The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) investments are expected to result in grid parity for solar by 2015 according to recent analysis by the office of the vice president.

The cost of power from rooftop solar panels is expected to drop from $0.21/kWh in 2009 to $0.10/kWh in 2015, which is equivalent to current  household electricity rate in many areas. The cost of power from utility-size solar projects will drop by $0.07c kWh  ($0.13/kWh today to $0.06/kWh) by 2015, which is equivalent to the cost of wholesale utility power. In the longer term, the cost of rooftop solar power could drop to as low as $0.06/kWh by 2030.When consumers can produce power at the same cost as utilities, this will signal a significant shift in power.

The analysis highlights four areas including

1. Modernizing transportation, including advanced vehicle technology and high-speed rail;
2. Jumpstarting the renewable energy sector through wind and solar energy;
3. Building a platform for private sector innovation through investments in broadband, Smart Grid, and health information technology; and
4. Investing in groundbreaking medical research.

The full report is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/uploads/Recovery_Act_Innovation.pdf

Sandag is planning to install over 1,500 charging stations around San Diego county - early in August 2010, the regional roadmap for charging stations was unveiled.

County supervisors have indicated the charging stations will be near well trafficked areas such as malls, entertainment venues etc. Government sponsored programs are being rolled out to match the introduction of the new breed of electric vehicles. Over $230 million has been allocated for the EV project covering 16 cities. The battery charging network is being built by San Francisco based Ecotality Inc., using its Blink stations.  Location of stations will be integrated with smartphone mapping tools such as Google maps and on GPS devices.

When the network is all built out, Read said his firm will have about 250 workers in the region, including installers, electricians, maintenance people, and call center employees.

Niggli said SDG&E has plenty of capacity to ensure all the new electric cars get the power they need, but will encourage users to plug in during off-peak periods. In doing so, users could save anywhere from one-sixth to one-half off the price of recharging batteries during peak periods.

Ideally these stations should be installed with some form of Solar energy based Carport which will allow a portion of the charging electricity to be generated directly from renewable energy.

The blink units are not as effective as the new units from JFE energy (A japanese company) which can provide a 50% recharge in under 3 minutes, but hopefully the blink units will be upgradeable as technology improves....

Energy Innovations, a concentrated solar energy company founded by entrepreneur Bill Gross, recently opened the doors of its new headquarters and manufacturing facility  in the San Diego community of Poway, CA. Energy Innovations was started at the Idealab incubator Bill Gross runs in Pasadena, CA.

The products being developed by the company are focused on commercial installations or system exceeding 500kW in size. A 5 acre parcel of land will generate approximately 1 mW of power. The company officially opened its new 60,000-square-foot plant in south Poway last month.

“We now have 25 employees but we’re hiring another hundred by the end of this year,” said Chief Executive Officer Joe Budano. “This is going to be a highly automated factory and with lots of robotic equipment. When we get to capacity we’ll be operating three shifts, five days a week, and have 450 workers within five years.”

The type of jobs being created by Energy Innovations are software engineers, mechanical engineers, manufacturing engineers, assemblers, quality assurance people, testing technicians, and administrative support personnel, said Budano, who has been CEO for 18 months and is the former CEO of Elgar Electronics.

CleanTech San Diego notes that there are 175 companies in the San Diego region engaged in some aspect of solar energy.

For more information and news visit Energy Innovations website.