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Florida To Build Solar-Powered City
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Apr 16, 2009 06:57 AM
from the sunny-side-of-the-street dept.
from the sunny-side-of-the-street dept.
Mike writes "The sunny state of Florida just announced that they will begin construction this year on the world's first solar-powered city. A collaboration between Florida Power & Light and development firm Kitson & Partners, the 17,000 acre city will generate all of its electrical needs via a 75 megawatt, $300 million solar-powered generator. The city will also use smart grid technology to manage its power and allow all inhabitants of the community to monitor their energy consumption."
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Submission: Florida Announces World's First Solar-Powered City by Anonymous Coward
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+1 (Score:5, Funny)
I would like to live in what seems to be an Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I would like to live in what seems to be an Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow.
Exactly what I was thinking. [wikipedia.org] And it's in Florida, too.
Racoon city (Score:2)
A new city? (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I understand correctly? They want to build a city from scratch?
In that case, why build a massive solar generator instead of fitting the rooftops with solar panels from the start? It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city.
And it would probably save massive amounts of space.
Re:A new city? (Score:5, Funny)
It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shut down the whole city.
That's disgusting. I hope that the power generator employees won't be doing that on company time.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
According to the mod history, it was modded Troll then Funny, but Troll has a higher precedence.
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Re: (Score:2)
I would not assume that they are not planing to use roof tops for solar collection. I suspect that it will look something like a condo type city as we already have a few condo communities the size of cities. Simply adding business spaces into the condominiums is enough to provide employment and you can bet it will be a community largely for retired seniors. Of course the hitch might be if any voting is involved. Then it will take forever to get the ballots right and figure out who cheated just like it
Why ground installation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Several reasons:
(1) Installation on the ground is less expensive than on rooftops.
(2) If you put them on rooftops, all the houses would have to point in the same direction and have the same roof angles to get best efficiency
(3) In hurricane country, you might want to reset the panels horizontal in a storm to avoid damage
I assume they will be tied to the rest of the grid as backup, and to cover cloudy days, ie the city will generate its own power on average, but not necessarily at any given moment.
Parent
Re:Why ground installation? (Score:5, Insightful)
Photovoltaic systems are generally expensive overall. Usually when they choose where it goes it's been because they did extensive research and simulations [pvsyst.com] to decide on which location to build it, which direction the panels will face, whether the climate conditions will cause problems, etc. If they chose to put it in one centralized location, it's because they did the fucking math and it will pay off.
Disclaimer: My cousin sells photovoltaic systems for a living, I've learned a lot from him while assisting.
Parent
Re:Why ground installation? (Score:4, Informative)
How long is the lifetime of a plant like this
It depends on what they use. If they cheap out, it could be less than 10 years. If they go with the good stuff, 25 to 30 years. Here's a list of the solar cell types. [dmsolar.com]
Parent
Re:Why ground installation? (Score:4, Informative)
In Switzerland, when the whole roof is supposed to be fitted with PV, they often do not even build the usual roof but use stronger panels that can be walked on and used as a roof themselves.
A roof isn't a cheap thing, at least around here, so this method puts the cost of PV a bit in perspective.
Since this is a city built from scratch, what would stop them from having all rooftops point the same direction?
Your third point ties into my statement towards your thirst. Since the panels could be used as the roof itself, there wouldn't be any more leverage for storms to rip them off.
Another thing that came to mind, though: Having a big effing generator is all nice and well, but what do they do at night? Do they have a dam nearby they can use as a power reservoir?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Do they have a dam nearby they can use as a power reservoir?
It's Florida. Too flat to use running water to generate electricity, no delta-h.
Re:Why ground installation? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, wrong.
I used to live near the Inglis Hydroelectric plant [inglishydropower.com]. The dam was built in 1909, but stopped generating power in 1965. I know there was talk through the 80's and maybe early 90's about restarting it, but it's output was insignificant compared to the nuclear and 4 coal plants of the Florida Power (Now Progress Energy) Crystal River site, just a few miles away. Bah, who needs clean renewable, when we have 4 coal burning plants and a nuclear reactor that's offline most of the time. :)
The link above indicates that they're trying to bring it back online as a 2 megawatt facility. In comparison, the nuclear plant a few miles away is a 914 megawatt facility. The 4 coal plants there generate 2313 megawatts. Then again, the Crystal River site is the 12th worst polluter in the US. Ahhh, gotta love clean burning coal. {cough}{cough}
People get bent out of shape about new power plants going in. But, they get even more bent out of shape if you try to put a hydroelectric plant in. Not only does it use the land the plant is on, but it also uses miles upstream that it has to back up for water pressure. There's no "natural" way to do it, you need the differential in water level to make it work. How do you say "We're going to flood this million acres, all of you need to move now. You'll be paid for your property. Have a nice day."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
> Since the panels could be used as the roof itself, there wouldn't be any more leverage for storms to rip them off.
You've never been in a hurricane, have you?
Leverage doesn't have all that much to do with things getting ripped up. Wind, pressures, and dumb luck have a lot to do with it.
Hurricanes can be rough. I still prefer them to earthquakes, but, they're rough. I've seen well secured things rip loose. I've also seen things that shouldn't have survived
That's the real problem with Florida (Score:3, Interesting)
Florida is a hurricane-prone area, and the houses aren't built to-code. Thus, every few years a hurricane comes along and blows roofs off, making more work (and more money) for the contractors. If the original builder's code violations aren't caught, it's a net-win for everyone except the homeowner and insurance company.
Florida offers a double-edged sword, as the code is poor to begin with, and is almost always not followed. Corrupt building inspectors allow this sort of crap to continue unabated. Just
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, they are installing rooftops with solar panels, too. From the CNet article [cnet.com] that the article linked to: "Along with solar panels on the roofs of buildings citywide, it will be a revolutionary leap forward in clean energy for an urban area."
Besides that fact, if you have a solar generator that supplies electricity to houses, you can then charge those houses for the supply of electricity. Having solar panels for each house effectively means no revenue stream.
Call my a cynic, but I doubt Florida Power
Re:A new city? (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, typos can happen to the best of us. Let me FTFY.
It would have the added advantage that one 'incident' at the generator site would nut shot down the whole city.
Parent
golf carts too? (Score:2, Interesting)
Air Conditioning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately the sunniest places are also some of the hottest, requiring quite a lot of power-hungry air conditioning.
Hopefully they'll take advantage of highly-efficient ground source heat pumps [wikipedia.org] since the water table is probably very high in the Ft. Meyers area.
Re: (Score:2)
It is warm here in Florida - and my family uses AC pretty much year round. The funny thing is that it isn't nearly as sunny as I thought it would be. We had many, many more days of sun per year when we were in Arizona. And there it got cool in the winter, though it was a bit hotter in the summer.
So this does bring up some interesting issues. I can't imagine they could get by purely on solar alone unless they have some truly massive battery capacity that could allow them to run for days without g
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the amount of sun you guys get in Ft. Meyers is mitigated by the incredible thunderstorms that roll from there down through Alligator Alley toward Ft. Lauderdale. My parents live full time in Naples, FL (about 20 minutes south of Ft. Meyers for those not familiar) and virtually every time we have visited it has been sunny and really hot in the morning, and then incredibly cloudy and eventually stormy in the afternoon. You can almost set your watch that there will be a storm sometime between 2 pm and
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Apparently, doing geo-thermal HAS a major issue there. The problem is that water is cooler underground which retards microbial growth. Add heat constantly, and all the fertilizers that Florida used on sugar, oranges, etc and you have a REAL issue with growth in your drinking water. As such, a n
Re:Air Conditioning? (Score:5, Insightful)
Modern folks think they are required to have air conditioning, sure. But I grew up in Jacksonville (Florida) in the 60's and 70's - and houses with air conditioning were the exception, not the norm. People got along just fine without it. We didn't have older folk or kids keeling over from the heat. Nobody panicked when it got over 75 F.
What changed in Florida was four things: 1) Cutting down all the shade trees when building new developments. 2) Building standard ranch tract houses rather than houses suited to the climate. 3) Massive waves of 'immigrants' and retirees from colder areas of the country who were unused to the heat. 4) Ongoing marketing by AC companies that AC was 'required' to be modern and up-to-date.
Parent
Re:Air Conditioning? (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I have to agree with this. I'm living in Shizuoka prefecture in Japan and it gets "Florida hot" and then some (I lived in Tallahassee for a year when I was a kid). In the school where I work we *do* have air conditioning. It's set at 28 degrees C. I don't have air conditioning in my house. I use a hand fan during the day and an electric fan at night. If it's really hot I wear a wet bandana on my head. You get used to the heat. Hell, it's barely even warm here compared to places like India.
Parent
Let's actually DO THE MATH on this one (Score:4, Insightful)
Okay, solar-powered city!
But let's see how much this is going to cost John Q. Resident.
$300 million divided by say 20,000 residents is $15K/resident. Add in the cost of money and amortization and you're talking at least $2,200 a year.
Plus they need to build a regular power station to handle 100% of the load for when it gets cloudy and rainy, which in Florida is a non-negligible part of the time. Plus the power lines to bring in all that power to the city. No, you can't assume the rest of their system has that much extra capacity in lines or generators.
It's not a terribly attractive deal for the actual ratepayers.
Re: (Score:2)
You seem to have forgotten that this is a -new- city, not an old one being revamped. This simply means that each house is an additional $15k (average) to buy. It's not like there are current residents being taxed $15k just to continue living there.
The fact that it's expensive is an attraction for the people in this community, not a negative.
BTW, if you'd read the article, you wouldn't have had to guess at the number of residents... You'd know it to be 19,500.
Re:Let's actually DO THE MATH on this one (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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Well, since the fee is per resident, an average household will be paying something like 2.3 times that value, or north of $2500/yr. Also, the cost to generate and distribute electricity is only about 25%-30% fuel costs, the rest is maintenance and transmission. One would hope the maintenance would be less than a traditional plant, but (no I didn't RTFA) if there is a steam cycle involved it may not vary much from fossil fuel. If you bank on transmission and administration being set at 50% of the cost, and
Close to my home.. (Score:2, Informative)
Most of the Babcock Ranch is swamp land, nature preserve (They do tours there, alligators, FL. panthers, etc..). I am guessing that is why the requirement for Solar power there, as there was a lot of stink locally when it was sold about what they would actually be allowed to do with the land. I look forward to moving there (if I can afford it!)
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The only reason FPL is even talking about this is because of subsidies.
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And all that stink, locally, is swamp gas.
They actually build a natural gas pipeline through there to feed a "clean" electric generator station not far away... maybe you found a leak?
It's easy to build a solar powered city. (Score:3, Interesting)
Start with wooden buildings and dirt roads. Add some cows, some pigs, chickens...
The almighty sun will make the plants grow and with those you can feed the animals and the people.
And you got a solar powered city.
You can have bees for the candles to read at night. The honey is a bonus.
I tried that (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Missing from the Mockups (Score:2)
I dont see any of the diesel big-rigs that are traitionally required to bring food and other resources into a city.
Why solar power (Score:3, Funny)
Why not gas from all the decomposing old people?
Homesteaders? (Score:2)
Fascinating. I wonder if they need homesteaders. I've always thought about moving to Tampa/St. Petersburg area...
Re: (Score:2)
Tampa/St. Pete is a couple of hours North of Babcock.
ummmm? (Score:2)
Awesome! (Score:2)
It's about time, that a city comes into its own and has a power grid which is self sustaining, even though it is still plugged into the regular power grid we know and loathe.
If anything happens locally, the main power grid kicks in, if the main power grid has problems, it does not wipe out a whole city's power!
This is a win win situation for all parties involved and will also help create more jobs...
a local city power plant instead of the federal/privatized power plant.
I just hope that the city does not buc
More real estate -- Just what FL needs... (Score:3, Insightful)
While overall this being a good idea, with so many vacancies in FL now, do they really need more real estate?
Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why build a new city in Florida when all the ones they already have are chock full of empty, foreclosed houses? Its a lot more green to live in the places you've already built than it is to build new places. Putting solar panels on your new city doesn't change that equation.
Underwater (Score:3, Insightful)
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Which for a whole city's worth of electricity usage is currently unfeasible if you don't have a mountain lake nearby.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You would indeed have to generate thermal solar power, store it and convert it into electricity later on. The main drawback with using molten salt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_energy_storage#Molten_salt_technology), which is one of the few viable options for electricity generation, is its high maintenance (as it's rather corrosive), and if it solidifies you're fucked as it takes a long time to liquify the entire circulation.
Another option is vanadium redox-flow batteries, (http://www.vrbpower.com/d
What is amazing (Score:3, Informative)
I would love to know why dems are pushing wind and solar PV, when Solar PV is the most expensive option and wind can not be used as base power except with EXPENSIVE storage. Geo-thermal can serve as base power and solar thermal allows relatively c
Re:What is amazing (Score:4, Informative)
Photovoltaics are more expensive, but once they are installed they are pretty much maintenance-free.
Solar thermal generators, on the other hand, require constant maintenance since they require a conventional steam turbines and generators.
In the long run, PV has about the same cost as solar thermal plants.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"..At a seemingly reasonable ratio 12 students per teache"
HAHAHAHAHAha