Large Scale Solar Power Projects
Green Wombat has a couple of cool articles up concerning large-scale solar power projects. The first concerns a 500 MW plant being built in New Mexico with cooperation between San Diego Gas and Electric and Southern California Edison, among others. The article also mentions a 1.75 GW plant based on solar dish technology from Stirling Energy Systems. One drawback of these larger scale projects is that they are often located far away from the cities they supply, causing inefficiencies in the transmission of generated electricity.
In order to avoid these issues, Pacific Gas and Electric has two smaller projects up near the Bay Area in Fresno and Tracy. These projects should be able to supply power to Fresno and the Bay Area, respectively, without having to transmit over substantial distances. With all of the activity surrounding solar power from California’s major utilities and the abundance of potential solar energy in the region, it’s no surprise that San Diego and San Francisco/Berkeley are two of the Department of Energy’s 13 “Solar America Cities.”
These developments are good for someone like me who lives in attached housing, and therefore cannot easily generate individual solar power. Beyond conserving, the only other obvious option for reducing my in-home energy carbon footprint is purchasing carbon offsets, which are fairly controversial in terms of impact (and will no doubt be the subject of a future article).
