San Francisco voters back solar power expansion
Associated Press
Published Nov 8 2001
SAN FRANCISCO -- San Franciscans have voted to make
their often-foggy city the nation's largest producer of
sun-generated electricity, approving a $100 million bond issue
to install as many solar panels in the area as the entire nation
does each year.
The measure allowing the city to fund solar projects for city
and county-owned buildings and to capture wind power on
bluffs elsewhere in the Bay Area was overwhelmingly approved
by voters Tuesday.
Voters also endorsed a measure that allows city supervisors to
issue bonds for renewable energy projects without voter
approval.
The solar industry said the added demand could spur
development of more efficient and less expensive technology.
That could lower solar's cost, which is high compared with
other renewable fuels.
"This is a big shot in the arm for the solar industry," said Ron
Pernick, co-founder of Clean Edge Inc., an Oakland consulting
firm. "All of a sudden you're increasing, maybe even doubling
the growth rate of solar" panels.
The industry, which says it has grown about 25 percent in each
of the past 10 years, got a further boost from California's power
woes.
High start-up costs and historically limited government
subsidies have made solar power an investment for the
environmentally inclined, not for mainstream businesses. Like
hundreds of other California cities, San Francisco's power costs
forced officials to find ways to lower electricity and natural gas
bills.
Previous advances have lowered the cost of producing solar
energy to about 12 cents per kilowatt hour from as high as $3
per kilowatt hour a decade earlier. That's still more than the
roughly 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour it costs to make electricity
using wind, but less than California's investor-owned utilities
charged residential customers under last spring's rate increases.
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