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Florida To Build Solar-Powered City
Mike writes "The sunny state of Florida just announced that they will begin construction this year on the world's first solar-powered city. A collaboration between Florida Power & Light and development firm Kitson & Partners, the 17,000 acre city will generate all of its electrical needs via a 75 megawatt, $300 million solar-powered generator. The city will also use smart grid technology to manage its power and allow all inhabitants of the community to monitor their energy consumption."
Do I understand correctly? They want to build a city from scratch?
In that case, why build a massive solar generator instead of fitting the rooftops with solar panels from the start? It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city.
And it would probably save massive amounts of space.
Unfortunately the sunniest places are also some of the hottest, requiring quite a lot of power-hungry air conditioning.
Hopefully they'll take advantage of highly-efficient ground source heat pumps since the water table is probably very high in the Ft. Meyers area.
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Okay, solar-powered city!
But let's see how much this is going to cost John Q. Resident.
$300 million divided by say 20,000 residents is $15K/resident. Add in the cost of money and amortization and you're talking at least $2,200 a year.
Plus they need to build a regular power station to handle 100% of the load for when it gets cloudy and rainy, which in Florida is a non-negligible part of the time. Plus the power lines to bring in all that power to the city. No, you can't assume the rest of their system has that much extra capacity in lines or generators.
It's not a terribly attractive deal for the actual ratepayers.
Photovoltaic systems are generally expensive overall. Usually when they choose where it goes it's been because they did extensive research and simulations to decide on which location to build it, which direction the panels will face, whether the climate conditions will cause problems, etc. If they chose to put it in one centralized location, it's because they did the fucking math and it will pay off.
Disclaimer: My cousin sells photovoltaic systems for a living, I've learned a lot from him while assisting.
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While overall this being a good idea, with so many vacancies in FL now, do they really need more real estate?
Why build a new city in Florida when all the ones they already have are chock full of empty, foreclosed houses? Its a lot more green to live in the places you've already built than it is to build new places. Putting solar panels on your new city doesn't change that equation.
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I doubt you have to deal with hurricanes tearing roofs off of buildings in Switzerland, so it makes sense to spend the money on it. While a great idea in general, in FL it's essentially trying to save yourself from losing money shortly down the road.
Perhaps Florida should plan for hydro power instead, given the projected rise in sea level? http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml
How on earth did this fuckwitted driven get modded up? Your argument against this is that it takes up space that could be used for trees? Have you consider that so do the fucking houses, and that also the world needs less reliance on things that spew CO2 into the air more than it needs an acre of trees that stop sucking the stuff up once they grow to full height?
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