Arizona - The Solar Capital of the World?

Las Vegas is the Entertainment Capital of the World and sadly, Nevada is one of the foreclosure capitals of the world.  While Nevadans party their pain away, Arizona is looking on the bright side and becoming the solar capital of the world.

The sunny deserts of the Southwest United States is one of the ideal planetary locations for solar.  In fact, with the amount of sun and the available land, it could produce enough electricity to meet the electrical needs of the entire US!  Photovoltaics, or PVs, are 85 times as as efficient as growing corn for ethanol; on a 300 ft x 300 ft (1 hectare) plot of land, enough ethanol can be produced to drive a car 30,000 miles per year vs 2,500,000 miles by covering the same land with photo cells. Which is good news for the Southwest, where soil temperatures are often way above proper corn germination temps of 60 degrees!

A fact not lost on Arizona Public Service, they have announced another large solar plant - a 290 million watt concentrating solar plant, among the largest in the world, to be built in the Harquahala Valley, 75 miles west of Phoenix.  This is in addition to a 280-megawatt concentrating solar power plant to be built 70 miles southwest of Phoenix, near Gila Bend, Arizona.  Together the two plants will supply electricity to 143,000 consumers.

Not stopping there, Arizona Public Service, APS, offered Flagstaff customers the opportunity to help APS build an interconnected solar power plant – one rooftop at a time. For this program, APS will own and receive energy from solar panels installed on about 300 customer rooftops. Participating customers will not have any up-front costs or other requirements and they will receive a low 20-year fixed community power rate for the solar portion of their electricity bill.

APS staffers also celebrated with visitors as the Grand Canyon's Visitor Center went solar with 84 solar panels on the center's roof and on adjacent ground-mounted platforms. The 18 kilowatts of energy generated by the panels provide enough power to offset 30 percent of the center's electricity use. APS said that the Grand Canyon is important to their efforts "because of the opportunity that exists to educate more than 4.5 million Canyon visitors each year about renewable energy."

Maybe someday Nevadans will get over their hangovers and see the light.

Colorado ranch goes green and spreads green

I would not have guessed a rancher in a tiny Colorado mountain town to lead the way in the electric car movement, but my hat is tipped to Jim Duke of El Jebel, an Aspen neighbor. Mr. Duke installed enough solar panels on his ranch to not only generate enough electricity for his entire ranch, but enough to give it away to any electric car that shows up at his ranch. His electric car 'fueling' station, also feeds his own electric cars, purchased for trips to town.

Although a substantial upfront investment, ($84,600 for the panels), he is eligible for nearly $51,000 in federal, state, local and power company credits, to ease the burden somewhat. And while his remaining $34,000 investment is a gigantic chunk of change to lay out for a project that could take decades to pay off, that is OK with Mr. Duke. He sees becoming carbon neutral as an obligation to future generations and the planet, saying, "It's way, way, way past the point for talk. It's time for action."

Mr. Duke has always been known for his environmental streak — back in the 80's he spearheaded efforts to establish recycling and composting programs for Aspen and surrounding communities.

Solar may be coming your way!

Congress extended the federal tax incentives for solar energy for another eight years, hoping to stimulate growth in the industry. With the current economic crises' and Americans looking to reduce their energy bills, the increase in interest in solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is expected to drop the price of the PV panels (by far the biggest expense) by 10 percent to 25 percent in the next year. In addition, companies from around the globe are testing technology that allows utility-scale solar thermal power plants to store the heat of the sun in molten salts so they can release it in a controlled manner for electricity production. United Technologies is teaming with US Renewables Group to commercialize a solar-power plant that will use this molten salt system for steam turbine power generation.
The company says plants using this method will be able to generate as much as 500 megawatts of peak power or run continuously at 50 megawatts. One megawatt is enough power to supply about 1,000 U.S. households.

California Company Installs Largest Corporate Solar Power System

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger dedicated a 2 megawatt solar power system at Applied Materials’ campus in Sunnyvale, California earlier this month.

The company is touting the solar system as one of the largest corporate solar power installations in the U.S., incorporating more than 7,000 wafer-based solar panels and capable of generating approximately 2 megawatts of power annually, the equivalent of powering 1,400 homes.

The parking lot-mounted system tracks the sun to increase the efficiency of the panels while also serving as shade for several hundred employee cars, and is "a great hedge against future energy cost increases,” said Mike Splinter, president and CEO of Applied Materials.

In addition, the company recently announced that it would purchase 8,220,000 kilowatt-hours of renewable energy annually from wind and solar generation sources in California.