Florida Keys
In the Florida Keys the local utility FKEC (Florida Keys Electric Cooperative) gets nearly 100% of the power from the mainland, although there are still one or two emergency diesel generators. There is one highway that runs the length of the keys, and FKEC is amazingly good at keeping things going on the 138 kV transmission line and >800 miles of local transmission despite the frequent storms. They are quite green, with a
biodiesel truck fleet.
In addition to solar net metering agreements with home owners like me, FKEC has two Solar projects:
- The 96.6kW Marathon array consists of 552 separate 175-watt solar modules.
- The 21 kW Crawl Key Substation:
Marathon was installed in 2008, and Crawl key was installed around 2010.
Comparing their 10+ year degraded output to the 1 yr degradation on my roof for January:
Array | Produced | Size | Produced / Size |
---|
Mine | 829 | 7.82 | 106 |
Marathon | 7161 | 96.6 | 74 |
Crawl Key | 1694 | 21 | 81 |
From datasheet estimations, in ten years mine will probably be around a factor of 95, so the delta is probably due tech innovations over the last decade and things like the high efficiency Enphase microinverters!
So, we're small and land limited; but while AFAIK FKEC doesn't have any new energy production projects, I believe they are interested. The FKEC folks I've talked to where knowledgeable and very friendly. Who knows, perhaps they'll apply for $10M under
H.R.448 (Energy Resilient Communities Act) for some tidal energy, a
Magnus Effect wind turbine that can operate in a hurricane, local energy storage, or a floating solar farm where the shade makes for some great fishing!