"million solar roofs plan"

"Maria, it's bright out here. We need more POWER!"

Bill signing completes governor's solar plan
More panels, cleaner power goal of project
By Ed Mendel
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
August 22, 2006

The bill and action by the state Public Utilities Commission in January use a rate increase, about $15 a year for the average residential customer, to provide rebates lowering the cost of installing solar panels.

The goal of the $3.2 billion program is to create 3,000 megawatts of clean solar power – or 5 percent of the state's total need – during the next decade, avoid constructing six fossil-fuel power plants and the greenhouse gases they would emit and lower solar costs through mass production.

At the bill signing event, Schwarzenegger took a larger view: “I want to prove to the rest of the world that you can protect the environment and also have an economic expansion and boom.”

If successful, the new plan will result in a million homes with 3,000 megawatts of solar power by 2017.

Current law requires investor-owned utilities to obtain 20 percent of their power from renewable sources – such as solar, wind, water and thermal – by 2017, increasing at the rate of at least 1 percent of sales a year.