Solar Energy

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has approved two major initiatives that will require utilities to pay consumers for generating extra power and will boost the payoff for certain solar facilities. Homes, businesses and schools that have solar panels or wind turbines previously had no financial incentive to use less electricity than they generated. But AB 920, written by Assemblyman Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), will encourage efficiency, supporters say. SB 32, by state Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod (D-Chino)

Generating clean electricity that's as cheap as power from fossil fuels is the Holy Grail of green-energy companies. A new solar project powering California homes appears to be closing in on that prize. Sempra Generation, a subsidiary of Sempra Energy in San Diego, just took the wraps off a 10-megawatt solar farm in Nevada. That's small by industry standards, enough to light just 6,400 homes. But the ramifications are potentially huge.

Just past Barstow on Interstate 15, Las Vegas-bound travelers can eye a tower resembling a lighthouse rising out of the desert encircled by more than 1,800 mirrors the size of billboards. The complex is often mistaken for a science fiction movie set, but it is actually a power plant that once used molten salt, water and the sun's heat to produce electricity.

Lis Sines of Hermosa Beach loves watching her electric meter run backward. When that happens, she knows that the 20 solar panels on her roof are producing more power than she needs to run her 3,800-square-foot home. The excess electricity flows to the electric company's grid, and she gets its full retail value credited to her utility bill. Sines' electric bill has plunged since she and her husband, William, installed a photovoltaic system on their roof three months ago.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. for decades has generated power for its customers by splitting atoms, burning natural gas and capturing the force of falling water. More recently, the San Francisco utility began turning to the sun, wind, boiling geysers and even fermented cow manure to produce electricity. Now, PG&E wants to turn to outer space. A Manhattan Beach start-up called Solaren Corp.

The hundreds of glass mirrors break the dusty field in Lancaster, a sea of silver in a landscape of brown. When switched on for the first time today at an opening gala with investors, local politicians and others, they'll make up the first operational solar tower energy facility in the United States. They reflect the sun into a tower in the middle of the field, boiling water into steam that travels through pipes to power a turbine and create electricity.

After buying 17,750 acres in Palmdale for an intercontinental jetport that has not gotten off the ground, Los Angeles airport officials say they might finally have a use for much of the property: a solar power facility capable of generating up to 100 megawatts of clean energy.

Frozen capital markets are putting the chill on a fast-growing California solar company, a sign that the economic downturn is being felt even in the state's thriving renewable-energy sector. Hayward-based OptiSolar Inc. confirmed Monday that it dismissed nearly half its 600-member workforce last week, cutting 185 jobs at its Hayward facility and 105 at a plant in Sacramento.

Stunted by the nation's credit freeze, troubled OptiSolar Inc. of Hayward, Calif., has agreed to sell its portfolio of unfinished solar farms to one of the hottest firms in the solar industry. First Solar Inc. said Monday that it would pay OptiSolar $400 million in First Solar stock to buy the outstanding projects, which the Tempe, Ariz., company intends to complete. The portfolio includes a planned 550-megawatt facility in San Luis Obispo County known as the Topaz Solar Farm.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. said Tuesday that it would spend $1.5 billion of ratepayers' money to add 500 megawatts of photovoltaic power in California, one of the largest such deals in the country. Plans call for the San Francisco utility to invest at least half of that in solar panels placed on commercial rooftops and on ground-mounted modules that PG&E would own and operate. The other half is earmarked for long-term contracts with private-sector solar companies.