We've seen a few massive solar farms pop up out west, but it looks like Southern California Edison is taking a different approach: instead of cluttering up the desert, the company plans to build a distributed solar array on the rooftops of commercial buildings throughout SoCal. The plan is to spend $875M over five years to cover about two square miles of rooftop with the panels, which will alleviate stress on the grid by generating around 250 megawatts of juice, as much as a small power plant. That's enough to light up 162,000 homes, but it's still a little short of the record 280-megawatt Solana installation planned in Arizona -- come on, Cali, let's see a little fight.

We're still waiting for the dust to settle here, but it looks like the "Father of the PlayStation," Ken Kutaragi, has been bumped out of his top spot as President of Sony Computer Entertainment, to be replaced by Kaz Hirai, the President of CEO of SCE America. Ken will now be Chairman and Group CEO, while Kaz while take on the role of President and Group COO, effective December 1st. While Ken will have oversight of the PlayStation in his new roles, it sounds like he's been largely been removed from the day-to-day operations to make way for the talented Kaz to do his thing. Speculation is rampant as to whether this is a "promotion" for Kutaragi, in order for him to think "big picture" for his console prodigy, or a demotion in response to the numerous PS3 launch foibles -- we're guessing the latter. What we do know that SCEA will, for the first time, be helmed by an American: Jack Tretton, who we're sure to be seeing plenty of over the next few years.

[Via Joystiq]

Read - SCE Press Release [Warning: PDF file]
Read - SCEA Press Release