UTILITY WILL SPEND $100 MIL ON SOLAR
Submitted by New Energy News Blog
Like so many U.S. utilities and power companies, Duke Energy is investing in New Energy. It will spend $100 million to build distributed solar generation capacity to meet peak demand stresses.
Here again a state Renewable Electricity Standard (RES) is driving the move to New Energy. North Carolina passed an RES in 2007 and Duke is responding. Think what the nation’s response would be if Congress passed a national RES and the other half of the states got into the flow.
Jim Rogers, Duke’s CEO, is clear about how he wants to use New Energy: “Solar is something that has the potential for its costs to come down over time…And clearly as it does, we want to blend solar in with our low-cost nuclear and coal here.”
That may seem to hardliners like a compromised remark, but it is serious recognition for solar energy from a guy who only thinks about keeping the lights on and taking care of his stockholders.
The Duke Carolinas interest in using rooftop solar is a response to limited Carolina wind resources outside environmentally protected areas. It is an example of how any and every region and state of the country has New Energy resources that can be and must be developed in the U.S. New Energy portfolio.
In the Midwest, where the wind resource is better than the solar resource, Duke Indiana is buying wind energy developed on privately owned wind farms. Last year, Duke bought the wind portion of Tierra Energy and its 1000 megawatts of wind power in development throughout the west and southwest.
