CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2014, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FINALLY, RIGHT-SIZED SOLAR GETTING
A PUSH”
When ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and
former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made their way onto a hot and
sunny alkali flat just west of the Interstate 15 freeway between Barstow
and Las Vegas in late 2010, they were opening an era of giantism in solar
electricity.
They and bunches of utility executives
went to a site near the Mojave Desert’s Ivanpah dry lake to mark what they
called a landmark advance in energy, the start of work on a huge solar farm now
visible as a glassy sea of deep blue to travelers just southwest of the
California-Nevada state line.
Ivanpah, opened in 2013, will use up
to 12,000 acres of federal land for 30 years or more. It is the second-largest
of half a dozen solar thermal energy projects that have brought more than 1,000
construction jobs to the previously depressed desert area. It is also having
trouble repaying its federal loans.
As
a sideline, these very large projects have also produced a spate of power line
construction, an investment that will soon show up in the rates of utilities
like Southern California Edison Co. and Pacific Gas & Electric Co.
Partly because of the big solar
thermal projects, the price of electricity, as ads for rooftop solar panels
constantly remind us, will likely soon start climbing steeply for consumers,
perhaps as much as 50 percent by the year 2030.
It didn’t have to happen that way, and
future solar development in California may not.
Photovoltaic is the preferred
alternative to the large solar thermal power farms whose intense heat is
reflected to high towers where it turns water to steam. By contrast,
photovoltaic development can be concentrated on urban rooftops and above
parking lots where the power won’t have to be shipped hundreds of miles on
expensive new transmission lines before it is ultimately used.
Small solar also doesn’t impinge on endangered
species and treasured Native American religious and historic sites. Nor does it
require billions of dollars in federal tax credits or loans to the large
corporations that build solar thermal.
That’s one reason the city of Los
Angeles, not usually thought of as an environmental pioneer, is now pushing for
more energy independence through its Department of Water & Power, in effect
the fourth-largest power company in the state.
Los
Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti last year declared a goal of building 1,200
megawatts of solar electric capacity above his city’s roofs, parking lots and
other structures within six years – in time to meet a state mandate that about
one-third of all California power come from renewable sources by then. That
would be almost one-fifth of L.A.’s usual peak summer consumption of about
6,100 megawatts.
Any cost to other consumers created by
solar users leaving the grid will be far lower than the price of buying solar
thermal power and shipping it many miles across deserts and mountains to the
city. Plus, photovoltaic power promises to create at least as many jobs as
solar thermal, without forcing workers to remote locations.
Essentially, the same amounts of
energy can be produced from photovoltaic panels as from thermal farms, at less
than 55 percent the cost.
That led San Diego engineer William
Powers to suggest in the journal Natural Gas and Electricity that solar thermal
energy is now outmoded – even before most of the big California solar farms
come online, noting that the technology is not even being pursued in other
advanced countries like Japan and Germany, both of which have large-scale solar
photovoltaic projects under way.
This
all makes it a mystery why the state Public Utilities Commission has spent the
last few years steadily promoting the big thermal farms and doing little to
encourage rooftop solar and the like.
The
most obvious explanation is that the PUC, as usual, seeks to generate steady
profits for big utilities, whose income drops when photovoltaic panels take
large numbers of their customers off the grid.
This essentially means that government
is forcing consumers to subsidize both utilities and large solar developers.
Which suggests that when all the big solar projects now being built are allowed
to come online, that ought to be end for them in California.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net
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