Mass. with new renewable energy policy:

Link (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/story?id=52974)

It's sounds good, in that it maintains competition for long term contracts, to drive prices down, but won't provide a price floor, as a Feed In Tariff would, that prevents renewable energy companies from aiming lower. They also insist that utilities buy power from individual customers up to 2 MW, so a factory could buy a large wind-turbine and sell excess to the utility - this gets many more players involved.

They slowly increase the amount of renewable mix by 1% per year, so that utilities can plan for growth, and keep competitors bidding lower and lower, year after year.

This sounds like a good policy that won't shock consumers with sudden high prices.

Cool, thanks for the article. As a MA resident, I must admit I'm embarrassed to not have known the details before. I don't know much about the pro's and con's on the topic, so seeing your approval on anything coming out of my liberal state is a good sign ;) Are there are other plans that have caught your eye?

Thanks!
-Nuttzy :cool:

Cool, thanks for the article. As a MA resident, I must admit I'm embarrassed to not have known the details before. I don't know much about the pro's and con's on the topic, so seeing your approval on anything coming out of my liberal state is a good sign ;) Are there are other plans that have caught your eye?

Thanks!
-Nuttzy :cool:

Only those plans that are commercially driven, as opposed to state driven. For instance, GE has a push to finance billions in wind turbine farms, as they are cheap and set up quickly. T. Boone Pickens has a brilliant strategy, now we need to see some execution.

California, while mandating a lot of renewable energy at a steep rate, is actually purchasing many different types of renewable energy systems, as a way to evaluate their approaches in reality, and not on paper. They are trying:

- solar dishes with sterling engines,
- hybrid solar thermal, in which non-daylight hours are supplimented with bio fuels, natural gas or thermal storage systems like molten salt
- photo voltaic and concentrated photo voltaic

In several years, we should which systems are effective, then go full bore replicating those, or a new tech will emerge, like thin film photo voltaics, that will outperform them all.