Florida Gives Green Light to Largest Solar Power Plant in U.S.
The Florida Public Service Commission has “unanimously and enthusiastically” approved a plan to build America’s largest commercial solar-power plant in the state. The committee also gave the green light to a further two facilities, due to go on-line in 2009.
Florida Power & Light have selected SunPower to construct the three solar-power plants in the center of the state. The largest, a 75-megawatt plant in Martin County on the East Coast, will be connected to a natural gas plant. Another 25-megawatt plant in DeSoto County will be the largest photovoltaic facility in the country, while a third, 10-megawatt photovoltaic facility is to be housed at the Kennedy Space Center.
Speaking about the project, Howard Wenger, SunPower’s Senior Vice President, Global Business Units said, “These agreements confirm the growing trend in the U.S. to build solar power plants at a scale rivalling those in market-leading countries such as Germany and Spain.”
The Florida decision follows a raft of recent political moves to boost the development of solar and other renewable energy sources in the U.S. Last week, Pennsylvania launched a Bill establishing a $650 million energy fund to support the sector. Earlier in the month, the U.S. Senate introduced the 10 Million Solar Roofs Act of 2008, while the end of June saw House Democrats introduce a national feed-in tariff for renewable energy projects.
Other Posts on Renewable Energy Policy:
- Pennsylvania Gets $650 Million Renewable Energy Fund
- U.S. Could Get Ten Million Solar Roofs in Ten Years
- House Democrats Introduce National Feed-in Tariff for Renewable Energy Projects
- BLM Applying Nepa to Large Scale Solar Energy on Public Lands
- Senator Attacks Solar Energy Industry
- Senate Passes Renewable Energy Tax Credits. Why Am I Not More Excited?
Image Credit - Schwarzerkater on Flickr via a Creative Commons License
It seems that the US is heading toward a greener energy sector in spite of the federal government, not because of it.
I think that the claim that the US is heading toward parity with the greenest EU countries is somewhat inflated. Those states have government backing for their green energy production and a fierce approach to increasing efficiency and reducing carbon emissions, especially Germany.
The populations these countries have also needs to be considered and the proportion of the total energy use provided by renewables. By these standards I gfear the US is still miles behind and will be for some time.
Sweet. This should have been happened. Florida is the Sunshine State. I guess the main problem is clearing enough land to place the panels.
http://thethreelaws.net
And what about hurricanes? How will they prevent against that? At least in California, they would only vibrate but most likely would not fall down. I think it is a waste unless they can make it to where the panels can lower below ground for protection.
That’s a good idea, making the solar panels able to be lowered below ground for protection, in case of severe storms, hurricanes, or tornados — or fires, Florida is plagued by drought-driven fires.
My dad is 85 & a lifelong Repub., lives in Florida on West Coast. He admires Al Gore’s work on Climate Change, & sure doesn’t want to see the pristine BEACHfront in his City drenched in Oil from Offshore Oil Drilling!
Only the flacks who front for the Oil, Natural gas, or Nuke special interests, are against Solar Power Energy anymore!
The biggest embarrassment in Cable TV News is CNN’s Glen Beck, whose clownish rants about Global Warming being a Hoax are hilariously transparent bullsh*t!
Nice to see some steps made over in the US (for a change).
Ok, let’s see how this compares with other energy production in Florida. Florida has almost no hydroelectric, so it principally gets energy from Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, and miscellaneous sources (including 2/3 of the nation’s petroleum coke and significant petroleum liquids). Specifically in 2004 (the last year for which I have data), 29% of the energy was produced from Coal, 36% from natural gas, and 15% from nuclear. Miscellaneous sources (where I guess solar will one day fit) were 21% of the total production.
Now we see that the three plants listed above produce a total of 110 MW of electricity. How does that compare, for example, with the nuclear power plants in Florida? Well there are 5 units. One unit at Crystal River can produce 842 MW, the two units at St Lucie (near Stuart) can produce 1678 MW, and Turkey Point (south of Miami) produces 1386 MW. The St Lucie reactors together were 43% of the nuclear production or about 6% of the total energy production. And St Lucie will produce 15 times the total of the three solar plants. Thus, by my calculations the three solar plants together will produce 0.4% of the electrical needs of Florida.
Also one of the main installations is at Kennedy Space center where it will use up most of its power.
All of this insignificant or miniscule benefit but FPL customers see a 8% or higher rate hike.
And when a hurricane comes by and wipes these panels away the PSC will ok another 11% rate hike to let FPL reccoup costs.
Yea I was wondering why they would build solar panels in the path of hurricanes. However nuclear plants are far more durable…
Just think, when we blot out the sun like in the Matrix, all these panels will be a waste.
I think solar is perfect in a place like florida. RFK jr said that the midwest is the saudi arabia of wind power. Florida is the saudi arabia of solar.
http://www.rerenewables.com
Nice, welcome steps but I would agree with Da Man. You have to take into account hurricanes when you put in a lot of money into a Florida-based project.
You don’t want to move the solar plant when the hurricanes come, or do you?
One thing that is missing from most discussions about solar power is a recognition of the massive quantities of land needed for the collectors. Florida has lots of sunshine, but it also has a lot of land that is environmentally fragile and not suitable for being carpeted with mirrors or panels.
Another issue is the fact that solar developers have a rather unusual way of talking bragging about the capability of their system. They like to advertise the peak power capacity instead of helping people to understand the average power that can be produced. Using their figures is a bit like planning a trip by using a car’s top speed as an input rather than real world considerations like traffic, fuel consumption, and speed limits.
As the earth spins, the energy hitting any particular point on the globe changes based on the sine of the elevation angle. For much of the 24 hour clock, there is no energy at all. Even when the sun rises, and reaches a 30% elevation in mid morning, the energy is only 50% of the peak.
At noon on a clear day in mid summer in low latitudes is the only time that the power output of a solar system is actually equal to its nameplate, within hours, the power level drops dramatically. Tracking arrays can solve some of the problem - at a significant added cost - but certainly not all. Storage systems are proposed, but the added burden of storage adds space, large material requirements, pumps valves, and some amount of chemical or thermal hazard for the operator.
Nope - solar power is no panacea. There is a good reason why hundreds of generations of very intelligent people have seen the sun rise and set every day and determined that they would use its energy when it was freely available for lighting and heat, but would also work to develop other energy sources like coal, oil, gas and uranium to fill in those frequent times when the sun disappeared or was too weak to help much.