickr/Creative Commons License

When theory meets the real world, the real world is often disappointing. How often do we hear of projects not doing as well as projected? In an effort to sell a project, proponents will often downplay weaknesses and emphasize the upper range of possibilities. It's just human nature, and so we usually expect performance to come in somewhere under what we'd been promised.

So it's lovely when a project actually turns out to perform better than promised. And this week, SunPower, a developer of solar generating projects working with 26 water agencies and districts in California, said its solar installations have provided 102 percent of the power the company had projected.

"Water agencies and facilities typically have huge energy demand and a responsibility to rate payers to minimize operational costs," said Howard Wenger, SunPower president of regions, when he spoke to the Association of California Water Agencies (ACWA) Fall Conference in San Diego on December 4. "We are very pleased that our water agency and district customers are seeing returns above and beyond expectations, delivering added value to the public agencies and their ratepayers."

SunPower has installed about 25 megawatts' worth of generating capacity on property owned by water companies in California. It's working on a new 922-kilowatt system for Western Municipal Water District in Riverside, which district already benefits from a one-megawatt SunPower facility, and a 1.2-megawatt system for the City of Oceanside Water Utilities Department. Both facilities will use single-axis tracking technology, allowing the panels to stay oriented at the sun as the earth rotates. All told, SunPower's installations on 43 water company properties throughout California have offset about 46.3 million pounds of carbon dioxide that would have been emitted had the utilities used coal-fired electricity rather than PV.

ReWire is dedicated to covering renewable energy in California. Keep in touch by liking us on Facebook, and help shape our editorial direction by taking this quick survey here.

Support Provided By
Read More
A blonde woman wearing a light grey skirt suit stands with her back to the camera as she holds a sheet of paper and addresses a panel at the front of a courtroom

California Passed a Law To Stop 'Pay to Play' in Local Politics. After Two Years, Legislators Want to Gut It

California legislators who backed a 2022 law limiting businesses' and contractors' attempts to sway local elected officials with campaign contributions are now trying to water it down — with the support of developers and labor unions.
By Yue Stella Yu, CalMatters
An oil pump painted white with red accents stands mid-pump on a dirt road under a blue, cloudy sky with a green, grassy slope in the background.

California’s First Carbon Capture Project: Vital Climate Tool or License to Pollute?

California’s first attempt to capture and sequester carbon involves California Resources Corp. collecting emissions at its Elk Hills Oil and Gas Field, and then inject the gases more than a mile deep into a depleted oil reservoir. The goal is to keep carbon underground and out of the atmosphere, where it traps heat and contributes to climate change. But some argue polluting industries need to cease altogether.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
By Alejandro Lazo, CalMatters