A Postmodern Desi

"The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus?

I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...and you finish off as an orgasm."

Pacific Gas & Electric, the utility for most of us here in Northern California, has inked a deal to buy a combined 800 MW of solar power from two utilities, OptiSolar and SunPower, both of which plan to use photovolatics, rather than solar-thermal. This is huge: the largest existing plant in Germany is 40 MW, and the largest US Solar plant is at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, and it generates 14 MW.

There's a mandate that says PG&E must get 20% of its electricity from renewables by 2010. These new plants won't be up till 2012 or so, so it looks like PG&E will still have to get some sort of waiver from the state, but a huge PV purchase can't help but be good for the industry.

more info here (with solar plant pic goodness)

Southern California Edison, which is the other "big" utility in the state, is purchasing 909 MW of wind energy in order to meet the same 2010 mandate.

How's your utility doing? Here're the top solar power purchasers:


(source)


(For comparison's sake, Reactor #2 at Diablo Canyon which was shut due to a fire on Monday produces 1,118 MW)