Southern California Edison plans to install 250 megawatts’ worth of solar panels on commercial rooftops, generating enough electricity to power 162,000 homes.

It’s a potentially game-changing move, one that could lower the cost of solar cells as manufacturers ramp up production to meet the utility’s schedule of installing a megawatt-a-week of arrays until it reaches the 250-megawatt target. That alone is more than United States’ entire production of solar cells in 2006 and will produce as much electricity as a small coal-fired power plant, albeit with no greenhouse gas emissions. “This project will turn two square miles of unused commercial rooftops into advanced solar generating stations,” said John Bryson, CEO of the utility’s parent company, Edison International (EIX), in a statement Wednesday night.



http://greenwombat.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/27/california-utility-to-turn-roofs-into-solar-power-plants/?source=yahoo_quote