VAN DER RYN Architects - Sim's Almanac Number 3

Almanac # 4
Energy "Crisis"

Real Goods Solar Living Center Solar Panels

Until last summer, California residents took electricity pretty much for granted. You had as much as you wanted, whenever you wanted it. In the last months, we’ve seen the shadow side of a nightmare that technological society is going to experience with increasing frequency – a failing centralized infrastructure in energy, transportation, agriculture, health care – you name it. We’ve put our misplaced faith in big is better and more is best.

The roots of the California electricity crisis are simple. In the 1990's, the utilities succeeded in killing a bill that would have required them to purchase more of their energy from renewable sources such as cogeneration, solar, wind, and biofuels. At that time, electricity cost them four cents a Kilowatt hour and renewables would have cost them seven cents/ KWHR.. Now electricity is costing them as much as fifty cents per KWHR and their state controlled rate to the consumer is about twelve cents.

Next, deregulation took the utilities out of the business of generating energy, since the theory was they could buy it cheaper somewhere else. Then the utilities and the State PUC underestimated growing demand caused by a four million more Californians, an economic boom, and the growth of energy using computers and electronics manufacturing. What we got as a "solution" – like putting on a band-aid on a heart attack - it's an outrageous tax payer financed bailout engineered by a Governor Gray Davis that will eventually cost us taxpayers tens of billions of dollars.

If I sound mad, I am. Instead of tens of billions of dollars enriching fossil fuel energy producers, the money should be going to create a distributed energy system based on renewable energy. Most feasible are roof top photovoltaic panels or sheets that directly convert solar energy to electricity. California rooftops are a giant solar farm. 100-200 square feet of roof covered with photo-voltaic panels can provide enough energy to power the average house at a cost no higher than utilities with their enormous state subsidies are now paying for power.

A distributed grid of locally supplied power will also save the presently overstressed transmission grid which, like a rush hour freeway, has bottlenecks and it does not have sufficient capacity to transmit the energy needed at peak hours.

Instead of centralized subsidized band-aids from Dr. Davis, we need a localized, community-based renewable energy future and the time to build it is now, starting with solarizing every school, hospital, and public building.