New York Governor Announces $1 Billion For Solar Energy

[kristopher]

New York Governor Announces $1 Billion For Solar Energy
BY KILEY KROH ON JANUARY 9, 2014 AT 3:06 PM

New York governor Andrew Cuomo delivered his State of the State address on Wednesday and announced an even greater commitment to clean energy, including $1 billion in new funding for solar energy projects.

Launched in 2012, Cuomo’s NY-Sun Initiative has already been a tremendous success, with almost 300 megawatts (MW) of solar photovoltaic capacity installed or under development, more than was installed in the entire decade prior to the program.

Now with another major financial boost, Cuomo aims to install 3,000 (MW) of solar across New York. “That’s enough solar to power 465,000 New York homes, cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2.3 million tons annually — the equivalent of taking almost 435,000 cars off the road — and create more than 13,000 new solar jobs,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In addition to the ten-year financial boost for NY-Sun, Cuomo announced a new program entitled K-Solar, which will incentivize the deployment of solar energy by using the state’s 5,000 schools as “demonstration hubs” to increase the number of solar energy projects in their surrounding communities.

The governor also unveiled the $40 million NY Prize competition, which will bolster community microgrids in the state, helping to make the electrical grid more resilient in the face of increasing extreme weather like Superstorm Sandy...

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/01/09/3139091/cuomo-big-solar/

[kristopher]

1. New York Plans $40M in Prizes for Storm-Resilient Microgrids

New York Plans $40M in Prizes for Storm-Resilient Microgrids
Can $40 million bootstrap more than ten community microgrid projects across the state?

Jeff St. John
January 9, 2014

New York governor Andrew Cuomo has put $40 million in prize money behind his push to bolster the state’s post-Hurricane Sandy storm resilience with community microgrids. But will that be enough to overcome the regulatory and economic barriers that have challenged efforts to create microgrids in the Empire State?

That’s the question facing would-be contenders for the NY Prize competition. As part of a much broader $17 billion storm preparedness plan unveiled Tuesday by Gov. Cuomo and Vice President Joe Biden, NY Prize is a $40 million competition aimed at jump-starting at least ten “independent, community-based electric distributions systems” across the state.

The projects are meant to support communities of about 40,000 residents and to operate in conjunction with the grid most of the time. But during emergencies, the microgrids will be able to disconnect from the grid and power themselves, providing islands of stable power for hospitals, police department, fire stations, gas stations and other critical systems.

It’s the latest move by Cuomo to use prize money as an incentive for community microgrid projects. In October, the state announced a similar competition to direct $10 million to each of two winning projects in Nassau and Suffolk counties, both areas that sustained heavy damage from Hurricane Sandy, as part of an $815 million recovery package for Long Island.

It’s a more indirect route than that taken by neighboring Connecticut, which in 2012 created a statewide microgrid program...

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/new-york-plans-40m-in-prizes-for-storm-resilient-microgrids?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+GreentechMedia+(Greentech+Media)

[madokie]

2. That's how its done

any solar or wind is co2 not going into our air. Pretty simple to figure out