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Bad math due to bad phrasing from the WH. The panels are in kW hours. It produces that much per hour. With DC being about 5 to 6 hours of average light. Not that it radically changes things but the lights also don’t always run 24 hours.
A 6kwh system would provide enough power to take half the uasage of a small house. Still minimal for the WH
I also think it is stupid that the WH installed panels for show but the author is not even a kindergarten-level engineer.
6.3 kilowatts directly connected would light approximately 6.3 kilowatts of bulb -- the filaments have to be appropriately selected for the input voltage. That's a lot of light and lots of bulbs.
In reality the energy is stored and 110v is output with some loss but not a huge amount.
In my town, they installed solar panels to light a park. The cost of upkeep, and maintenance basically amounted to a cost of $1.00 per KWH. Even at today’s higher electricity costs (as compared to when the panels were first installed), our non solar electricity here costs .93 cents per KWH.
That 6 kW is probably midday, summer, sunny - the total of the panels’ rated output. Usable output will be a fraction of that. And, I doubt that they have a battery bank and an inverter. The panels are probably just tied into the grid where there will be zero noticeable difference in the Hut’s monthly utility bill.
Sham.
We’re obviously running out of electricity, yet they keep letting more and more immigrants in.
6 light bulbs. Near 600 million for Solyndra. Hey! What a deal!!! $100m/bulb!
Typical of the Left. Symbolism over substance.
the bulbs in the White Hut are dim, so they may be able to run a dozen or two
What do you call someone who is smart enough to be conservative but too stupid to do basic math and physics?
This article has zero credibility, because the author confuses energy with power — specifically, it mixes up kWh with kW.
The White House solar panels are rated to deliver 6.3 kW, whenever the sun is shining on them fully. Given the location, it’s likely that the panels will only average about 25% of rated output capacity. That would be somewhere around an average of 35 kWh/day.
While it’s likely that the solar panels make very little economic sense — this article completely fails to make that point; because of the confusion between kWh and kW. This sort of shoddy work does more harm than good. The solar lobby could use this article to mock every conservative that opposes massive subsidies for uneconomic “green” energy.
I remember when President Peanuts put solar cells on the white house. Didn’t generate enough juice to power those little electronic mouse chasers.
Maybe the WH can dedicate the output from the solar cells towards recharging their smartphones, to be able to keep issuing those important policy Tweets ...
The site has an update (which matches what FR engineering types have posted):
“UPDATE: A commenter below noted…
“This article makes a number of fundamental errors in its analysis. First and foremost is the confusion between power (kilowatts or kW) and energy (kilowatt-hours or kWh).
“KW is the instantaneous power, or in this case the “rated” instantaneous power of the PV array, or the most it would put out under ideal conditions. Energy is that power over a period of time. For example, 6 kW over three hours equals 18 kWh of energy.. Since Washington gets an annual average of about 5.5 hours of equivalent full sunshine on a tilted array surface, the “energy” from the array would be the “power” times the equivalent sunshine hours. Kilowatts times hours equals kilowatt-hours. There are some other factors such as temperature effects and the efficiency of converting from DC to AC, so it is easiest to use one of the web-based calculators.
“Using the NREL “PVWatts” program (http://pvwatts.nrel.gov/) for calculating energy from a PV system, the 6.3 kWp White House system system would produce about 100,000 kWh per year, which works out to roughly 27 kWh per year, which works out to roughly the average household usage quoted in the article.
and they will prolly pay for themselves in thirty or forty years..."Given how little energy will be generated, it’s no surprise that the administration has declined to state just how much the taxpayer shelled out for it."
Transparency and all that. Nothing but effing crooks, the whole lot.
Didn’t we read that Obama heated the WH to 79 degrees and went around in shirt sleeves, comfortably warm? How would solar panels give him “green” cache?