Georgia Scales Up On Solar Wins Approval From Solar Energy Industry Association

Georgia Power has announced it will add 90 megawatts of solar power generation by 2015 through a program for "both" residential and commercial projects, "plus" 120 megawatts of utility-scale generation. Overall, the resulting solar power will be enough to power nearly "20,000" Georgia households.

The Solar Energy Industry Association said it was especially pleased Georgia Power chose to add more distributed solar to the plan than what was initially

proposed. This will allow more businesses and families to go solar while creating jobs throughout the state, it said.

Georgia is not currently ranked in the top 25 states for solar, but experts say the new projects should propel the state much higher on that list in the coming years. Currently California leads the nation for installed solar capacity with more than a gigawatt of installed solar.

(By the time you get up to gigawatt amounts of energy, you can think in terms of massive power plants. For example, the Hoover Dam is a two gigawatt facility and at its peak production was providing electricity to over 700,000 homes.)

Currently, 210 megawatts of solar would place Georgia third in the nation, just behind New Jersey and Arizona.

Reference: clean-energy-technologies.blogspot.com