The Essentia Blog

If you live in Berkeley, California, you can have solar panels added to your rooftop for no initial cost. They’ll just be an extra line item on your property taxes for the next 20 years. This isn’t an initiative that’s in the pipe or being worked on - its actually here. It’s all been arranged through a company called Renewable Funding through its product called CityFIRST. The homeowner gets to pick the installer or contractor of their choice and the city charges it through on the property tax.

California loves basking in solar power. From 1998 to 2007, residents of the state consumed a whopping $2.1 Billion in solar electric technology.

A $1 Billion dollar project is planned for San Francisco in order to install a charging grid for electric cars.  The company incentive funded project will be put in place by a company called “A Better Place” in partnership with Renault-Nissan.  They will distribute the cars under a subscription based program which will offer the cars at a discount and people who purchase them will subscribe to a certain number of miles.

Better Place hopes to expand the plan to Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego and the three highways connecting the Bay Area and the Los Angeles area.

Bolthouse Farms, purveyours of smoothies and salad dressings at fine grocery stores anywhere, have gone solar in a big way.  They announced the completion today of a 1.9 megawatt solar array that will power their farms in Palmdale, California.  The array incorporates 10,300 Mitsubishi solar panels on a new ground-mounted system that follows the sun during the day for greater efficiency.

The farm’s switch from diesel to solar powered irrigation pumps improves air quality and reduces noise.  The new array will provide 80% of the power needs of the large-scale farm operation.

Global warming won’t make the wine production of Napa and Sonoma Valleys go sideways if UC Davis has anything to say about it.  The Pacific Ocean has been warming up and cooling down California’s coast before global warming even came into focus as an issue.  Vinters have been adjusting their methods for years based on the unstable California climate.

However, if climate change produces a prolonged drought, there will have to be some major changes in which grapes are used in California wines.  They are exploring certain kinds of grapes at UC Davis that could replace Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays such as Spanish and Argentinian grapes that grow better in warmer climates.  They are also looking at moving to cooler climate areas and participating in water conservation programs.

According to a recently released study by the Center for Energy, Resources and Economic Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, green initiatives at the state level created jobs in the private sector.  With consumers able to reduce energy spending, that spending was redirected to other demands.

The number that Berkeley came up with was $44.6 billion, of which $1.2 billion was in the light industrial sector, $11.2 billion was in wholesale and retail trade, $7.3 billion was in the financial and insurance sectors and $17.8 billion was in the service sector.  The study primarily focused on household spending and how the spending habits changed after money was removed from the electric bill.

Solar energy is so popular in California, solar panels are being stolen.  Tom McCalmont, president of Regrid Power, was victim to one such burglary where they took $30,000 worth of panels from the roof of his solar energy business.  A homeowner, Glenda Hoffman, has fallen victim to three separate burglaries in which a total of 16 solar panels have been removed from the roof of her home - she now sleeps with a shotgun and a .22 just in case they come back.

Thieves then try to sell the panels on the internet - one such thief was not so lucky as detectives from the police department ended up being his customers after numerous $1500.00 panels were stolen from a California toll road.  He charged only $100.00 for the panels and when he showed up to deliver them he was led away in cuffs.  Authorities are now recommending that customers engrave their driver’s license number into their solar panels for easy identification.