What we're up against

While visiting friends and family in Arizona over the past couple of weeks, I had a chance to look at sample utility bills in Phoenix and Tucson.  (I also gave lots of test drives for people to try out our Volt).  The Phoenix electric bill charged 9 cents per kilowatt hour (kwh) for over 4000 kwh.  The Tucson bill was 11 cents per kwh for about 1000 kwh.  This compares to an average of 18 cents/kwh charged by our utility here in Oakland, CA. 

The important point here is that our solar panels generate electricity at a cost of about 13 cents per kwh after the 30% federal tax credit (see earlier post:  "Everything is going according to plan").  Based on these numbers, most people in Northern California will save money by putting up solar panels, which is great.  But people in Arizona, which has even more sunshine than California, will still find it cheaper to use electricity generated by its combination of nuclear, coal and natural gas.

The utility in Phoenix, APS, has a lot of publicity about solar on its website, so that is a good thing.  Hopefully they will phase out all of these dirty energy sources (including natural gas) and move to renewables, but this will take a lot of pushing by activists.  The Tucson Electric Power company also is increasing its percentage of renewables, but as of 2011, only 3% of its electricity was renewable, and its goal is only 15% by 2025.  This is not going to slow global warming, let alone stop it.

I also notice that the utility companies are focussed on utility scale solar projects rather than promoting residential and commercial rooftop solar panels.  The same goes for PG&E here in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've been reading a good report on this titled Bay Area Smart Energy 2020. 

 I'll write more on this when I finish it, but it does seem clear that the profits for utilities are in large scale projects, while the most economical and environmentally promising projects are smaller scale on parking lots, schools, commercial buildings, and residences.

Tucson does offer $0.60 per watt as a rebate for solar panels, so this should bring the price down by at least 10%--say to 11.5 cents per kwh.  This is very close to the utility bill that I saw, so hopefully, everyone will be switching to solar soon.

I was also encouraged to learn that Tucson is one of 18 cities to receive a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to install 14,000 charging stations across the U.S. 

From my brief visit to Arizona, I feel certain that most people are not aware of the disaster that lies ahead, and that Arizona will be one of the places hardest hit with extreme drought forecast for the near future.  Both in California and Arizona, we need to elect leaders who will stop denying the problem and start working for real solutions.