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Walmart Goes Solar In California
tekgoblin writes "Walmart today has announced that it plans to install solar panels on more than 75 percent of its stores in the state. From the article: 'When completed, Walmart’s solar commitment in California is expected to generate up to 70 million kilowatt hours of clean, renewable energy per year, which is equal to powering more than 5,400 homes. It will also avoid producing more than 21,700 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year, which is equal to 4,100 cars off the road and provide 20 to 30 percent of each facility’s total electric needs.'"
The reason California has the highest electricity costs in the western world is because they privatized the whole system but without any protection to protect the consumer from price fixing or profit maximization. Corporations like to gouge you, it's what they were designed for- to maximize profit. If the electric company anticipates demand and maintains the infrastructure you get safe reliable cheap power. If they don't you get costly unreliable dangerous power. The first costs more and brings in less (low profit), the second costs less and brings in more(high profit)- clearly the intelligent CEO will opt for the second plan.
Well, more realistically, what is happening is that China is producing solar panels well in excess of demand (and doing a number on their environment in the process, but that's another story), and it's forced prices for panels down so much that all the other panel producers are dropping like flies. Has nothing whatsoever to do with U.S. regulations (unless you want U.S. creeks to run black with industrial chemicals too), or conspiracy theories about siphoning government money or anything like that.
Even worse, panel prices are now low enough to compete against large industrial-scale mirror/tower systems. So THOSE companies are also getting crushed as contracts get canceled and buyers go with panels. Think about that for a moment. It isn't that panels are less expensive than mirrors, it's that panels are now less expensive than mirrors + tower system + workforce required to keep it maintained.
-Matt