From Green Right Now Reports
OK, this is a hard one: What can cities in the Sunbelt do to find more energy sources?
Hint. Cities in the Sunbelt. Hmmmmm. That’s right, install solar panels!
Solar roof tops in LA.
In Los Angeles, homeowners have been installing solar panels for decades — when they can afford it. But the LA Business Council has concluded that solar power could benefit all Angelenos, and has hatched a pilot program to put apartment rooftops into solar service, especially in disadvantaged areas.
Putting solar panels on apartment rooftops could easily help add 300 megawatts of power to the city’s grid over the next five to ten years – enough to power 30,000 homes, according to a report issued by the Los Angeles Business Council’s Sustainability Summit.
A survey shows some of the best rooftops for the pilot program by the business council are atop buildings in poor areas. There, the council hopes, solar power could provide jobs and a means of income, while supplementing the city’s electrical grid, helping make all of LA more sustainable.
The apartment building owners would benefit economically by selling the electricity back to the grid at a fair price (of 24-28 cents per kilowatt), according to the report, Making a Market: Multifamily Rooftop Solar and Social Equity in Los Angeles.
The report drew on findings by researchers from UCLA and USC, working in collaboration with the LABC Institute and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The plan calls for the first installations to begin in 2012, and would be partly financed by federal government incentives, combined with a feed-in-tariff program (by which the owners of the multi-family properties who generate solar power can sell power back to the Department of Water and Power).
Previous research by UCLA and the LABC found that a city-wide 150-megawatt solar program on commercial and residential rooftops would generate $500 million in local investment, create thousands of jobs, and cost electricity consumers as little as 19 cents a month for the average customer.