Largest U.S. Solar Utility Goes Online as Obama Awards 100 New Smart Energy Grants
November 9, 2009 Kyriaki (Sandy) Venetis With a lot of backing from the Obama Administration, renewable industries and their infrastructures are growing at an exponential rate, making them increasingly available to consumers.
President Barack Obama was most recently on-hand at the Florida Power and Lights DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center as it was powered up for the first time.
With more than 90,500 solar panels, the plant is now the largest solar photovoltaic facility in the country, with the capacity to annually generate an estimated 42,000 megawatt-hours or enough power to serve about 3,000 homes.
President Barack Obama tours the DeSoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center with Lew Hey, FPL Group Chairman and CEO, left, and Greg Bove, construction manger for the facility, right, in Arcadia, Fla. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy.)
“This plant will produce enough power to serve the entire city of Arcadia,” commented Obama, adding that, “Even as FPL is bringing this solar plant online, it is also deploying hundreds of thousands of these smart meters in people’s homes throughout Florida.
A smart meter is an advanced meter, usually an electrical meter, that identifies consumption in more detail than a conventional meter. It can give consumers the ability to know how much energy they are using during different times of the day, and what the rates are at those times. This gives the consumers a more informed way to regulate their energy usage, such as when is the best time of day to use the dishwasher or do laundry.
To enhance infrastructure for such technologies, Obama also took the opportunity during the plant’s opening to announce what the White House calls, “the largest single energy grid modernization investment in U.S. history.”
The president said directly that, “This investment will come in the form of 100 grants (just given) totaling $3.4 billion, that will go to private companies, utilities, cities, and other partners who have applied with plans to install smart grid technologies in their area. Most of the projects that are receiving grants involve the installation of what are known as smart meters.”
FPL received $200 million in funding to install 2.6 million smart meters and other technologies designed to cut energy costs for its customers.
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