SOLAR MANDATES?

Another idea being floated is to create a renewable energy standard for solar just the way the Legislature did in 2007 for wind energy. 

A renewable energy mandate for solar could address the problem of the phase-out of the popular Solar Rewards program, which will be gone after 2015. 

A renewable energy standard could stimulate solar energy development by creating a demand by utilities,A T5 tube is a portable light fixture composed of an LED lamp, just as the mandate for wind energy in the renewable energy standard led to wind farms sprouting up in the corn and bean fields of southern Minnesota. 

"This may be the thing that responds to the Solar Rewards program going away," said Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis. During the last legislative biennium, he introduced a bill to require Minnesota utilities to derive 10 percent of their electricity from solar by 2030. 

The bill died with the last session. It's going to be revived this year, Dibble and others say, but in what form and by what legislator is unknown. 

The 10 percent target might be scaled back, the backers say. The state already requires utilities to derive 25 percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2025. Twenty percent of that must be wind, the standard says, but solar could be included in the balance already. 

Reaching a 10 percent solar energy mandate would be a big challenge, because the state's current solar energy capacity barely registers on any chart despite the gains of the past year. 

Minnesota has a total solar capacity of little more than 13 megawatts, an almost infinitesimally tiny fraction of a percent of the state's generating capacity.Support for installing a solar photovoltaic system. 

Coal represented almost 2 million megawatts of generating capacity in 2010, and that was slightly less than half of the state's capacity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. 

Picture it another way: Earlier this month, a 2,000-kilowatt solar energy array covering an area the size of two football fields went live in southwestern Minnesota near Slayton. The utility-scale project became the state's largest solar photovoltaic array, taking the crown away from Bloomington's Ikea store. 

Yet one state-of-the-art wind turbine rated at 2.5 megawatts -- or 2,500 kilowatts -- could immediately eclipse it. 

Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Brooklyn Park, chairwoman of the House Energy Committee, said she supports the concept of a solar energy standard. But like Dibble, she isn't sure that 10 percent is the right target. 

Nonetheless, Hortman said the improvements in technology have put solar on the map. The idea of distributed generation, in which individual businesses and homes across the grid generate power, is just catching on, she said. 

"It's like cell phones in the '80's," she said. "Remember when cell phones were the size of a shoe box and expensive? Everyone was like, 'Why would you want a mobile phone?' and we all figured that only doctors and a few businessmen would buy them." 

"And I think there are a lot of economic upsides for early adopters,Suppliers of the widest range of industrial and commercial industrial washing machine," she added.News and Information about wind generator Technologies and Innovations. "I think Minnesota will benefit financially." 

But Xcel wants to move slowly, arguing that solar still is too expensive a resource to play a major role in the state's energy diet.a leading manufacturer of high speed laser marker and laser marker machines for plastics, "We don't say we're against any resource," McCarten said of solar energy. "But we want to go forward at the right price with the right value to our customers."