lee's Comments

Dyes have a finite life under bright sunshine. How durable is this pokeberry dye?

Lee

Liz,
Your table showing total Florida grid-tied PV installations at 132 is out of date, I'm happy to say. As of this month, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) serving Alachua County had 140 total installations with 29 under its new FIT program and 111 under its older net metering program with state and federal subsidies.

GRU is a Florida leader. I hope others will follow. Lee in Gainesville

The only question is: Why doesn't the Sunshine State establish an FIT program like several other states? Evidently the politically powerful public utilities fear that distributed or rooftop power production would diminish their legal monopolies, so they block any statewide FIT proposal. Only non-profit municipal utilities such as GRU offer FIT.

Meanwhile a public utility, Florida Power and Light is building several centralized solar power plants in Florida on open spaces. That's fine, but we have millions of bare rooftops here and few available open fields. We need FIT for Florida and nationally. It works!
Lee Bidgood in Gainesville

Did you mean the cost per month per customer will be $0.83 or $0.0083?

Lee in Florida

To get an effective FIT program, the powrful resistance of investor-owned public utility monopolies must be overcome. That happened in Germany, the FIT leader. Here in Gainesville, Florida we are fortunate to have a non-profit municipal utility, Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) that initiated the highly successful FIT program.

GRU isn't perfect, but is more interested in providing economical services than in making a profit. Florida's public utilities want to generate all electricity in large centralized plants and oppose distributed power production, such as rooftop solar because it would cut into their legal monopolies.
Lee Bidgood, Jr.

Vote Solar ought to support a Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) locally and nationally. FIT made Germany a solar leader and now is rapidly making Gainesville, Florida a solar leader.

FIT is far more effective than a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) endorsed by Vote Solar. RPS encourages large centralized solar plants favored by public utilities rather than local rooftop solar with local jobs.

The Washington Monthly reported that Hermann Scheer of the German Parliament and FIT advocate stated: "Big power companies have too many vested interests against renewable energy. They will never be the driving force behind its development." (see "The Rooftop Revolution") LB in Gainesville

A short answer to Laura H.'s question is: GRU chose the FIT path because it works. More than 40 nations use it. Canada's Ontario Province has had a successful FIT program, now being expanded.
By the way, the Gainesville GRU program is sold out for 2009-10 and there are contracts for 2011 when the payment drops to 30 cents per kWh.
Lee in Gainesville

In the brief discussion of feed-in tariffs, there was no mention of Washington State's law. Why not? Isn't that a success story? All the rest were merely proposals.

Lee in Florida