Edison's rooftop solar project powers up

Southern California Edison on Monday unveiled its newest power plant: 33,700 solar panels atop a warehouse in Fontana that will feed green energy directly into the grid.

It's the first piece of what the utility says could become the largest rooftop solar installation in the world, a swath of photovoltaic panels spanning two square miles.

The 600,000-square-foot warehouse rooftop, owned by logistics firm ProLogis Inc., is the first of 150 commercial buildings that Edison is looking to outfit with solar panels over the next five years. Collectively, solar panels on all those roofs would provide 250 megawatts of electricity, enough by Edison's reckoning to power more than 160,000 homes when the sun is shining.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was on hand to flip a mock switch on the 2-megawatt Fontana system, which cost $10 million and can light about 1,300 homes.

"I am a fanatic about renewable energy, and I have been trying to push the power companies . . . to create more," said Schwarzenegger, who urged Edison to move even faster on its proposed plan.

If approved by state regulators, Edison's photovoltaic project would be the largest ever attempted by a U.S. utility; 250 megawatts roughly equals the capacity of all the solar panels manufactured in the United States last year.

The massive size reflects the pressure California's investor-owned power companies are under to meet state mandates requiring them to boost the use of clean energy. It also underscores an evolution in solar financing. Rather than pay for their own panels, companies such as ProLogis are increasingly leasing out their roofs to utilities or striking long-term power contracts with third parties, which own, install and maintain the panels.

The approach is a hit with business owners who are finding their roofs to be unexpectedly valuable real estate. Urban solar is also popular with environmentalists because it can be linked to existing transmission lines and it transforms barren industrial space into platforms for clean power.

"This is exactly what all the energy companies should be doing," said Terry Weiner, conservation coordinator for the San Diego-based Desert Protective Council. She said the solution to global warming "is right there on the roof."

But not everyone is enamored of Edison's plan. The Rosemead-based utility, a subsidiary of Edison International, wants its customers to pick up the nearly $1-billion tab for the proposed 150-roof project.