By Staff
January 2, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
On the stroke of midnight this New Year’s Eve, the American dream will get a makeover. In California, the nation’s most populous state, every newly-built home must now come with enough solar panels to satisfy its electricity needs.
The law in California requires every new home built to have enough solar capacity to meet all the electrical needs. Progress
It’s a quiet revolution tucked into the building codes approved unanimously by the California Energy Commission in 2018. Solar panels are installed on just 20% of new homes in the state. That figure will rise to 100% for every home under four stories tall. The expectation is that this this to add 74,000 new solar installations in 2020.
It will help, but other problems need to be addressed as well. See: https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/data-centres-energy-consumption-1.5391269
Sounds expensive. I guess that explains why California has more than half the homeless people in the United States. Socialist dreams.
Palm Springs is taking this novel approach. We could learn a lot from Palm Springs.
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2019/12/26/new-palm-springs-agrihood-miralon-open-model-homes-2020/2513142001/
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/15/17351236/california-rooftop-solar-pv-panels-mandate-energy-experts
Good one! But technology being what it is, those panels will need to be replaced every so often and the newest form of solar “collector” is a form of glass for regular home windows that claims to do the same job without the hardware on the roof.
Does California also recommend geo-thermal installations?