California utility adds to its renewable portfolio

 

 

Southern California Edison continues to add to its renewable-energy portfolio, announcing Monday that it signed contracts for more than 800 megawatts of electricity generated from solar photovoltaic plants being built in three California counties.

The utility is now the nation’s largest provider of renewable power, deriving about 19% of its  supply from renewable sources, according to Mike Marelli, the company's director of renewable energy contracts.

Marelli said the utility secured contracts for 711 megawatts from SunPower and 120 megawatts from Fotowatio Renewable Ventures, from generating projects in Los Angeles, Kern and Merced counties.  Generally, a megawatt of electricity is enough to power 650 homes.

Late last year, Edison dropped its contract with the 850-megawatt Calico Solar project, then owned by Tessera Solar. That company then sold the project. An Edison spokeswoman said she was bound by a confidentiality agreement not to discuss the matter.

Despite the loss of that potential solar power, Marelli said Edison is moving toward its mandated goal of  obtaining 33% of its power from renewable sources. With different technologies for utility-scale solar generation still fighting it out in the marketplace, Marelli said the company isn’t choosing sides.

“We like to say that we are technology-agnostic,” he said. “We have renewable goals. We cast a wide net to the industry. We’ve executed contracts around all the technologies. We have seen over the years that some technologies tend to be more competitive than others.”

Edison has contracted to receive power from a variety of technologies, including solar thermal and photovoltaic. The latest contracts must be approved by the California Public Utilities Commission.

-- Julie Cart

 Photo: A solar project near Barstow. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy

 

 

Comments

[California Solar Engineering]

Love the idea of saving the environment and money- Love SunPower as a business and their products/installations and most importantly Love benefiting from LA's commitment to renewable energies.

[berribrand]

@save the deserts!

Your math is actually a bit fuzzy. You are confusing "watt" with "watt-hours." A watt is an instantaneous power demand. According to the article, a house needs about 1.5 kilowatts of instantaneous power. But you don't pay for electricity based on instantaneous demand. You pay for "watt-HOURS." So you need to multiply the watts by the number of hours. Over a 30-day month, that is 1.5 kW x 30 days x 24 hrs/day = 1080 kilowatt-hours of electricity a home needs per month. This is a bit conservative though, because obviously homes use far less energy at night. It isn't clear from the article if 1 megawatt is enough for 650 homes during PEAK power demand or average demand. If its peak demand, then a home probably uses much less than 1080 kW-hrs per month (probably about 50% less). According to SCE, I use about 300-400 kilowatt-hours per month, and I have a lot of electronics (PS3, LCD TV, multiple computers, etc). So, the numbers seem to actually make sense (they are in the ballpark).

[Brian]

I was using electric heating last month to decrease the wood burn we go through.

SCE tiered pricing went from .13 kwh to .33 for the same energy. $734.56 a month isn't gonna work.

Wood stove burns nice and warm now.

Too bad I have an incentive to stay off electricity.

[Alan]

Yeah I agree lets save the deserts .... by outlawing off road driving.

Seems a solar collector staiton is less of an impact and has critical social benefits as well.

[heg]

People attack solar because it couldn't 'replace' petroleum, but really, there's going to be nothing that replaces petroleum. Nothing can. To live a modern, high energy lifestyle without external energy, each of us would have to have the equivalent of 200 manual laborers working for us. There's a day's worth of manual labor in a tablespoon of gas. Every year, the earth burns energy that it took mother nature a million years to put in the ground.

So clearly we have to change our habits as well as find new sources of energy. This isn't as hard as its seems. Computers and the internet are energy-saving miracles, because they create efficiencies in scheduling, design, and transport. How many business trips have been eliminated by Webex? How many trips to the mall by Amazon? And that savings is just beginning. Moore's law says processing power will be doubling every 18 months for the foreseeable future.

Also, people are opting more for an urbainized lifestyle, which leads to attendant scale savings with infrastructure, mass transit, and real estate.

And alternative energy is really taking off. Wind energy just about matches nuclear right now as an electricity source, and is 1000 times less complicated and expensive. What's the worst that can happen with a windmill?

I think the future looks very bright.

[save the deserts!]

With respect, all of you replying to my comment are off point, and here is why:

Let's start with "efficiency." All I said was that the statistic is wrong. This is not a complaint about solar, it is a complaint about press releases using falsely inflated numbers, and those numbers being dutifully copied and pasted without any independent thought. If a MW of solar power ACTUALLY fully powered 650 homes, then that means each home needs only 1.5 kW of solar power to fully power itself. At current rebate levels, in the SCE territory, that would cost $3,000 (or $6/month for 40 years). So, if that's the truth, why would we not immediately ALL do that instead? Do you really think that our bills are gonna drop below $6/hour with all this new infrastructure we are being forced to pay for? Either the number is a lie or we can all fully power our homes for $6/month. which is it?

Secondly, capacity factors for polycrystalline PV and CSP at the same location are identical. 27%. This is not opinion, this is proven, again, despite the lies in the press releases over the past 5 years. PV has no moving parts, so it actually lasts much longer than CSP and when sited in the built environment, does not kill ecosystems or deplete water because the built environment is not generally full of recently-bulldozed sand and dead soil crust which covers Big Solar mirrors/panels and needs to be rinsed almost daily. Any increased solar insolation in hot deserts is completely offset by line losses plus decreased output in hot weather (both PV and air-cooled CSP), right when we need the power the most.

The "energy payback" for PV is less than 2 years, let's put that sad old myth to rest. Look at the DOE website if you need proof. Most Big Solar (including all the solar in this story) is now going to be PV, in fact, since CSP has failed to deliver on their hype, it breaks down and underperforms all the time, and nobody will finance it. Don't ask me why they put a CSP tower photo on a story about PV...

Thirdly, GHG emissions from manufacturing, transportation, construction, operation and destruction of CO2 sequestering ecosystem, plus SF6 from transmission are ENORMOUS. New research at UC Riverside is showing a NET INCREASE in GHG emissions over the life of these projects, not a decrease. Take out the construction, transmission and dead sequestration areas and you have a MUCH lower emitting project, with the same net amount of power for the same cost. Better for the climate, better for the environment, better for us.

Fourthly, when there are 2 options that will produce the same amount of power for the same price, it is hardly a stretch to prefer the one that reduces GHGs, saves wilderness, saves billions of gallons of water, stabilizes and democratizes the grid. It is, in fact, insane to choose the other.

We are not comparing Big Solar to Big Oil, we are comparing Big Solar to local solar, since that is apples to apples, and the latter wins on every environmental, engineering and economic point. More and better jobs, economic benefits to FIT recipients, improved home values, spared open spaces, no water waste, better grid redundancy and reliability, etc. Think "internet" not "highway." Decentralized and dynamic systems are the future of energy, just like computing and communications.

There is literally no reason at all to support Big Solar and millions of reasons to support comprehensive policies that encourage point of use solutions like efficiency, passive heating/cooling, rooftop solar and water catchment. If you can't do it for the environment, do it for the money. Regular German residents receive generous payments every month for producing solar power on their rooftops while we are paying Big Energy through the nose (huge subsidies plus high rates), and the cost is only going to shoot skyward once these things start showing up on our bills. THAT, not lack of open space, is why Germans do rooftop solar. They can do the math.

[Mike SR]

I believe that when people rail against solar by saying things like renewable power plants are "permanently killing millions of acres of wilderness for Big Energy," they are missing the point, and placing ideology ahead of solving problems. There is no free lunch, so one must balance one's ideals against solving the problems of our huge imports of oil, generation of air pollution, and the global increase in "green house gases" by fossil fuel based power plants.

[Mike SR]

I'm not sure why people rail against solar, claiming it is inefficient. What makes solar viable is that the systems tend to lack moving parts and therefore last for decades. With a lifespan of 20+ years, these systems can generate power with a limited amount of maintenance and with production of zero emissions. One of the reasons we want zero emissions is that we have to breathe the air pollution from carbon-based power plants, and then future generations have to deal with global warming. Another reason is that every watt generated by these plants is one less watt added to our national trade deficit, even it is is built by a German company. Once the plant it built, it generates energy from the sun, not from Big Oil. Let's think a little larger here and promote more solar (both distributed on roofs and in concentrated power plants) as part of the mix of our power solutions.

[heg]

Save the Deserts -

You make some viable points, but I think there is enough room for pristine reserves and scaled up production, considering how seriously the environment will be harmed if we don't get serious about renewables. I could even see where setting up a PV plant would prevent a desert area from becoming an ATV/4WD paradise, which would be good for desert biota, which are often very small, being either microorgainisms, small plants, or burrowing animals.

Rooftop pvs require a huge amount of energy and water to manufacture, and have a limited life. Solar thermal is a much simpler technology, and with good maintenance, can last a long time. Also, there are economies of scale in these big plants. That doesn't mean there isn't room for rooftops in some areas, especially where theft wouldn't be a problem. But in the long run, scale is how to run things efficiently.

Germany doesn't have large areas to set up these farms, although Spain is doing it. If Germany did have the space, they'd probably be doing it this way.

[stephesthe]

One of the things I like about rooftop photovoltaic systems is that they do not incur a loss of power during transmission from far-away locations. This seems to me to make rooftops inherently more efficient. Maybe we should mandate more rooftop systems or provide more incentives for them. Especially with electric cars comin' on strong. That could mean less tailpipe emissions and less money being shipped out of the good ole USA.

[save the deserts!]

there is nothing "renewable" about permanently killing millions of acres of wilderness for Big Energy production since the built environment could more easily and affordably provide all the solar power we need without wasting billions of gallons of waters, killing off endangered species, hugely increasing GHG emissions and costing ratepayers a fortune.

secondly, although a MW of high-efficiency gas power operating at a 90% capacity factor may "power" 650 homes, since desert solar has closer to 27% capacity factor, it's more like 265 homes when you refer to what a MW of solar can power.

we are being totally, totally ripped off, not to mention seriously destroying the planet, with Big Solar. if we had a german-style feed in tariff, all of US could be paid for producing clean power right where it is needed - on our rooftops, and we wouldn't be monopolizing OUR sunshine on OUR public lands for THEIR offshored profits! property values, grid reliability, jobs, local economies, affordable power bills, water, GHG emissions (very high with Big Solar), and open spaces (and all their species) ALL benefit from feed in tariffs like Germany's.

ONLY BIG ENERGY BENEFITS FROM BIG SOLAR. are we still working for them?