Solar power in the Sunshine State: FPL gets 1st OK from PSC

Florida Power & Light, already the biggest generator of solar power in the country, won unanimous approval from the Florida Public Service Commission this week to make its customers pay for a $688-million plan to build the first commercial-scale solar plants in Florida, according to the Miami Herald.

FPL plans to build a 25-megawatt plant in rural DeSoto County -- which FPL says would be the largest photovoltaic facility in the world -- as well as a 10-megawatt photovoltaic facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Brevard County and a 75-megawatt facility in Martin County that would link solar thermal power to a natural gas plant. The DeSoto plant is scheduled to be completed by December 2009 with the other two following in 2010.

When completed, the trio of projects would make Florida the second largest supplier of utility-generated solar power in the nation, the company says. 

The commission voted to allow the utility to recover costs through an environmental provision used to charge customers for clean-energy improvements like smokestack scrubbers. In the past utilities had to wait until a plant is producing electricity before it can recover costs, but the Legislature changed the rules to allow full-cost recovery of a utility building 110-megawatts of renewable energy generators.

"The Florida solar facilities will prevent the release of nearly 3.5 million tons of greenhouses gases over the life of the projects, which is the equivalent of removing 25,000 cars from the road per year," according to FPL.

[Photo of the sun by NASA]

--Craig Pittman

Comments

[paminator]

Yahoo. 110 MW peak (27.5 MW average) for $688M gets rid of 3.5 Million Tons of CO2. Meanwhile, Progress Energy is building 2,200 MW baseload nuclear reactors that will, over their lifetimes (using the above article's CO2 savings estimate per MW), avoid over 500 Million Tons of CO2 emissions, over 140 times more.

[Don in St. Pete]

Pam, The real use of solar should be homes and businesses, to reduce each individuals base load on the grid thereby requiring less power, thus eliminating the need for new power plants. Conservation has produced 10x more KwH than all the power plants brought online in the last 10 years. It doesn't take a brainiac to figure it out. New house construction should require solar photovoltaic and thermal and be given back as breaks on closing cost's and an annual tax benefit.

[paminator]

Don- Let me know the current price of a solar PV system that can supply 2kW of electricity 24 hours a day for my home in Pinellas county. I already have an answer, because I calculate it every time a news article claims that solar PV is now cost competitive with residential utility rates. Without the numbers, its all just glad-handing empty promises.

I agree that conservation can save energy. The single biggest contributor to energy savings is proper insulation for a home. But the article is talking about solar PV, not energy conservation.

[Ronnie]

I am with paminator, over the past couple of years I have researched the cost of solar for my home and found that it would take between 15 to 20 years to see a return. That does not include repairs and maintaining the system. Most people do not keep their homes that long. Solar at present is not cost effective.

[Frank]

You can't compare solar to base load power; apples to oranges.

If the playing field was level and fossil and nuclear industries had to use true cost accounting then the electricity would be much more expensive and thus solar more competitive. Instead the artificial prices we pay for energy perpetuates our fossil fuel addiction.

We need to come to the realization that energy is not cheap and we are going to have to pay if we want to continue to be energy hogs.

Force the nuclear industry to get their own insurance instead of a pass from Congress and see how expensive nuclear is. However, that will never happen because insurers won't touch nuclear with a ten foot pole.

[Tino]

You can compare solar power to baseload power in an apples-to-apples manner. Traders refer to it as "firm" versus "nonfirm" power and price it accordingly.

As expected, nonfirm power sells at a massive discount to the firm power on the open market. That's just reality.

Sorry, Frank, I have yet to hear anyone in the power industry that buys into the "accounting conspiracy" theories. That's just a tired argument perpetuated by people looking for subsidy handouts.

[Frank]

Oh...now that's hypocritical...fossil fuels and nuclear got 7 billion in subsidies in 2007, for a mature technology, compared to the 2.8 billion all renewables got.

How much would coal fueled electricity cost if the health effects of asthma, heart attacks and other ailments linked to coal plant emissions were accounted for? What about mercury poisoning? What is a human life worth?

How much would nuclear cost if they had to get their own insurance?

[paminator]

Frank- you say "You can't compare solar to base load power; apples to oranges."

Actually you can, but you choose not to because the comparison shows solar to be an expensive source of electricity.

As an excellent article in Physics Today this month described a home solar PV installation, the discussion of cost led to "you are going to either spend a lot, or a whole lot, on a solar PV system for your home."

Well, if you want to keep them separate, then you support the notion that solar (and wind) will never contribute more than 10-15% of the total generation capacity in the grid.

Or you support the notion that solar PV will be distributed on rooftops at 2-3 times the cost of a solar farm solution.

But you certainly do not support Rev. Gore's call for 100% renewable electricity by 2018.

[Tino]

Name the fossil/nuclear subsidies.

Most of them that enviros count are things like this:

- access to railroads on Federal rights-of-way: $1 billion a year

- etc