Solar Energy

From the Los Angeles Times:

“Last year, when the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power kicked off a new program to buy electricity from local solar installations, city leaders along with environmentalists and business groups said it would be the nation’s largest urban rooftop solar program and would allow hundreds of building owners to create sun-fueled power plants on their roofs or over parking lots.”

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From the Los Angeles Times:

“One by one, a parade of Owens Valley residents rose at a public hearing Tuesday to assail the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s plan to meet its renewable energy goals by covering 2 square miles of high desert with 1 million solar panels.”

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From the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Quietly whirring away in a dusty field in the Central Valley is a shiny solar energy machine that may someday solve many of California’s water problems.

“It’s called the WaterFX solar thermal desalination plant, and it has been turning salty, contaminated irrigation runoff into ultra-pure liquid for nearly a year for the Panoche Water and Drainage District.”

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From the Los Angeles Times:

“It takes L.A. at least 12 to 13 weeks to approve and inspect rooftop panels for homeowners, according to estimates provided by the DWP. That’s roughly five times what it takes in San Diego and Sacramento.”

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From the Los Angeles Times:

“Over the objections of critics, Los Angeles is moving ahead with plans to build a $680-million 200-megawatt solar energy plant within view of this desolate Eastern Sierra site that was a Japanese American internment camp during World War II.”

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From The Bakersfield Californian, in a commentary by Lois Henry:

“A water grab is a water grab is a water grab. No matter how AquaHelio Resources LLC tries to dress it up, that’s what I believe its proposed Fremont Valley Preservation Project amounts to. I wrote about this mysterious company’s initial proposal last year when it was just a solar/water banking project.”

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From Capital Public Radio:

“SMUD is launching a new clean energy project to help improve efficiency at its natural gas-fired power plant. The U.S. Energy Department has given the utility $10 million to test the technology. …

“The technology uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and focus it on water to produce steam.”

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From the KCET ReWire blog:

“The upscale Sacramento suburb of Roseville will buy 325,000 megawatt-hours of electrical power from a solar facility more than 260 miles south of the city, in a Kern County town more readily known for oil wells than solar fields. Roseville will buy all the power from First Solar’s Lost Hills solar facility for four years.”

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