MILPITAS, CA National Energy Secretary Steven Chu watched over Governor Jerry Brown’s shoulders as the beloved busy-minded wizard of clean economies poured his signature over SB2X (State Senator Simitian D- Palo Alto). The legislation requires California get 33 percent of its RPS [required portfolio standard] electricity to come from renewable energy sources by 2020.
Sunpower hosted the signing at its chosen manufacturer Flextronics in Milpitas, CA. The panels built will rival the quality of cheap imported Chinese panels. Sunpower claims its panels will achieve the highest efficiency in the industry at 19%.
Sunpower has created over 1000 jobs for Californians, and roughly 4000 jobs nationwide. The Milpitas location alone will create 100 jobs to manufacture enough solar panels each year to supply 25,000 homes.
Solar Economies of Scale lead to 165% growth in 2010
Dr. Richard Swanson founded Sunpower in the 70s when the price of solar was as high as $70.00 per kWh. That price is now cents on the dollar. The new pricing will allow solar to compete with conventional energy sources for electricity.
Given plans for the electrification of the nation's autos, solar could also provide a fuel source for the transportation sector. Large scale solar farms and concentrated solar projects (CSPs), par with the price of coal, and has long since already beaten nuclear produced electricity in price and safety.
Independent research has forecasted prices as low as $0.04/kWh by 2030 given capacity factor of 34% and declining costs per kW-year by 3.5% per year after 2006 writes Dr. Matthias Fripp (2008). Fripp has produced his methods for this projection in his dissertation for the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute entitled Optimal Investment in Wind and Solar Power in California.
Strong stable solar public policy creates natural marketplace driven by demand
Swanson further supported his economies of scale claims to bring down the costs of solar by announcing that “Southern California Edison just won a bid of 711 MW of solar at a price [per Kwh to the rate payer] at less than that of a natural gas power plant.” The crowd of about 400 applauded.
Swanson concluded, “Needed is strong stable public policy to attract adequate investment to further deliver at scales of economy to continue to reduce the price of solar for the nation."
Sunpower CEO Tom Werner further recanted that a stable public policy combined with the highest efficiency panels in the industry will allow for “long term market visibility.” Werner went on to say that "Public policy can produce the demand as the marketplace in which in turn allows for jobs."
Marketing studies have shown that there is indeed a demand for solar power such that 9 out of 10 Americans polled want solar.
Rate hikes a myth say rate payer consumer advocates
Author State Senator Simitian advises that consumers concered about rate hikes can contact the Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DAR) who have written a position letter in which they concluded:
DRA strongly supports the ratepayer protection provisions in this bill which would limit program costs by establishing a limitation that prevents disproportionate rate impacts, adhering to the "least-cost and best-fit" approach, and by requiring sufficient transparency and reporting. These mechanisms are key to ensuring we achieve our renewable goals in a cost-effect manner.
The letter has also been posted on the Senators website here with more information about the legislation.
The Utility Reform Network (TURN) prepared a press release entitled More Renewables is a Victory for California Consumers. Bill's passage signals more clean, green and affordable energy for California.
Oil Shock
Obama Administration Nobel prize winner Steven Chu took the stage to speak about how solar power can reduce the effects of oil shock. "The public is seldom reminded that electric cars can be charged by solar powered batteries and so would reduce fuel dependency on oil supplies that experts forecast there are only 40 years left worldwide."
Chu furthered that public policy per the Obama Administration will confront the end of a hydrocarbon era by allowing for even more solar including concentrated solar thermal power plants known within the industry as CSPs. Per the Concentrated SolarThermal Power Summit scheduled for July in Las Vegas, there are over 200 of these plants around the world and soon to be 30 or so more constructed in the southwestern United States.
Concentrated solar plants can be thought of as nuclear power plants in that the sun also can be used to heat water to spin a turbine creating electricity without the storage hazards of nuclear waste nor the leakages of radiation being witnessed at several nuclear power plants in Japan, now rated as a hazard of '7' ranking the diasaster on par with that of the Russian nuclear power plant disaster, Chernobyl.
Jobs, jobs, jobs
Secretary Chu made the following announcements in keeping with President Obama’s commitment to doubling the amount of electricity the United States produces from clean renewable sources by 2035:
- Brightsource of Oakland, California will receive a 1.6 billion dollar loan guarantee. This will provide one million MW per year, enough to power 85,000 homes and provide 1000 jobs.
- Another 1.2 billion for the California Valley Solar Ranch Project is scheduled to be built in San Luis Obispo providing another 250 MW for 60,000 homes and 350 jobs.
- Lastly, Chu cited 27 billion for 26 projects to materialize into 60,000 jobs all across the USA.
Further, standards at which companies are becoming more careful about their footprint are in response to an ever growing society educated about the importance of maintaining a sustainable economy and an resultant habitable planet.
….and when will the Golden State reach100% RPS?
The Safe Energy Association is a group formed to represent rate payers, environmentalists, energy conservationists, and safe, clean, renewable energy industries. Alan Dechert, President, says his group is collecting letters from citizens to endorse such a plan to “urge the state to hold public hearings to develop a roadmap and a timeline with which to reach an RPS of 100% renewable energy. Both Australia and Germany already have such plans.”
P.S. Governor 'Moonbeam' Jerry Brown vindicated
Writer would be remiss to leave out incredible sound bites from the reincarnated and feisty environmentalist Jerry Brown, whose very first solar credit in the nation came as a result of the oil shocks during Brown’s first governorship of the golden state, that triggered so many and also inspired Secretary of Energy Chu:
“We are dealing with a retrograde faction who think we can drill our way to happiness," said Brown. "These people don’t believe in evolution or global warming and are not relying upon information that is science based.” It is a myth that the whole problem was government when it was the banks that were creating a bubble to cause livelihoods to disappear."
- Governor Brown vindicated by the growth of the green economy in California, cited the great clean world-wide energy race and noted that China installed 6000 MW of solar last year while the USA only installed 1000 MW. However, if the Democratic Governor does not win consensus with the Republican Party resistant to holding the special election Brown says he needs to allow voters to decide between raising taxes or living in severe austerity, the race between China and the USA could continue to call China the winner. The cuts would include vital investments that would stimulate the economy.
Jerry Brown encouraged would be inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs to not be afraid to be called a name he now embraces such as he was as a young visionary during his first term as governor with the State of California, “I didn’t earn my name Governor Moon Beam for nothing.”
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