Friday, April 29, 2011

Grand Game: Solar Power Edition

So many choice passages here. I'll just let you folks have at it. What's your favorite fatuous statement, or silly fact?

The article

(Nod to Anonyman, who liked the "fact" one solar panel could produce enough electricity, in a year, to light four 60 watt bulbs for six weeks. WTF?)

7 comments:

Dirty Davey said...

Favorite silly fact: that the residents somehow talk as if the utility poles and the maze of overhead wires are part of a pastoral landscape on which the panels are a sudden intrusion.

Mike said...

"All the units are connected to high-voltage wires."

I suppose that is ultimately true, but that is just the power company trying to scare people away from messing with them. It is also likely the reporter does not have any idea of how the panels actually work.

One could cut those things loose with their teeth, just as if you were biting through fishing line, and not get hurt. Especially if you did it at night. Which would be the right time to remove those eyesores.

Not that I would want people to get any ideas.

And I don't advocate messing with other people's property. Nor do I advocate climbing power poles without the proper equipment.

Leave that to the teenagers.

Another bit is this

New Jersey is second only to California in solar power capacity thanks to financial incentives and a public policy commitment to renewable energy industries seeded during Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s administration. But what might have been a point of pride in a state better known as the nation’s leader in toxic Superfund sites has instead caused suburban aesthetic unrest.

They've just moved the Superfund sites to China.

Eric said...

“Solar is extremely flexible,” said Monique Hanis, a spokeswoman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group based in Washington. “The utility owns the property already, and the panels can feed right into the transmission line.”

Solar panels can produce 13,200 volts AC now?

Tom said...

“Solar is extremely flexible,” said Monique Hanis...

No, Monique -- electricity is flexible; sourcing it from solar panels is rigid.

Also "...utility owns the property already"! Yes, Citizen, that rectangular plot with the clean lines marked in the hall of records for you to pay taxes on is yours only in so far as someone important doesn't want an easement. The utility poles were ugly enough by themselves, but now you know that there is no limit to the political process encroaching on "your property."

Anonymous said...

Copy that, Mike. Proceed!

Mungowitz said...

Dirty Davey makes a good point. I think the solar panels are actually pretty, compared to the wires and poles. It is hard to imagine an objection based on aesthetics.

J Scheppers said...

Isn't oil, just organic solar saved energy produced million of years ago from the sun and ancient vegetation? Seems to me oil is naturaly occuring bio/solar fuel. Sure it has some negative externalities but so do lithium batteries, steel windturbines and deisel excreting algae.