A popular refrain, "Let's catch some rays, man," took on new meaning Jan. 12 when sunny California created the nation's largest ever solar energy program, a historic initiative which gives home owners something to really beam about.

Pushing California's status as a trend-setting progressive policy state, California's Public Utilities Commission (PUC), by a vote of 3 to 1, approved the $3.2 billion "California Solar Initiative".

Among it's provisions is a subsidy program that will pay hundreds of thousands of home owners a third of the cost of a solar system large enough to supply all of a home's electricity needs.

The initiative's funding is enough to help finance solar systems on 1 million buildings statewide, commercial, public and residential, by 2017. That's equal to more than 3,000 megawatts of electricity, the generating capacity of six power plants and enough juice to serve 2.3 million people. The megawattage is also more than seven times the current 400-megawatt level of installed solar power available in all 50 states today.

The Golden State's Solar State plan also helps terminate the popularity slide of politically beleaguered Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, whose defeated "Million Solar Roofs Initiative" was the impetus for the utility commission's program.

Funded by an average $1.10 increase in monthly utility bills, the program comes with a big piece of sunshine for home owners -- a $9,000 rebate on a $27,000 home solar power generating station.

The $27,000, before federal tax credits and other incentives, is the going price to install a flush-mounted, rooftop, 320-square-foot photovoltaic (PV) 3 kilowatt residential solar system generating enough electricity to zero out the electricity bill of a 2,500 square foot home, according to Tom McCalmont, chief engineer at REGrid Power in San Jose, CA.

Solar powered homes remain wired to the grid for extended periods of gray days or when battery-stored power dwindles. Home owners must still pay a connection fee and the costs of maintenance and upkeep, but the electricity bill virtually vanishes.

"It nets out to a zero. You run positive in the summer as the meter runs backward and negative in the winter (when there's less sun), but it nets out to zero," said McCalmont.

In a state plagued by power shortages California's Emerging Renewables Program has long offered a similar rebate program for home owners who install solar systems, but the year-by-year program had to be renewed and refunded at varying levels each year.

The new initiative effectively solidifies the cash benefit for the next 10 years, thrusting the solar-powered home to the forefront as another icon of the California lifestyle. California gets more sunshine days than any other state except Arizona, according to the National Weather Service.

Home owners in some jurisdictions still will have to overcome the prohibitively high cost of solar permits which can tack more than $1,000 onto the cost of a solar system, but the expected boost in demand for sun power will help lower the cost of solar systems already down 50 percent in the last 10 years.

First focusing on electricity-generating PV systems, the 10-year program will later add solar hot water heating and solar heating and cooling systems.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) will oversee a component of the program focusing on new home builders and developers, to give new home buyers a solar power option. The PUC will oversee the majority of the initiative which also offers benefits to owners of commercial and industrial properties as well as home owners.

Ten percent of the program funding is earmarked for low-income customers and affordable housing installations. The PUC also plans to develop some type of low-cost financing options to help home owners and others buy solar systems.

Already available nationwide, Energy Efficient Mortgages (EEM) help buyers purchase homes with solar systems and other energy saving components.

California also revealed it's solar-power commitment late last year when the PUC approved Southern California Edison's (SCE) deal with Phoenix, AZ-based Stirling Energy Systems to develop a massive solar farm.

Among other technologies, Stirling develops solar thermal technology known as "concentrated solar power" (CSP) which uses reflective materials such as mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy for conversion to electricity.

SCE, the nation's largest purchaser of renewable energy, obtains 18 percent of its power load from wind, geothermal, solar, biomass, and small hydroelectric-derived energy sources and has agreed to purchase some 500 megawatts of electricity from Stirling -- enough to provide all the energy needs of 278,000 homes -- more than all other U.S. solar projects combined.

As part of the deal, an 18-month pilot project includes 40 solar dishes producing one megawatt of energy. If successful, Stirling Energy Systems will within four years later construct a 20,000-solar dish farm over an expanse of 4,500 acres in the desert northwest of Los Angeles -- more than four times the size of the National Mall in Washington D.C.

Published: January 16, 2006

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Broderick Perkins parlayed a career in old-school journalism into a contemporary digital news service that really hits home. The award-winning consumer journalist, originally from Wilmington, DE, is founder, publisher and executive editor of the bootstrap DeadlineNews Group, a Silicon Valley-based editorial content and consulting service specializing in residential real estate, consumer news and related editorial consulting services. The DeadlineNews Group includes the website, DeadlineNews.com, offering real estate editorial content and consulting services, and its back shop, the Deadline Newsroom, an open house on news that really hits home. Perkins obtained his formal journalism education from University of Delaware and a journalism boot camp, the Institute of Journalism Education at the University of California-Berkeley. He went on to 20 years of service as a daily newspaper journalist at the Wilmington, DE News Journal and San Jose, CA Mercury News. Perkins covered housing on the San Jose Mercury News reporting team which earned a General News Reporting Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for coverage of the Loma Prieta earthquake. He has also produced real estate, consumer and small business content for the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, RealtyTimes.com, Nolo.com, Better Homes and Gardens, the National Association of Realtors, Homestore/Move and Intuit/Quicken among more than three dozen publications. In addition to managing the DeadlineNews Group, Perkins most recently served as chief editorial consultant for Nolo's Essential Guide To Buying Your First Home, Nolo, and writes real estate television scripts for RealtyTimes.com.