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To: Starboard

Years ago, the Wall Street Journal published an article by a well known investor. (I forget who)

He was asked to buy into a large offshore Atlantic wind farm. The investment looked great with a good ROI. At the last minute, he asked his staff to rerun the numbers with the government subsidies removed.

ROI went to <1%. He said if one unit got damaged or had a problem, he would lose money on his investment and thus he chose not to invest.

Coal is awesome. Wind is useless. Solar is good for limited purposes.

A company I used to work for supplied a solar manufacturer. I worked closely with them. If solar is so great, why is the plant on the grid? They had a two big plants, one in Michigan and one in Mexico. They could make their own panels at cost, yet they used none. When foreign subsidies dried up, the company died.


10 posted on 10/05/2018 8:15:47 AM PDT by cyclotic ( Democrats must be politically eviscerated, disemboweled and demolished.)
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To: cyclotic

Solar panels generate DC voltage. (at low current low voltage levels.) It is great for some applications. NOT powerful applications.

If solar panels are used to generate AC it must be done through an inverter of some type. Many are 50% efficient, and all of them produce Square Wave (not Sine Wave) AC. Sine wave AC is very noisy and generates some heating in the transformers.

I bought my first solar panels in the 1980’s. They were surplus out of Los Alamos.


17 posted on 10/05/2018 8:31:17 AM PDT by Texas Fossil ((Texas is not where you were born, but a Free State of Heart, Mind & Attitude!))
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