It get baking hot in Lancaster CA in the summer. The city got clobbered when real estate collapsed and is reinventing itself as a renewable energy hub and showcase. The city council has now mandated that new homes have solar panels installed on them. The solar power can be aggregated, homes can share power. This makes perfect sense in a place as hot as Lancaster, where 110 in the summer is normal.
This is the latest piece in what Republican Mayor R. Rex Perris described at the City Council meeting as a plan to make Lancaster “the solar capital of the universe.”
Perris has already brought utility-scale solar to Lancaster, installed solar panels on schools that make a profit, and wants new homes to be LEED certified and have gray water systems. Wow. He gets it.
These are things political leaders in San Francisco and Los Angeles should be doing, Perris said, “but they lack the courage.”
Absolutely. SF and LA should mandate similar rules for new homes. Â You did catch that Perris is a Republican, right? Renewable energy increasingly ignores traditional party boundaries. Several of the states with the most installed wind power are Republican too, like Texas.