Solar Garden Institute Introduces Colorado’s Solar Gardens Act to San Francisco Rental Community
June 28, 2010
By Karen Hansen
The Solar Garden Institute has introduced the concept of the solar garden to the San Francisco rental community. If California would enact a Solar Gardens Act to complement Jared Huffman’s Feed in Tariff Legislation, renters could subscribe to Solar Panel Hosting and be reimbursed for the cost of the excess clean energy they and tenants supply to an electrical grid. Similar legislative solutions in other countries has led to the percentage of energy supplied by solar power 20 times that of the United States.
The Community Solar Gardens Act
Governor Ritter signed Representative Claire Levy’s Community Solar Gardens Act into Colorado State Law June 5th, 2010. The founder of the Solar Gardens Institute, Joy Hughes issued this statement, “We see the Community Solar Gardens Act as a step toward enabling everyone their own solar panels. Even if you have shade on your roof or rent your house, you can subscribe to the sun, and if you move, your subscription moves with you.”
Seventy percent of those who reside in San Francisco have no roofs of their own on which to generate solar power. An ABC local report showed because of the record foreclosures, many of these renters have gone without heating, and or power, or even water. Many await the utility they currently are beholden to construct solar farms. Solar farms however, require the costly purchase and usage of land that environmentalists would best like to see left open.
Solar farms are often great distances from the end user and results in less efficiency than sources generated closer to the actual user. An example of how far a distance between a clean energy farm and its end users would be the famous Altamont wind farm in Livermore, California that is actually owned and the energy transmitted to FLORIDA Power and Light.
Solar Garden vs Solar Farm
The unique benefit to subscribing to a solar garden rather than a solar farm is that principle known as distributed generation, sometimes referred to in clean energy literature as DG. Distributed generation means that the power is locally distributed to be more close to the end user. Solar garden projects also bear in mind whenever possible the ecocentric land ethic of conservation of open space.
Dave Llorens, CEO of One Block Off the Grid (1BOG) remarks “This is a great way for San Francisco renters or those who have shaded or wonky roofs to go solar. We know for a fact that lots of our 1BOG members would be excited about participating in a solar garden, so we’re very happy that Solar Gardens has taken this on at a policy level.”
One Block Off the Grid in San Francisco specializes in group purchasing of solar power designed for those whom would like support in terms of getting over common barriers to become solar.
