Got chocolate? : A man stands next to a giant Easter egg made by Belgian chocolate-maker Guylian in a bid to establish a new world record in Sint-Niklaas. (AFP/BELGA/Lieven Van Assche)
Posted on 03/26/2005 7:23:06 PM PST by NormsRevenge
SACRAMENTO (AP) - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is scheduled to make a cameo appearance on the ABC television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" on Sunday to tout the use of solar electricity in homes and businesses.
The Republican governor will appear during Sunday night's episode, when a home is renovated with a solar photovoltaic system that allows the house to produce its own electricity, helping the owner to save on electricity bills, according to ABC's Web site and the San Francisco nonprofit Vote Solar.
Schwarzenegger is championing new legislation - known as the Million Solar Roofs Initiative - that would create an 10-year incentive fund to encourage both residences and commercial buildings to install solar power systems.
In each episode of "Extreme Makeover," now in its second season, a team of designers, contractors and several hundred workers completely rebuild a house within one week.
Not a bad idea really. One of the first things president Bush did when he moved into the White house was ordered solar panels installed in some areas of it.
I have two sets of solar powered pathway lights and a solar powered floodlight with a motion detector over my driveway. We've been happy with them.
Sigh.
I don't see him pushing our too Senators to pass the engergy bill.
Got chocolate? : A man stands next to a giant Easter egg made by Belgian chocolate-maker Guylian in a bid to establish a new world record in Sint-Niklaas. (AFP/BELGA/Lieven Van Assche)
Oh man, that is cruel!!!
The equipment was rated for a 20 year life. It survived 10 years before the hard water in San Diego screwed it up. Leaks developed in the storage tanks that caused the insulation to become wet. At that point the efficiency of the system dropped to an unusable level. The manufacturer and retailer had already gone out of business. Even with the tax credits, the system never saved as much natural gas usage as I spent on it. I ended up donating the perfectly good panels to a solar contractor in San Diego to get them off my lawn before moving to Idaho.
Reality is an illusion and vice versa, don'tcha know?
We're 20 years past 1984, remember??? True lies, and all that...
I can't wait until they remake Annie as a GReen epic.. with Big DaDDy GReenbacks as the lead.
Tomorrow, Tomorrow,, The sun will come up tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar :)
I been trying to figure out what to call this new blending of infotainment, government and hollywood special effects we been witness to the last few years..
boutique politique
InfoGovt
Pickles ,, ummm.
My immediate thought was, "Man, that looks like crap." My second thought was, "If this idea catches on, all these houses will look like crap."
Why don't they take all those crappy looking windmills that cover California passes and give them to these idiots?
Seeing as and his contributors have heavy investments in this waste of energy.
Hey Tex, I used ta live in that town, back when they had an onion dehydratin plant right next to I-80 and I lived right next to it, too.
The smells from that plant would waft all over I-80 causin all them Bay Area skiers and gamblers to stop at the Nut Tree for a steak, then stop again at the Milk Farm in Dixon for a milk shake from that cow jumpin over the danged moon!!!
I watched the moon landing in that house...Can you dig it???
The roof of the house in question was hard to miss. It stood out like an Austrian accent.
Was it really, really thick, like the head of our silly Schwarzenegger???
Well, it was thicker than the rest of the roof which was made up of that cool looking roundy tile stuff.
| 8 | “The Republican governor will appear during Sunday night's episode, when a home is renovated with a solar photovoltaic system that allows the house to produce its own electricity, helping the owner to save on electricity bills” |
Promoting solar power is not just stupid, it is criminally stupid.
When used as a supplement to, or replacement for the public utility grid, there is simply no rational technical or economic way to justify the use of solar power...
| ref. | source | loss (%) |
power (per m2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar flux |
|
1,368 W | |
| Atmospheric losses |
|
752 W | |
|
|
Night times losses |
|
376 W |
| Solar angle losses |
|
188 W | |
| Cell conversion losses |
|
22.6 W | |
| DC®AC inverter losses |
|
20.3 W | |
|
|
Net efficiency |
|
1.5% |
|
|
Net energy (per m2 per day) |
|
0.5 kWh |
| Value of energy (per m2 per day) |
|
4.3 ¢ | |
| Solar panel cost (per m2) |
|
$530 | |
|
|
Payback period |
|
33 years |
|
Let's see, for an investment of a mere $530, you become the proud sucker owner of a boondoggle that will repay you a stunning rate of return of 4.3¢ worth of electricity every day. That means it will be 33 years before you break even with the residential price for utility power. And this is not counting the additional manditory costs of interest, installation, power inverter, wiring, building permits, etc. If you count all those "extras" in, you'll have to wait 100 years to break even! (Of course your photovoltaic cells will have died loooong before that will ever happen.)
By promoting solar power the governor is condoning hi-tech fraud.
--Boot Hill
And then there's the money you will have to invest to remove and properly dispose of the stupid thing when it wears out and THEN there's the cost of a new roof since surely the new tiles that will go where the solars panels were will be a different color than the rest of the roof.
Wow! I didn't know it was that bad.
You're absolutely correct. Only someone who's had the joys of owning a solar system would notice that missing detail. And not just dust, dirt and bird droppings, but also snow.
Another little known fact of solar panels is that the 50-100 individual cells, that make up a panel are wired in series, so that just like the old style Christmas tree lights, if one goes out, the whole string is useless. But unlike the Christmas tree lights, you can't replace just the bad cell, you have to replace the entire panel ($700 per panel, for the example used in the above table)!
--Boot Hill
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