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Florida To Build Solar-Powered City

Posted by samzenpus on from the sunny-side-of-the-street dept.

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."

20 of 195 comments (clear)

  1. +1 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I would like to live in what seems to be an Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.

  2. A new city? by Kokuyo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:A new city? by dotancohen · · Score: 5, Funny

      It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city.

      That's disgusting. I hope that the power generator employees won't be doing that on company time.

      --
      It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
    2. Re:A new city? by Bentov · · Score: 3, Funny

      Duh....because we all know that a centralized system is much better than a decentralized one...

    3. Re:A new city? by Taibhsear · · Score: 3, Funny

      Ah, typos can happen to the best of us. Let me FTFY.

      It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shot down the whole city.

  3. Air Conditioning? by Muad'Dave · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
    1. Re:Air Conditioning? by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unfortunately the sunniest places are also some of the hottest, requiring quite a lot of power-hungry air conditioning.

      Modern folks think they are required to have air conditioning, sure. But I grew up in Jacksonville (Florida) in the 60's and 70's - and houses with air conditioning were the exception, not the norm. People got along just fine without it. We didn't have older folk or kids keeling over from the heat. Nobody panicked when it got over 75 F.
       
      What changed in Florida was four things: 1) Cutting down all the shade trees when building new developments. 2) Building standard ranch tract houses rather than houses suited to the climate. 3) Massive waves of 'immigrants' and retirees from colder areas of the country who were unused to the heat. 4) Ongoing marketing by AC companies that AC was 'required' to be modern and up-to-date.

    2. Re:Air Conditioning? by wrook · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, I have to agree with this. I'm living in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan and it gets "Florida hot" and then some (I lived in Tallahassee for a year when I was a kid). In the school where I work we *do* have air conditioning. It's set at 28 degrees C. I don't have air conditioning in my house. I use a hand fan during the day and an electric fan at night. If it's really hot I wear a wet bandana on my head. You get used to the heat. Hell, it's barely even warm here compared to places like India.

  4. Let's actually DO THE MATH on this one by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Let's actually DO THE MATH on this one by datapharmer · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually it isn't $2,200 a year, it is under $1140 a year at 6.5% interest for 30 years (the usual home loan term). You must also consider that Florida has some very favorable rebates for Solar and there are some Federal tax credits too. In summer my electric bill is more than $100, so paying $95 for solar before rebates and tax credits will be almost the same amount as coal. Personally I would rather get my energy from solar. If it lasts more than 30 years it is free, if it doesn't then oh well, same price as coal. Sure, there are some other alternate energy sources, but I commend the experiment.

      --
      Get a web developer
  5. Why ground installation? by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Several reasons:

    (1) Installation on the ground is less expensive than on rooftops.

    (2) If you put them on rooftops, all the houses would have to point in the same direction and have the same roof angles to get best efficiency

    (3) In hurricane country, you might want to reset the panels horizontal in a storm to avoid damage

    I assume they will be tied to the rest of the grid as backup, and to cover cloudy days, ie the city will generate its own power on average, but not necessarily at any given moment.

    1. Re:Why ground installation? by Spazztastic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
    2. Re:Why ground installation? by Kokuyo · · Score: 3, Informative

      In Switzerland, when the whole roof is supposed to be fitted with PV, they often do not even build the usual roof but use stronger panels that can be walked on and used as a roof themselves.

      A roof isn't a cheap thing, at least around here, so this method puts the cost of PV a bit in perspective.

      Since this is a city built from scratch, what would stop them from having all rooftops point the same direction?

      Your third point ties into my statement towards your thirst. Since the panels could be used as the roof itself, there wouldn't be any more leverage for storms to rip them off.

      Another thing that came to mind, though: Having a big effing generator is all nice and well, but what do they do at night? Do they have a dam nearby they can use as a power reservoir?

    3. Re:Why ground installation? by Spazztastic · · Score: 3, Informative

      How long is the lifetime of a plant like this

      It depends on what they use. If they cheap out, it could be less than 10 years. If they go with the good stuff, 25 to 30 years. Here's a list of the solar cell types.

      --
      Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
    4. Re:Why ground installation? by JWSmythe · · Score: 5, Informative

          Actually, wrong.

          I used to live near the Inglis Hydroelectric plant. The dam was built in 1909, but stopped generating power in 1965. I know there was talk through the 80's and maybe early 90's about restarting it, but it's output was insignificant compared to the nuclear and 4 coal plants of the Florida Power (Now Progress Energy) Crystal River site, just a few miles away. Bah, who needs clean renewable, when we have 4 coal burning plants and a nuclear reactor that's offline most of the time. :)

          The link above indicates that they're trying to bring it back online as a 2 megawatt facility. In comparison, the nuclear plant a few miles away is a 914 megawatt facility. The 4 coal plants there generate 2313 megawatts. Then again, the Crystal River site is the 12th worst polluter in the US. Ahhh, gotta love clean burning coal. {cough}{cough}

          People get bent out of shape about new power plants going in. But, they get even more bent out of shape if you try to put a hydroelectric plant in. Not only does it use the land the plant is on, but it also uses miles upstream that it has to back up for water pressure. There's no "natural" way to do it, you need the differential in water level to make it work. How do you say "We're going to flood this million acres, all of you need to move now. You'll be paid for your property. Have a nice day."

         

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
  6. Why solar power by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Why not gas from all the decomposing old people?

  7. I tried that by SmallFurryCreature · · Score: 4, Funny

    But the beez fly around crazy when you light them and don't last very long at all. Perhaps it would be smarter to use the wax, that burns. If you put some kind of wick in it you could have a very controable burn. Might patent it!

    --

    MMO Quests are like orgasms:

    You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.

  8. More real estate -- Just what FL needs... by Ruvim · · Score: 3, Insightful

    While overall this being a good idea, with so many vacancies in FL now, do they really need more real estate?

  9. Why? by spike2131 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    SpyDock: Scientific Python in a Docker container
  10. Re:What is amazing by Cyberax · · Score: 3, Informative

    Photovoltaics are more expensive, but once they are installed they are pretty much maintenance-free.

    Solar thermal generators, on the other hand, require constant maintenance since they require a conventional steam turbines and generators.

    In the long run, PV has about the same cost as solar thermal plants.