75-megawatt solar plant to power "first solar city" in Florida
By Darren Murph 
posted April 11th 2009 4:11AM
posted April 11th 2009 4:11AM
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posted April 11th 2009 4:11AM
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The math is definitely lost in translation. Read the article here: http://www.miamiherald.com/business/story/993255.html
How is it going to cost the average FPL customer in this Solar City $0.31 per month, yet its going to cost $300 Million to build? The project is to serve 19,500 homes. That means the average monthly revenue is going to be about $6,000 for those 19,500 homes in the Solar City.
$300 million financed over eternity at negative interest rate somehow is equating to an FPL (Florida Power & Light) monthly cost of $6K? What am I missing here?
Common sense or dillusional mathematics?
ADD 31 cents to the average monthly consumers bill, if you pay 80/month,now you're paying 80.31 :)
The near totality of their power bill amount will probably be used to finance the construction of the plant, but the said amount will be $0.31 higher on average than in the past... The power in itself is cheap, no fuel to buy, only maintenance.
$300??? I'll put one in my backyard and sell the excess to the grid. You got contact info for buying one of these rigs??
$300 wow what a steal!
I'd like to see the lifetime of said plant to give an idea of how long it will last to see how much it needs to charge 20k houses to make a profit. I'd suspect lots of parts would need replacing in what.. 5 years post launch?
Solar panels have a pretty great lifespan- they last at least 25 years, and many panels that are 40 years old are still operating around 80-85% efficiency still.
There'll always be maintenance and ironing out bugs in any complex system, but the technology is fundamentally sound and cheap to maintain.
Anyone else think its a mighty stupid idea to be placing this thing in a big time hurricane zone?
FPL will also build a natural gas turbine and a nuclear power plant in florida
Generally, I feel it was a bad plan to place Florida in such a big time hurricane zone... but then, it's only Florida, America's wang.
Yeah, at least 2 of us said so on the previous page. :)
Florida is in the southeast.
Southwest Corner of the State of Florida which is in the Southeast of the United States.
I live in south Florida, and I want to know what will happen to this thing the next time a hurricane comes through? I can see all those panels go flying away into the wind. This is the same FPL that cant even put new power poles into the ground correctly. The poles fall over (not even snapping) without anything landing on them in simple tropical storms and weak cat1 hurricanes. My whole street had a straight 3/4th mile of 9month old poles and every single one was down and not one tree along the whole street even went over. This happened twice with 2 hurricanes. I hope the engineers on this project have more foresight then the ones who put together their pole procedures.
"Though researchers are working to create storage capability"
so when's this going to happen?
Somehow "solar city" just sounds way cooler than it probably ever could be.
So how long until the oil industries pay someone to destroy the plant?
america's wang gets solar attachment, news at 11.
Capacity factor is very low with solar photovoltaic - 30% at best.
Contrast that with nuclear plant (capacity factor above 90%)
Solar PV is nice to have for some peak shaving, more so for the future carbon credits this will provide the utility.
HEY! Thats my city on the map!!
w00t Cape Coral!!
lol
I think for the sake of the efficiency of coal fired power plants, we should devote more time and effort to cleaning them up, while yielding such a high output. When coal power plants are into the gigawatts, why does a measly 75 mW solar plant all of the sudden get so much hype? Coal reserves are still vast and many unproven resources remain to be discovered, so until science is up to par with the goal of green energy, lets clean up our efficient methods and stop wasting time and money on wind and solar until they surpass coal. Everyone wants to be green, but they still go home and turn their lights on at night, and watch TV, and drive their cars. All of which pollute in some respect. The answer is not flipping a switch and shutting things down, its a gradual effect that comes with advances in technology that increase the efficiency and output of these green technologies. Do you think someone in the 1970's said i want a computer on my lap, and all of the sudden it worked, no it was a time consuming effort by many people that took years to accomplish. How is this any different?
holy crap i live in north port which is very close i cannot wait to see how this turns out. if anyone wants to know the outcome email me at flyboy71195@aim.com