The conventional wisdom is that solar is where wind was 5 years ago. The technology works. There is just that chicken and egg conundrum. Costs won't come down til there is economy of scale. And there will not be economy of scale until costs come down.
Some brave states and utilities are willing to take a crack at that egg.
Duke Energy has come up with what I have heard described as the 400,000 Solar Roof Initiative. Not sure where it is in the regulatory process. But the company plans to put company-owned solar units on roofs around its service territory, direct the energy first to the energy users below those roofs - and then pay rent to the roof owners. Duke CEO Jim Rogers gets passionate about the enterprise in the current issue of EnergyBiz.
Now comes the leaders of Berkley with a different approach, covered Thursday in the NY Times. The city wants to provide city-backed loans of $22,000 a pop to property owners who install solar panels. The homeowners would pay the city back in 20 years. The thinking is that much of the monthly cost of repayment, through property tax bills, would be offset by electricity savings.
Two models - one utility inspired, the other the work of city council members in the Republic of Berkley. I am not sure which model will work best. Perhaps both will work - depending on the political climate and utility cultural climate. Suffice it to say, to quote Paul Simon, we live in an "age of miracles and wonders."
Getting more solar roofs out there will mean the cost per unit should start coming down. Roofers - get ready for some new revenue opportunities.
projects. It should be pointed out that California has learned the lesson that incentives dollars
were wasted in rebate (capacity-based) programs, but can go a long way when they are based
on performance (KWh output-based). As seen in the key features of the California Solar Initiative--CSI, http://www.gosolarcalifornia.org/csi/index.html.
I say this from my personal observation of over hundreds of solar installations in California.
I envision in a utility sponsored large project with many installations concentrated in a neighborhood, effective on-line monitoring of performance can be added at the time of
construction. It's effect is like a insurance policy that allow detection of under-performance,
and correction of cause of these under-performance, with verificaion. Thus the performance
of all PV installations in a large project will be maintained. Environmental and financial
goals of the project will be met, and ascertained.