Southern California Edison (SCE) representatives say the Southern California utility should be able to meet demand for power even without the San Onofre nuclear power plant, as long as Fortune throws a few breaks its way -- and with the help of its customers.
"SCE and the California Independent System Operator (CaISO) are planning to get through summer without the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station," SCE's PR Director Charley Wilson told reporters at a briefing Friday at the utility's offices in Rosemead. "If we get transmission upgrades done in time, and no other disasters strike, we should be able to meet demand this summer without rolling blackouts.
A team in Melbourne Australia has developed a way to create inexpensive solar cells using a standard industrial printer, offering the possibility of incredibly cheap photovoltaic cells -- but there are a couple of reasons not to declare the solar revolution over.
Though rooftop solar is starting to make inroads into California's less-affluent communities, most of the state's millions of low- and moderate-income residents still have to pay their utility bills without much help from the sun. But a non-profit solar installer is trying to change that a little bit at a time. Last week, that "little bit" was two struggling households in Palmdale.
It sounds like a flight of fantasy: mount wind turbine generators on gigantic kites, then fly them a thousand feet off the ground to generate power. But one company pushing this literal "blue sky" concept got a huge real-world vote of confidence recently: Google bought them.
Riverside County has cut the fee it wants to charge for utility-scale solar power developments in the county by two-thirds, following a contentious campaign by the solar industry to get it rolled back. In a 4-1 vote Tuesday, the county's Board of Supervisors reduced the fee from the $450 per acre per year, which was first proposed in 2011, to $150. The vote settles a legal battle between the county and solar developers.
A federal analysis of renewable energy tax credits indicates that wind power generation is significantly more dependent on federal tax breaks than all other forms of renewable energy. According to a study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the renewable energy Production Tax Credit (PTC), which Congress renewed in January, is likely to boost wind power capacity about 35 percent by 2016 while solar, geothermal, and other renewable energy sources would increase at about the same rate with or without the credit.
- Wind Power
- PV and Solar Thermal
- Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI)
- Watts and Watt-Hours, Kilo and Mega
- 'Enough To Power X Thousand Homes'
- The Grid
- Distributed Generation
- Conservation and 'Negawatts'
- Grid Storage
- PACE Loans, Feed In Tariffs and Net Metering
- Base Load and Peaking Power
- Capacity Factor
- Renewable Portfolio Standards
- Biomass
- Transportation and Renewable Energy
- Geothermal
