Two Large Solar Projects Planned for California

clipped from www.nytimes.com Companies will build two solar power plants in California that together will put out more than 12 times as much electricity as the largest such plant today, the latest indication that solar energy is starting to achieve significant scale. The plants will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar panels, and in the middle of a sunny day will generate about 800 megawatts of power, roughly equal to the size of a large coal-burning power plant or a small nuclear plant. A megawatt is enough power to run a large Wal-Mart store. At 800 megawatts total, the new plants will greatly exceed the scale of previous solar installations. The largest photovoltaic installation in the United States, 14 megawatts, is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, using SunPower panels.

While I'm not extremely keen on these sort of plants -- there's no real reason to centralize solar generation like this -- it's nice to see that solar's being taken seriously. Given recent advances in photovoltaic technology, the price is coming down enough for it to be put anywhere the sun shines. In other words, there's no reason to use up huge expanses of land when you can do the same thing on rooftops.

Still, any time new generating capacity comes from green tech, it's good news.