{"id":3054,"date":"2013-04-20T21:15:58","date_gmt":"2013-04-21T01:15:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=3054"},"modified":"2013-04-20T21:19:18","modified_gmt":"2013-04-21T01:19:18","slug":"a-grid-with-a-million-solar-rooftops","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/04\/a-grid-with-a-million-solar-rooftops.html","title":{"rendered":"A grid with a million solar rooftops"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nBill McKibben wrote for Rolling Stone 11 April 2013,\r\n\r\nThe Fossil Fuel Resistance<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nA grid with a million solar rooftops feels more like the Internet\r\nthan ConEd; it’s a farmers market in electrons, with the local\r\ncontrol that it implies.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nDistributed solar power is\r\nexactly what electric utilities fear<\/a>.\r\nThere’s a reason why\r\n\r\nSouthern Company CEO Thomas A. Fanning\r\nconsistently ranks “renewables” as his second-to-last power\r\nsource<\/a>;\r\nthe only thing worse for big baseload utilities is his last one:\r\nefficiency, which could remove all demand for additional electrical supply in Georgia<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHow big of an opportunity for the rest of us is this threat to the\r\ncozy business model of big baseload utilities?\r\nJohn Farrell wrote for ILSR 21 March 2012,\r\n\r\nRooftop Revolution: Changing Everything with Cost-Effective Local Solar<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nNearly 100 million Americans could install over 60,000 megawatts of\r\nsolar at less than grid prices — without subsidies — by\r\n2021.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nFarrell’s estimates of how much electricity and how fast rooftop\r\nsolar can deliver it are quite conservative: 60-500 gigawatts or 17% of\r\nU.S. electricity use by 2021, 8 years from now.\r\nLook at what Apple is doing:\r\n\r\nfrom 35% to 75% renewable energy in two years<\/a>.\r\nApple, which knows something about the Internet and how it\r\nwent from unknown to in everyone’s pocket in only a few years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nDemocracy in America?\r\nDistributed solar power can deliver it.\r\nAs we already heard\r\n\r\nfrom North Carolina<\/a>,\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWe took this narrow initial step of just getting it on rooftops, and\r\nlearning from that….\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nConstituency building. Getting more visibility to what’s already\r\npresent. So people couldn’t claim that if you add more energy the\r\ngrid’s going to crash.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nResult? 91% of NC voters want more solar, far more than they want any other\r\npower source.\r\nIvan Urlaub of NCSEA also presente projections in June 2011 for\r\nhow quickly solar prices will drop below current utility power source prices: between 2014 and 2018.\r\nUnless they build nuclear, which will run up traditional power prices and move the solar grid parity dates sooner.\r\nHm, guess what’s happening in Georgia?\r\nSouthern Company is wasting so many Georgia Power ratepayer dollars on\r\n\r\n19-month-late and $1-billion-over-budget nuclear boondoggle on the Savannah River<\/a>\r\nthat solar power in Georgia is reaching grid parity right about now.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nA nationwide poll\r\n\r\nby Hart Research 4-9 September 2012<\/a>,\r\nfound:\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nA nearly unanimous 92% of voters feel it is very important (58%) or\r\nsomewhat important (34%) for the United States to develop and use\r\nsolar power, including 93% of swing voters. Democrats and\r\nindependents are nearly uniform in their agreement (98% and 95%\r\nimportant, respectively), and 84% of Republicans also agree.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nNuclear is down at the bottom with oil,\r\nonly somewhat higher than dead-last coal.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nThe people don’t just want solar, they want the government to\r\nprovide financial incentives to get it, by almost 2 to 1, once again\r\nmore than for any other power source, with nuclear, oil, and coal at\r\nthe bottom, and far more than the “no tax subsidies\/incentives to\r\nany” block.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nHowever, the point of grid parity is that after that solar is going to happen\r\neven without subsidies.\r\nWhich is why in Georgia Southern Company and Georgia Power keep\r\n\r\nkeep blocking any legislative attempts<\/a> to change that antique 1973\r\nTerritorial Electric Service Act that makes solar financing difficult,\r\nor to even limit charging nuke cost overruns to ratepayers.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nRooftop solar is going to win.\r\nCalifornia is already aiming for\r\n\r\na million solar roofs<\/a>.\r\nAustralia\r\n\r\nhas already been there and done that<\/a>.\r\nTom Arup wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald 5 April 2013,\r\n\r\nRooftop solar burns past 1-million mark<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\nThe growth in rooftop solar has been rapid, with installations\r\ngrowing from less than 900 in 2006 to well over 300,000 last year on\r\nthe back of generous concessions offered by government and falling\r\nsystem costs.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nWe have just as much sunshine here in Georgia.\r\nGeorgia Power and its uncle SO can only hold rooftop solar back for so long.\r\nHow about we stop letting them do that, and get on with it,\r\nso Georgia can lead for a change?\r\nLead in jobs, profit, and clean air and water through solar power,\r\nand lead in democracy.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bill McKibben wrote for Rolling Stone 11 April 2013, The Fossil Fuel Resistance, A grid with a million solar rooftops feels more like the Internet than ConEd; it’s a farmers market in electrons, with the local control that it implies. Distributed solar power is exactly what electric utilities fear. There’s a reason why Southern Company […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[14,8,18,19,22],"tags":[1303,8704,8701,8708,8709,507,8702,12,7,158,8712,637,8714,108,6],"class_list":["post-3054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-history","category-politics","tag-bill-mckibben","tag-economy","tag-georgia","tag-georgia-power","tag-history","tag-internet","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-north-carolina","tag-politics","tag-rooftop","tag-solar","tag-southern-company","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-Ng","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3054"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3059,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3054\/revisions\/3059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}