The Palm Beach post has an article on local utility FPL's solar thermal power project - FPL's big solar power project taking shape near Indiantown.

Nearly a year ago, Florida Power & Light Co. began construction on a solar-thermal plant in western Martin County that it said would "chase the sun," using mirrors to collect its energy and, in turn, powering thousands of homes. With the first mirrors set to arrive this week, that promise is starting to take shape.

"We want to harness all that free energy," said John Gnecco, FPL's director of project development. ...

In Martin County, where the largest and most expensive of Juno Beach-based FPL Group's three solar projects is being built, 192,000 mirrors will be attached to 6,800 aluminum frames on 7,100 steel pylons on 500 acres alongside the Martin Power Plant, west of Indiantown. About 1 million gallons of recyclable fluid, heated to 700 degrees Fahrenheit, will move the sun's energy to the plant.

The $476 million project is expected to open at the end of 2010. About 1,000 workers will be used in its construction, while only about a dozen will be required for its operation, Gnecco said.

Scientific American has a slide show on ocean energy from the gulf stream being used to power Florida - Could the Gulf Stream Provide Florida with Renewable Energy?.

Could the Gulf Stream be used as a renewable energy source to supply much-needed electricity to Florida's heavily populated southern region? That's what a team of researchers from Florida Atlantic University (F.A.U.) in Boca Raton are hoping to find out from four acoustic doppler current profilers (ADCP) that they dropped into the Atlantic Ocean between five miles (eight kilometers) and 22 miles (35 kilometers) from the sands of Dania Beach. The ADCPs, which were placed in the water in February at depths between 725 feet (220 meters) and 2,115 feet (645 meters), use high-frequency, low-power sonar to measure the Gulf Stream's water velocity at different locations, according to the school's Center for Ocean Energy Technology (COET).

COET researchers want to determine whether it is feasible to use underwater tidal turbines—like those now being tested in New York City's East River and elsewhere—to generate renewable energy from the powerful Gulf Stream without harming the underwater ecosystem. The scientists plan to gather as much information as possible about the North Atlantic's massive stream over the next eight months, before putting their prototype 20-kilowatt tidal turbine in the water. Their goal, says Howard Hanson, COET's scientific director: to pin down where the current is strongest.

The deployment of the ADCPs is the first step in COET's plans to create a National Open-ocean Energy Laboratory (NOEL) with a permanent infrastructure off the south Florida shore where makers of tidal turbines and other marine-based renewable energy technology would be able to test their devices. NOEL is expected to provide access to federal and state agencies, technology developers, and universities for testing and evaluation of ocean energy systems, from small subscale outfits to full-scale commercial complexes.

"Most companies aren't going to want to put the infrastructure in place to do it themselves," Hanson says. "Our mission is to become a national laboratory for companies to do this."

The Washington Monthly has an article on feed in tariffs and other measures supporting clean energy in Florida, asking "A little-known policy is turning sleepy central Florida into a green energy hub. Could it do the same for America at large?" - The Rooftop Revolution.

This winter, as Congress was scrambling to pass the stimulus package, the bottom fell out of the renewable energy sector—the very industry that lawmakers have held out as our best hope of salvaging the economy. Trade groups like the American Wind Energy Association, which as recently as December was forecasting "another record-shattering year of growth," began predicting that new installations would plunge by 30 to 50 percent. Solar panel manufacturers that had been blazing a trail of growth announced a wave of layoffs. Some have since cut their workforces in half, as stock prices tumble and plans for new green energy projects stall.

But there is one place where capital is still flowing: Gainesville, Florida. Even as solar panels are stacking up in warehouses around the country, this city of 120,000 is gearing up for a solar power boom, fueled by homegrown businesses and scrappy investors who have descended on the community and are hiring local contractors to install photovoltaic panels on rooftops around town.

One of those investors is Tim Morgan, a tall fiftysomething man with slicked-back hair and ostrich-skin boots who owns a chain of electrical contracting companies. His industry has been hit hard by the downturn, but he has a plan to salvage his business, which he explained over a drink at the Ballyhoo Grill, a gritty Gainesville bar with rusty license plates nailed to the wall and Jimmy Buffett blaring on the jukebox. Morgan intends to rent roof space from eighty Gainesville businesses and install twenty-five-kilowatt solar generating systems on each of them, for a total of two megawatts—a project that would nearly double Florida’s solar-generating capacity.

He estimates the venture will cost between $16 million and $20 million and bring in $1.4 million a year. Already, he has lined up financing, found local contractors to do the installation, and staked claims to the rooftops of at least fifty businesses. "And we’re just one tiny player," he told me. "Look around. You can see how fast this thing is going to move."

Indeed, around Gainesville similar projects abound. Paradigm Properties, a residential real estate company, plans to install photovoltaic arrays on fifty local apartment buildings and its downtown headquarters. Achira Wood, a custom carpentry outlet, is plastering the roof of its workshop—roughly 50,000 square feet of galvanized steel—with solar panels. Interstate Mini Storage is doing the same with its sprawling flat-roofed compound. Tom Lane, who owns ECS Solar Energy Systems, a local solar contractor, told me he’s planning to expand his staff from eleven to at least fifty. "The activity we’ve seen is just explosive," he said. "I’ve been in the business thirty years and I’ve never seen anything like it."

Why is the renewable energy market in Gainesville booming while it’s collapsing elsewhere in the country? The answer boils down to policy. In early February, the city became the first in the nation to adopt a "feed-in tariff"—a clunky and un-descriptive name for a bold incentive to foster renewable energy. Under this system, the local power company is required to buy renewable energy from independent producers, no matter how small, at rates slightly higher than the average cost of production. This means anyone with a cluster of solar cells on their roof can sell the power they produce at a profit. The costs of the program are passed on to ratepayers, who see a small rise in their electric bills (in Gainesville the annual increase is capped at 1 percent). While rate hikes are seldom popular, the community has rallied behind this policy, because unlike big power plant construction—the costs of which are also passed on to the public—everyone has the opportunity to profit, either by investing themselves or by tapping into the groundswell of economic activity the incentive creates.

Though Gainesville is the first to take the leap, other U.S. cities are also moving toward adopting feed-in tariffs. Hawaii plans to enact one this summer, and at least ten other states are considering following suit. Among them is hard-hit Michigan, where Governor Jennifer Granholm has promised that the policy will help salvage the state’s economy and create thousands of jobs by allowing "every homeowner, every business" to become "a renewable energy entrepreneur." There is also a bill for a federal feed-in tariff before Congress.

Could this approach help revive our renewable energy market, and give a needed jolt to the U.S. economy? There is reason to believe it could. In Germany, which pioneered the modern feed-in tariff, it has given rise to the world’s most vibrant green energy sector. More than forty countries, from Nicaragua to Israel, have followed Germany’s lead, often with dramatic results. Study after study has shown that not only do feed-in tariffs deliver more renewable energy than other market incentives, they do so at a lower cost. "People hesitate to call anything a panacea," says Toby Couture, an energy and financial markets analyst at the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. "But if you’re interested in creating jobs, getting capital flowing, and expanding renewable energy, feed-in tariffs get the job done—often more cost effectively than other policies."

EE Times has an update on efforts to harness the power of the Gulf Stream - Going deep: Ocean to power grid, recharge fuel cells.

Harnessing ocean power to generate electricity, hydrogen to fuel cars and heat exchangers to cool buildings is the aim of a $13.75 million effort at Florida Atlantic University's Center for Ocean Energy Technology.

The Center has already built a fleet of acoustic doppler current-profiler platforms to be anchored later this year off Florida's Atlantic coast. By 2009, the Center hopes to have permanent mooring sites picked for underwater adaptations of wind turbines. The ocean turbines would be mated to on-shore hydrogen storage facilities that could recharge fuel cells and generate electricity. The moorings will also house pumping facilities to pipe frigid deep ocean water coming from the Arctic Circle into buildings' heat exchangers for cooling.

"The Gulf Stream works 365 days a year, allowing electricity generated from its current to be available 24/7, compared with solar or wind resources. Plus there is a the possibility of using the thermal difference between the warm waters nearer the surface, and the very cold water at the bottom which comes from the Arctic Circle," said Sue Skemp, COET's executive director. ...

The project will also seek to harvest chilly waters at the bottom of the Gulf Stream, similar to a project already underway in Hawaii, Skemp said. Electrical generators in Hawaii currently harness geothermal gradients inside lava tubes. Researchers there also have experience piping cold water ashore from the ocean depths for use in heat exchangers used to cool buildings.

The first Florida project starting later this summer, will establish temporary moorings 13 to 15 miles offshore for acoustic doppler current-profilers used to evaluate how much the Gulf Stream wanders. The fleet of acoustic sensors will evaluate specific sites for energy-generation potential, as well as to catalog the local ecology and evaluate the environmental impact of an underwater power plant.