Solar panel program with a $1B price tag yields just a ‘small’ batch after two whole years

American Thinker ^ | 8 Aug, 2024 | Olivia Murray

[MtnClimber]

Cronyism, corporate welfare, and incompetence surges under Democrats.

First it was Pete Buttigieg and the mere seven electric vehicle charging stations his agency built for the American public after three years and nearly eight billion dollars, and now it’s Kamala Harris and her “small” batch of solar panels for Puerto Rico, after two years and one billion dollars earmarked for the job.

Here are the details, from Thomas Catenacci at The Washington Free Beacon:

The Biden-Harris administration has, for years, vowed to deploy thousands of solar panels to stabilize Puerto Rico’s power grid amid regular blackouts, government mismanagement, and ever-increasing residential electricity rates. But, years after making that promise, a $1 billion program central to that effort yielded only a tiny handful of solar panels…

…

While the Department of Energy declined to tell the Free Beacon how many solar panels have been installed using program funds, Sunnova Energy—one of two U.S. solar firms awarded funding to oversee implementation of the program—acknowledged that just ‘a small, initial batch’ of installations have been completed across the entire island so far. The other firm, Generac Holdings, declined to comment.

Now, it turned out that Buttigieg’s progress was being hampered by big government red tape (I guess Democrats are their own worst enemy too; schadenfreude!), but Harris’s tortoise-pace is for another reason:

‘The island is in the thick of hurricane season and high temperatures, and families on the island continue to battle weekly, or in some cases daily, power disruptions,’ a solar industry expert with knowledge of the program’s inner workings told the Free Beacon. ‘We need to figure out how to move faster.’

[Blood of Tyrants]

I doubt it. It sounds like another money laundering scheme like Solyndra. Billions go out but very little gets actually produced. Most of the money goes into “studies” and “overhead”, which means that ex and current politicians’ family members and former high-ranking bureaucrats get huge salaries for no-show jobs as “consultants”.

[Mastador1]

Can you say Solyndra? How long until they default on the loans leaving the taxpayers holding the bag for that and the hazmat clean up when they abandon the facility?

[sergeantdave]

You’re prescient and more...

“The authors even declared that 78,000 turbines 90 meters high placed off the coast of New Orleans could have reduced Hurricane Katrina’s wind speeds by as much as 158 km per hour by the time they reached land. And they go on: 100,000 turbines located between New York and Washington, D.C., could have weakened the winds of hurricane Sandy by up to 140km/h and reduced storm surge by 34 per cent. It is not without mentioning the financial benefits of producing huge amounts of clean energy.”

https://cimsec.org/super-tornadoes-vs-wind-farms/