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Cities can develop their own renewable energy and energy efficiency finance programs suited to their residential and commercial needs. For instance, in November 2007, the Berkeley City Council authorized staff to develop a plan to pay for the installation of solar panels and solar hot water systems for any homeowner or commercial building owner. Property owners retain ownership of the solar systems, paying back the cost over 20 years through an assessment on the annual property tax bill. This program entails little risk on the part of the city or the building owner, and overcomes a common obstacle of a costly up-front investment which may take more years to recoup savings than the owner intends to keep the building.
Once accepted into the program, a property owner would schedule an appointment for a solar installer to determine the appropriate solar system for the property. The city would pay the homeowner for the system and its installation, minus any applicable state and federal rebates, and would add a special tax to the property owner’s tax bill to pay for the system.
By The Dave Room •
March 10, 2008
Going solar is like purchasing your electricity upfront for the next 20 years with a one-time payment. Yeah, you may save money in the long run, but the upfront payment is no joke. Currently solar photovoltaics cost about $8 per watt (installed), so a four kilowatt system will set you back about $32,000 before state and federal incentives.
Photo credit: Pete Beverly, NREL/DOE
A new model of solar purchasing appears to be coming of age: community solar purchasing programs. Last month, two colleagues in the Local Clean Energy Alliance and I carpooled to a workshop by the Downtown San Jose Solar Project about their experiences setting up a community purchasing program.
By Carol Gulyas •
February 13, 2008
Problems with silicon-based solar electricity (PV)
In the world of solar electricity generation, the price and shortage of silicon have been barriers to wider adaptation of solar photovoltaic (PV), especially as demand continues to rise. Solar PV’s efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity has also been criticized. That’s why non-silicon-based alternatives are especially attractive. I spoke with Gregg Clevenger, CFO of Infinia Corporation, on Monday (February 11) to find out what his company is up to and why renewable energy advocates are all atwitter about it.
According to Gregg, “We set out to address climate change and went back to ground zero with our Stirling engine product, to develop it into a design that is simple enough to be mass-produced widely and to generate solar electricity at 20-30% of the cost of solar PV.”
Scientific American has a thought-provoking proposal in its January 2008 issue. The magazine proposes a massive, far-reaching plan to get solar power generating 69 percent of America’s electricity 35 percent of our total energy by 2050, thus replacing all of our foreign oil needs and slashing global warming emissions. Below are some of the highlights of that “solar grand plan.”
Technology
The American Southwest would be the home of massive amounts of solar power needed for this clean energy conversion. Specifically, two types of solar power would be employed: Photovoltaic (PV) cells and concentrated solar power.
According to the solar grand plan, 30,000 square miles of PV cells would provide 3,000 gigawatts (GW) of energy. The “30,000 square miles” part made me flinch, but already existing solar installations indicate that the land needed for each gigawatt-hour of solar energy in the Southwest is less that the amount of land needed to run a coal plant and mine the fossil fuel for it.
Concentrated solar power would supply about one-fifth of the solar energy in the plan. Concentrated solar power uses long metallic mirrors that focus the sun’s rays onto a pipe filled with fluid. The fluid is heated and runs through a heat exchanger that produces steam that turns a turbine. Nine plants like this already exist in the in U.S.
