April 9, 2008—Southern California Edison (SCE) recently launched the nation’s largest solar cell installation, a project that will place 250 megawatts of advanced photovoltaic generating technology on 65 million square feet of roofs of Southern California commercial buildings—enough power to serve approximately 162,000 homes, according to SCE.
“These are the kinds of big ideas we need to meet California’s long-term energy and climate change goals,” said Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. “I urge others to follow in their footsteps. If commercial buildings statewide partnered with utilities to put this solar technology on their rooftops, it would set off a huge wave of renewable energy growth.”
“The scale of this project is unprecedented,” said Mike Peevey, California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) president. SCE asked the CPUC for approval to install the solar cell technology during the next five years. The request estimates the total project cost will be $875 million (in today’s dollars).
The utility plans to begin installation work immediately on commercial roofs in Southern Californias Inland Empire, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.
SCE sees numerous customer benefits from its new solar program, among them locating the new generation in areas of growing customer demand. And the clusters of solar modules SCE plans to install will be connected directly to the nearest neighborhood circuit, eliminating the need to build new transmission lines to bring the power to customers. Additionally, solar units produce the most power when customer usage is at its highest.
For more information, see the SCE Web site.
