Million Solar Roofs Plan
Million Solar Roofs Plan
Billed passed into law to install one million solar roofs in California by 2018
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The Million Solar Roofs bill (SB1) is a plan to install one million solar roofs by 2018 in the state of California. The bill was written by Senator Kevin Murry and signed into law by Governer Arnold Schwarzenegger in August 2006. The law came into effect on 1st January 2007.
A total of $3.2 billion has been made available by the California Public Utilities Commission's California Solar Initiative as incentives and rebates (up to $2.80 per Watt) to be paid to Californians who choose to add PV solar power to their homes. All property developers planning to build more than 50 single family homes will be obliged to offer solar systems of at least 1kW as a standard option from January 1st 2011. It is of course cheaper to install solar power during construction than as a retro-fit.
The cap on net metering has been increased from 0.5% to 2.5% of peak demand meaning that most grid-tied solar system owners will get credit for electricity they feed back into the grid, and the amount of fossil fuel power stations required to cope with peak loads will be reduced.
If successful, the million solar roofs plan will provide 3GW of solar electricity of which just 1.2GW can be net-metered at the 2.5% cap level. Therefore the cap will have to be increased to over 5% in time if the full benefits of this plan are to be realised.
With 3GW of solar electricity greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 3 million tons per year, five modern electricity generating power stations will not be required potentially saving billions of dollars, and California will once again be the world leader in solar power.
Find out more about Solar Roof Tiles, and the basics of PV Solar Panels here.
Article Last Modified: 09:24, 10th Jan 2007Comment on this Article
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