San Francisco announces first project in plan to become solar leader

This often fog-shrouded city on Thursday announced its first solar project in a $100 million, voter-approved quest to become a national leader in harnessing the sun’s rays.

Mayor Willie Brown announced a $7.4 million project to install solar panels on the roof of the city’s mammoth Moscone Convention Center, a year after voters passed a bond measure to install as many panels as the rest of the nation does in a year.

The upgrade will cut San Francisco’s power bill by $639,000 annually, said the city’s Public Utilities Commission.

Many photovoltaic panels are planned for the rooftops of hospitals, schools and other city- and county-owned buildings as San Francisco strives to generate more than 10 megawatts of solar power each year, enough for 7,500 homes.

High electric rates and a desire to cut pollution have prompted many U.S. cities to consider major solar projects, said Adam Browning of the Vote Solar Initiative, a nonprofit group that encourages cities to use renewable energy. He said his group is discussing bond campaigns with interested parties in New York and Hawaii.

California gleans only 1 percent of its electricity from solar power, according to the state energy commission. The state gets 12 percent of its energy from renewable sources, including solar, wind, and geothermal, and a new law requires it to raise that level to 20 percent by 2017.

Though industry advocates note that solar panels more than pay for themselves over time, start-up costs remain prohibitive for many residents and businesses. However, greater demand has boosted production and is gradually lowering costs, said Ron Pernick, co-founder of Clean Edge Inc., an Oakland-based energy consulting firm.

It costs about 12 cents per kilowatt hour to produce solar energy — more than the roughly 4.5 cents per kilowatt hour it costs to make electricity using wind, but less than California’s investor-owned utilities charge residential customers under 2001 rate hikes.

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