Massive solar project garners protests from solar energy industry

"Edison, buying in huge quantities, is able to get great prices on the newest in solar panel technology, " ~ Why doesn't Edison let all the solar companies and private users add their orders so the price can go even lower?

It says at half the cost of previos PV units. How does that price compare to other energy sources. Is this the time to concider installing or continuing research.

LKelley, YES we are stupid and very much against progress.I live in Michigan also and while working in an automotive industry I keep on seeing an EXTREME opposition to ANYTHING that is modern, like electric car, because it COST MONEY to develop. I wish that it would be different , but cannot believe that it ever will.I believe your story , because I see dumb conservatism in our lives and politics.It would be awesome to take a tour of your company. Keep up good work - gems will always sell! Best Regards, Chris

To expand on what John in Tex said, this is similar to what happened inthe computer industry. We started out with large businesses pushing it from the garage shops into mass production and the price came down. The small guys ought to look at this from a longer life-cycle. The price will come down when the market is larger. Better manufacturers, more competition. No one complains when Wal-Mart sells the flat screen $400 cheaper than Radio Shack. Once solar suppliers feel they have a chance to sell a larger number of units the price will come down and we will all have them on our roof, just like the cell phone in our pocket, and the computers in our homes. Keep the government out of this except to provide incentives to us little guys to install them on our homes.

"250 megawatts of advanced photovoltaic generating technology ... enough power to serve approximately 162,000 homes." Am I missing something? 250 MW/162000 homes = 1543 W/home, enough for a toaster or microwave oven, but not both. Far less than it takes to run a whole-house air conditioner.

I live in Michigan, not California, but I am still very interested in what CA companies do, because other States and companies eventually copy CA. Solar energy prices via Solar cells (photovoltaic) will come down mainly because REALLY big money thinks it will. Some very large companies are building extremely expensive factories to make poly-Silicon which is the basic raw material for silicon solar cells. Their poly-Si capacity is doubling in the next year or so. I own a company that makes very highly advanced crystals such as Ruby, Sapphire, NdYAG, Cubic Zirconia and others. (www.shelbygemfactory.com) Take a look at the factory pictures there, and you may get a good idea of how expensive my business is to operate. I use a LOT of electricity. Since I know something about crystal growth, I came up with a new way to make Silicon Solar Cells. I use about 1/30 the silicon and about 1/15th the electricity and about 1/10th the labor compared with any other company making Silicon Solar Cells. My cost for assembling them into arrays or packaging them or shipping them isn''t any less, but the silicon use is very much smaller. My process is the only new process for making Silicon Solar cells to be developed in the last 30 years. You might not believe it, but I am having a horrible time raising any serious money to manufacture large quantities of these in the USA. I can hardly find anyone even slightly interested. I can find all kinds of people from other countries that are interested. What the hell is wrong in this country? Are we all so damn stupid that we can''t recognize a good deal when we trip over it? I really want to cut my own electricity costs, and I do not care for windmills. At least the sun comes up every single day without fail. The wind doesn''t blow consistently enough for my operation.

I have a comment to Gary H. Manufacturing solar cells is not more expensive than energy they would give over 20 yesrs.It would be an obvious nonsence.Lets take average 75W solar panel working for 10hrs a day where we have 200 sunny days for 20 years 75x10x200x20=3000000Whrs=3MWh There can be a whole bunch - like 500 of those manudactured with that amount of energy.Do you know a manufacturing process of solar panels? There is a lot of information on Internet.Some of the new ones(printed) cost below $1/W to manufacture.Margery had an article about those.It is a GREED that makes them expensive, not cost.If we lived in 1950ies a whole country would be covered with them.People were sensible,kind and smart then and greed factor , like I mentioned was 10x lower if not more.Best Regards,Chris

Gary made many important points.I had small scale installation .Only 450 W solar on my roof and they did pay for themselves, especially in summer running my pool pump for free.When I bought them "greed factor" in our great US was about 10x lower than it is now.When every dollar merchandise is sold for 10 dollars and 5 people make money in process , you naturally slow down a progress, while making a lot of people very rich.Sign of our "new brave world".

I have been around the solar/wind game for almost 40 years. About 10 years ago I gave up trying to make my voice heard by my local electric utility. They graciously paid me 1.7 cents per kilowatt which I sold to them and would charge 8 cents to me if I needed to buy back any power. I doesn''''t take a rocket scientist long to decide who is getting the best deal! I still have 4 large wind towers as a monument to this effort in my field. After changing over to solar and investing many thousands in this effort, I again decided there was something wrong with this idea. It takes more energy to make the solar panels than they will capture from the sun in 20 years. Until we can find a really cheap and energy efficient way of manufacturing watts and kilowatts of solar panels, I think we are just kidding ourselves!

I would just say : DO SOMETHING and don''t impose too much regulations on it , so I can install my solar panels (and I am ready when they finish a metal roof,which has mounts for them) and use them.My fist panels are almost dead and I had a good 10 years use out of them.With new good technology I hope to get 20 years of the new ones.As far as big scale I really don''t mind anything , as long as nobody sends me a union worker to my house and tells me that they have to do MY installation.Just like all the other monopolies, I will tell them: all outside a house is yours , all inside mine.I have not sold energy to a grid, but in a new system I will , to offset a cost of energy.Let''s just get on with all ne solar energy and quiet all "special interest" and "whiners".Solar energy is NOT an option , it is a NEED!!!

Every time someone has a great idea to do something in green power generation at a big scale, (viable project to turn the cost per m2 solar panel down and to profit to the small installations too) you will find some people who push the break.

what this bunch of morons are complaining about? What''s behind the scenes? Do we really want to get rid of fossil fuels dependence, or are we going to let a bunch of morons (or what could be worst, guys with hidden agendas and small interest groups) stop us from creating a clean world. We have been burning millions of barrels of oil, and tons of coal into the atmosphere, and there is people that still thinking that it has NO CONSECUENCES... AT ALL. So when somebody starts doing something positive, their contribution is whining and complaining and worrying about ghosts in their minds, or their bank accounts. Stop whining and start doing MORONS, stop sitting on your hands and DOUBLE what this guys are doing, install your OWN 500 MW of solar generated power, so SCE doesn''t become a monopoly.;

Yet another example of good people doing hard work to make everyones life easier and the "FREE LOAFERS" wanting to get FREE MONEY without doing work. The State should support SCE and ignore Harris and other FREE LOAFERS that want the FREE RIDE at the expense of the general public and SCE. Sam

If we look historically at the computer industry - it was large business that first bought into computers and look at the price and performance of a PC today. This project should be applauded by the solar energy industry. Large volume of this size does lead to competition in the long run. Edison is not the only utility in the nation and a successful performance of large installation will lead the way for other utilities and suppliers to consider solar. This is the only real way that cost will come down. Investors are needed to fuel the industry and these type of projects are highly visible.

the utilities have the incentive, they have the finances, let them do it -- without any new tax incentives ... let them bundle the fossil and solar power, and charge what they get regulatory approval for. they reap the benefits in the form of carbon trading credits.

We had better get more things going like SCE is doing and soon so that we can provide enough juice for all the electric cars that are just around the corner!

Take a look at Germany''s law and how it has changed their solar infrastucture. The "Feed-in Legislation" in Germany permits customers to receive preferential tariffs for solar generated electricity depending on the nature and size of the installation.

Utilities have been generating power as monopolies for a long time. Why is this any different? Remember the Enron debacle? Thanks to deregulation!! SCE even sold power plants during the deregulation. If we are to move forward, we need novel power sources such as solar. It is a sure bet that fossil fuel plants will not be approved in our lifetimes!! One thing that SCE should be compeled to do is to purchase all power produced by household solar installations. Currently, they are only offsetting homeowner electric bills up to the amount of power used in a year. I''m sure they are getting free power from homeowners who are trying to cover their electric bill (plus a little margin). They are also missing out on additional solar capacity from homeowners who don''t want to overproduce. This would be a win for all, including SCE because they would get a new source of power without investing (the homeowner would).

If SCE builds a power plant or puts in solar cells to generate power it is the same concept. They are creating an infrastructure to generate power. The cells are renewable and distributed. That's great. Hopefully less of a carbon footprint. Maybe they would allow home owners to tag along on the purchase and buy some at a low price too. Then they could hire the installers to install them and everyone would be happy. :)

I think that I would rather call the power company when my home solar unit was not working properly, than trying to find some guy that probably went out of business 5 years ago. I am also sure that from the standpoint of being able to sell my home, that telling the next perspective owner, that the solar is service by the power company would be appealing. At least there are enough people wathcing them to keep them for the most part honest. Commercial today, and hopefully Residential tomorrow.

250 megawatts... a drop in the bucket... Do what ever to increase the scale of solar production... The next gigawatt will be much cheaper! and the need for power will still be far from being met.....Just don''t lock out the other players and everything will work out.

There's no such thing as a "competitive marketplace." Once it becomes so called "competitive" and unregulated the price for electrical energy goes through the roof. Go for it SCE!

Home Power magazine had a big write up a few months ago about what the electrician unions were doing with solar installation in Southern California. Essentially they wouldn't sign off on anything that they didn't install. So the compeitive marketplace doesn't exist in that part of the country anyway. Utilities should be the ones driving solar on big-city rooftops. Small operators should operate in highly specialized markets, where they can create value-added for special users or uses. A large volume buy will distrible costs for PVs, distribution, and installer training over a bigger base, and create a degree of market acceptance not obvious at present. Imagine how Radio Shack and Apple were feeling when IBM announced the PC. Did it run them out of business, or create a user community they could carve niches out of?