California utilities push for solar, wind and carbon-capture projects

California regulators went out of this world today and gave the go-ahead to a power-purchase agreement involving the nation’s first solar power plant in space.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the state’s largest utility, will proceed with a 15-year contract with Manhattan Beach start-up Solaren Corp., after receiving approval from the California Public Utilities Commission.

The project, which is expected to go live in 2016, will use solar cells from Solaren on orbiting satellites to convert energy from the sun into radio-frequency waves. The waves will be transmitted to a receiving station near Fresno and reverted back into electricity.

The project should produce 1,700 gigawatt-hours of energy each year, according to the commission. The Japanese government said this summer that it intends to pursue a similar space-based solar program.

California hopes that utilities will pull 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2010. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a directive in September pushing for a 33% by 2020 goal.

San Francisco-based PG&E was also busy today signing a contract to buy and operate its first wind-energy project.

Portland, Ore.-based Iberdrola Renewables Inc., the U.S. branch of Iberdrola SA in Spain, will develop and build the Manzana Wind Project for PG&E. The project, which will be spread across 7,000 acres in the Tehachapi region of eastern Kern County, will cost slightly more than $900 million, the utility said.

The facility will produce up to 246 megawatts, or 670 gigawatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to power roughly 100,000 average California homes. Manzana could go online as early as December 2011 if the project is approved by the PUC.

To finance the effort, customers could see their rates increase 1.1% in 2012 compared with 2009 rates, or an average increase of 25 cents each month, the utility said.

Iberdrola has 3,500 megawatts from operating projects in the U.S., as well as four facilities under construction, said Jan Johnson, a spokeswoman with the company.

Also today, the California Public Utilities Commission gave approval for Edison International to spend up to $30 million to co-fund a feasibility study of a carbon-capture and storage plant.

Rosemead-based Edison, the parent of the Southern California Edison utility, will commit as much as $17 million to the first phase of the study, which will explore the permitting, engineering and economics of the Hydrogen Energy California (HECA) project.

The project could become a 250-megawatt power station in Kern County that would supply the state with low-carbon, hydrogen-produced electricity. The hydrogen would come from gasifying resources such as petroleum coke from oil refineries, potentially lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

If deemed necessary, Edison could also pour up to $13 million of funding into a second phase of research, according to regulators. So far, the U.S. Department of Energy has spent $308 million supporting the HECA project.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Comments

[automation]

Climate change is a global problem, and yet each one of us has the power to make a difference. Even small changes in our daily behaviour can help prevent greenhouse gas emissions without affecting our quality of life. In fact, they can help save us money!

[California Blogger]

When the utility companies, the PUC and California voters are all on the same page, tremendous things will happen for all of us.

[save the deserts!]

Great, more wilderness killed off for expensive, useless, GHG INCREASING boondoggles, while the entire SW USA bakes and sprawls without any point of use solutions like conservation and rooftop solar. This is downright corrupt, and a total Big Energy giveaway. Chevron, BP, Goldman Sachs - these are the names behind most of these hideous, destructive, wasteful and unreliable Big Solar projects, so you KNOW they are ripping us off and killing the planet. That's ALL THEY DO ALL DAY EVERY DAY.

We need to push MUCH HARDER for funding for our AB 811 loans so WE can install efficiency upgrades and rooftop solar on our homes and businesses. Let's be clear - a comprehensive program of conservation and point of use generation will QUICKLY get us to 33% renewables, will make our grid much more reliable (by using 90% of the power where it is produced, the grid loads are hugely reduced), more secure (it is impossible to hack into power that feeds directly into a structure, plus no blackouts), will not waste billions of gallons of water a year, cause thousands of people to be forced from their homes via eminent domain, nor slaughter millions of acres of wilderness. Oh, and an AB 811 and Feed in Tariff program will be at ZERO cost to ratepayers, taxpayers, the city and nature, and with Feed in Tariffs paying us for any power we produce and do not use, ZERO cost to the homeowner/business owner because all costs are fully offset. Compare this to the huge costs of these SF6 spewing powerlines and massive, massive industrial power plants plus increased energy rates. It is SO OBVIOUS WHAT IS HAPPENING!

You can see how the Big Energy Robber Barons (including LADWP) are trying desperately to keep the truth from us - going so far as to use Sierra Club, NRDC, Wilderness Society and Nature Conservancy as paid greenwashing mouthpieces for their remote, expensive monopoly machines. Think for yourself. WE have an opportunity here to seriously start a new paradigm where WE participate in the renewable energy economy as more than stupid sheep being forced to pay and pay while our homes and open spaces are destroyed.

If we don't fight hard for basic programs that work all over the world (risk-free loans and generous payments for excess power we produce), then we are as stupid as they think we are.

[Gregg Ferry]

What are the utility companies really doing? They are in the process of changing the rate structure to a flat rate. Let's see if I can follow the logic. The current rate structure was designed to encourage energy conservation. This change reverses that concept. This change does not benefit the electric companies. To what conclusion must I come? Is it that we no longer have to worry about energy independence? Or is it that we no longer have a problem with green house gasses?

With a little more thought about the ramifications of such a change, one would realize that it will hurt the alternative energy business because the rate of return will be lowered thus making solar, wind, micro-hydro, etc. even be more economically challenged.

This is so sad.

[Dave McGrath]

Where is the research in this article on Solaren Corp? Since LA Times has slashed its staff it looks like you must do your own research. Start by googling "Solaren Corp" and ask yourself if this is a professional, respectable, legitimate entity. I've got questions: LA Times - do your research!

http://www.solaren.com
http://www.solarenspace.com

[Paul Taylor Examiner]

Green groups are initially for lavish government programs with alternative and renewable energies (non-nuclear), electricity grid upgrades, conservation measures and other “smart” stuff. But cynically, they will then work at local levels to impede or stop actual construction projects in the virtuous guise of prudent environmental stewardship.

Green groups routinely operate partisan propaganda campaigns to suck you and government into spending money to solve theoretical environmental problems. They then insert themselves as a “stakeholder” to broker project approvals -- attracting free media publicity, naive donor sympathy, government grants and court cost awards as ”citizen” litigants.

It’s clear among these recent science frauds that partisan ideologies and cultish environmentalism have corrupted environmental science and policy. What is also clear is that environmentalism no longer offers any product or service in support of our future security and prosperity.

Militant eco-groups and green-obsessed environmentalists have become an "axis of antagonism" that we can no longer afford.

[John Leddy]

California and the U.S. should be leading the charge for renewable energy but the truth is several European countries and even China and India are more aggressive. Still, this report is encouraging. One should note that the promise of hydrogen power is that it is clean and unlimited so the problem with gasifying resources such as petroleum coke from oil refineries sounds like a dirty compromise. One California based company, Clean Energy Systems, may have the right technology providing utility scale power with CO2 as the only emission and the system is designed to effectively capture the CO2 for sequestration.

John Leddy, President
U.S. Water and Power
www.USWaterandPower.com

[scheng1]

It seems very complicated and expensive. I wonder why they dont put the solar panels in every rooftop, and utilize all available space first. It will be cheaper to make use of existing space before thinking about outer space.

[Tirau]

Rather than carpeting our last remaining open spaces with wind turbines, what about legally mandating more conservation?