Too Bad You Can't Make Energy From Fog

San Francisco approves giant solar incentive program

Posted at 5:22 PM on 11 Jun 2008

San Francisco has become the proud owner of the largest municipal solar program in the United States. The Solar Energy Incentive Program, approved by the city board of supervisors on Tuesday, will provide rebates to home- and business owners who install solar panels on their buildings. Individuals can receive up to $6,000; businesses can be granted $10,000. Supervisors also approved a one-year pilot program that will provide funding for solar installations at low-income housing and buildings owned by nonprofits. The program should soon be signed by the willing pen of Mayor Gavin Newsom, and could be ready as early as July 1. San Francisco currently generates less than 5 megawatts of power from 770 solar-powered rooftops, but hopes to boost that to 55 mw from 15,000 rooftops within the next decade.

sources: VentureBeat, Greentech Media, Earth2Tech, San Francisco Sentinel, San Francisco Chronicle

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Comments: (5 comments)

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San Fransisco Fog

I worked in that beautiful city in 1999 and 2000. The fog will shut down the panels in July, but believe me, the bay area has plenty of solar power potential. Now I live in Oregon and we have a bigger problem during the winter time; it's cloudy or rainy and the sun is pretty low on the horizon. But we do have hydroelectric as everyone knows. My friend uses a car alternator to charge batteries from a creek, and does very well.

Good Travels

by davb at 9:49 PM on 11 Jun 2008

Current

Lots of current power underwater in the bay! And geo heat exchange cooling too.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

by amazingdrx at 10:07 PM on 11 Jun 2008

The sun is shining in SF

As much as we perceive San Francisco to be a foggy city, according to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratories (PV Watts), San Francisco has slightly lower annual sun hours than 'sunny cities' like LA and Sacramento. Not too shabby, or too shady...we'll be posting about this on the Sungevity blog shortly: http://blog.sungevity.com/. As an employee at a solar installation company, I like to put this issue in perspective: Germany has the largest solar market in the world and they have the solar potential of Nome, Alaska. San Francisco is a great place for solar!

by HannahatSungevity at 11:37 AM on 12 Jun 2008

Good news

Good to see such a major city undertaking this kind of initiative! Not only will this help move the process along as we eagerly wait for solar power to hit economies of scale, but its media prominence will be invaluable in making the goal of harnessing solar energy an acceptable, mainstream effort.

Other recent events are also helping to achieve the same ends, including this optimistic piece of news: http://www.biobasednews.com/node/16166
("BioSolar Highlighted Nationally in Media Reports Focused on Growth of Solar Market and Company's Competitive Advantage")

by abby9280 at 7:12 PM on 15 Jun 2008

solar power - derailed in Oregon by Utility

hopefully they get the buy-in/OK from the Utility. In Oregon, Pacific Corp just blocked 13 MW of solar deals for 2008 - i guess they're afraid of the competition.

here's the story - no other people have picked this up yet. i guess it's not that important.

http://wweek.com/editorial/3431/11084/

Yours truly, SMC

by seattlegrister at 6:24 PM on 16 Jun 2008

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