Solar energy: The key to unlocking California's power gridlock and reducing greenhouse emissions

Since the failure of Assembly Bill 1890 (1996), which mandated deregulating California's power utilities, the state has enacted legislation such as Senate Bill 659, the Self-Generation Incentive Program, and the Emerging Renewables Program designed to act as a catalyst to help reduce dependency on commercially manufactured electricity. The demand for electricity in California has grown, and the need to produce enough reliable electric power is increasing annually. This growth has prompted California's utilities to search for resources that can help satisfy the demand for electricity. The three options available to these utility companies are to increase the purchase of electricity from independent third-party power suppliers, build additional electric power plants within the state, and encourage electric generation from alternative power sources. The State of California can only assume that these options will provide the consistent supply of energy required to power its hardy economy. The need for additional electric power presents two problems for the state's power utilities. First, the need for power must be consistent and steady if California's economy is to continue to flourish. The second problem is that in today's culture, a greater emphasis is being placed on California's utilities to find ways to meet the demand for more electric power while reducing the release of emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. The purpose of this study was to determine if the economics of generating electric power from the Sun's energy is a viable option for reducing the burden of generating enough electric power for California's end users while also reducing the need to manufacture power from plants that produce polluting greenhouse gases.