Largest solar power plant in US to go online in Florida

The largest solar power plant in the United States may soon go live in Florida. The Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center will be able to convert sunlight into 25 MW of renewable solar electric power, twice the second-largest solar power system in the US. It is scheduled to go live on Tuesday [27 Oct 2009] and President Barack Obama will visit the facility on the launch day. The plant is located 80 miles southeast from Tampa and it covers 180 acres of land. It cost $150 million and took over 400 employees to build, though only a few employees will run it.

- Great effort at renewable energy in the US. 180 acres works out to 7.84 million square feet. That kind of land might be a little hard to find back here in tiny Singapore. Now, peakoilers are well-versed with the basic advantages and disadvantages of solar power, including the cost of the solar panels themselves, load capacity and the baseload power issue, and sometimes EROEI is brought up as well.

What is less commonly discussed is land - or the lack thereof. There are quite a number of places especially in Asia where it is a big factor. Besides Singapore, you might also think about places like Hong Kong or Tokyo where there simply isn't any space to build due to geographical constraints - be it factors like being surrounded by the ocean, or being located in between the ocean and mountains inland.

Green energy is laudable but it is clear that built-up city areas without a huge hinterland will find it rather difficult to implement solar power installations on an industrial scale. Plus, 80% of the population here lives in tall apartment buildings for which, even if technological breakthroughs like nano-solar paint (which have been talked about since 2005 - and earlier) were to appear, makes for yet another set of challenges. We need to recognize that not everyone lives in a country with a huge landmass, and not everyone lives in houses with roofs and gardens and are able to put up a bank of solar cells any time they wish.

One more thing about the land factor over here in Singapore : the prices are steep and with the recovering Singapore property market, it's certainly not getting any cheaper nowadys. Something that takes up over 7 million square feet might run into the billions of dollars in terms of land costs and development charges payable to the government. Throw in another two orders of magnitude to the 25MW, the 180 acres, and the cost, and you can see the kind of challenges that built-up Asian cities are facing. It's great for places where large solar power plants are feasible, land is cheap and plentiful and nearby the area where the power will be utilized, but for the rest of us in other parts of the world, we'll probably have to think of something else.

2008 Honda Civic Hybrid FD3 real world fuel consumption gas mileage figures

Of course, I may be eyeing that 2010/2011 Honda Civic Hybrid right now, but what of my current one, the 2008 edition? Mind you that although hybrids have gained a much wider level of acceptance than say, 5 years ago, there are still misconceptions abound, especially with regard to things like gas mileage, highway vs city/urban fuel economy, and even the technology itself is sometimes misunderstood. I still get the odd questions like "do hybrid cars run on natural gas?" or "do you still need petrol/gasoline?" from time to time.

I have been diligently noting down the fuel mileage figures for my 2008 Honda Civic Hybrid for over a year now, and Biow had been asking me what I intended to do with all these numbers. Well I had been intending to publish my detailed fuel consumption figures for a while now and I admit it took me till two cars and three years later, but here it is for the current one (click here if you have problems viewing the iframe) :

The above are "live figures" in the sense that whenever I update my Google spreadsheet after pumping up a full tank, these figures will also be updated - according to Google the table should be updated within 5 minutes of that. A quick explanation of the data columns shown above :

km/l - kilometers per liter, which the Asians and European community would be more familiar with
mpg - miles per gallon, for our American friends
SGD cts/km - amount it costs to travel each km in Singapore currency (Singapore Dollar/SGD terms)
USD cts/mi - amount it costs to travel each mile in US currency (US Dollar/USD terms)
SGD $/liter - average cost of petrol in SGD dollars per liter
USD $/gal - what it would cost in gasoline, converted into US dollars per gallon

If you wish to be pedantic about it, you might want to note that the USD/SGD forex rate is converted in near real-time using my (rather popular may I say) currency conversion formula for Google spreadsheets. Also, though European folks are used to such things, do note that there is a significant amount of government tax involved in the petrol prices over here in Singapore (read the link for a detailed explanation).

As of today's writing, my Honda Civic Hybrid sedan has achieved an average lifetime, *real world* fuel consumption of 17.68 km/l or 41.60 mpg. While not the most fuel efficient car in the world, it is still better than my earlier conventional Civic of the same model platform (which itself is a story for another day) which had managed around 13 km/l (30 mpg).

I would say it's a mix of around 60-40 highway vs city/urban driving, and of course with the 3-stage VTEC, CVT and all, highway fuel economy with the Civic Hybrid is quite good, reaching into the 25 km/l (58 mpg) range during sustained highway cruising. It's the traffic jams that don't help at all, and this is where the inevitable "Honda Civic Hybrid vs Toyota Prius Hybrid" fuel economy debates have raged all over the Internet. And if you are talking about the new EPA gas mileage figures, I would say I'm pretty darn close, with the 2006-2008 Civic Hybrid models being essentially similar, the new EPA fuel economy rating is 42 mpg, which is very close to my (current) 41.6 mpg.

It would also be useful to note that my figures are for a single sample size of *one* car, based on *my* driving patterns (or rather Biow's since she drives more often these days). If you are in the market for fuel efficient vehicles, or looking for hybrid car comparison figures, you may also want to look at GreenHybrid's Fuel Economy Comparison table, where as of this writing, the Toyota Prius is at a median mpg of 48.21 mpg and the Honda Civic Hybrid is at 47.16 mpg, both with sample sizes of over 1000 each. As always, be aware that these are more American-centric numbers probably with more highway usage and given the nature of that website there are probably more than a couple of expert hypermilers included in the statistics.

Fuel consumption figures are subject to any number of factors, from make, model and technology, to driving patterns, traffic, temperature, climate and weather conditions and more, but I hope that for my current model, these figures are of some help toward whatever research you may be doing. You may also bookmark this page and come back from time to time to see how things are going.