[lowbridge]

The solar power plant takes up about 180 acres.

[driftdiver]

This is another project brought to you by Gov. Crist, the new age fiscal conservative.

[albie]

“Once running, it will require few full-time employees”.

...400 to start with. Temporary jobs to those that were ousted from other work. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul mentality. Everything is on a temporary and/or a “feel good” basis. All of it gets us nowhere fast.

[xkaydet65]

But the haloed one won’t go to Berlin to celebrate the 20th anniv of the Wall’s coming down. Yeah he gets it. (sarc)

[WellyP]

180 acres of tornado and hurricane targets and only 25 megawatts? http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/ 25 megawatts and $25 to $30 million each!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

$3,000 per kilowatt for a plant that makes power only in daytime. For half that, you could buy a modern coal fired plant that makes power around the clock. For a third of that, you could buy a natural gas fired peaker that makes power during the peak air conditioning load daytime hours.

Makes perfect sense to me. /s

[cranked]

Model of efficiency at $50K per house. Woot? =.=

[DannyTN]

Let’s say the average electric bill is $200/month. It’s Florida they don’t have heavy heating or cooling bills. $50,000/$200 = 250 months payback. That’s 21 years to pay back. And it’s doubtful that the panels and plant will last that long.

[sean327]

We have a company here in Yuma County AZ that wants to build a solar plant. They finaly cleared their last permit hurdle. Through the entire process they were opposed by none other than the tree hugger lobby. I thought they loved “green energy projects”.

[Tenacious 1]

What is the cost of energy to those 3,000 home owners? If the plant is to recovery just the initial cost to become a good economic investment, it will need to charge an average of $416.67/month over the next 10 years to each of the 3,000 energy users. (That does not include maintenance, interest, overhead, etc. so it is foolishly low)

In reality, this plant will be obsolete in 10 years and will never ever never ever pay for itself or turn a profit. It will always be a revenue consumer for the power company. But that's ok because all the tax payers in the US are pitching in to pay for the energy of those 3,000 houses. The Fed spent this $150M for 400 temporary jobs. But they will spend far more going forward to subsidize its losses and pay for the maintenance, management and overhead.

[YOUGOTIT]

160 + acres are now gone. And when we have another hurricane in that area the solar panels will also be gone. And there will be very few full time jobs to keep it going.

At $150 million for 3,000 houses that is $50,000 per home which will take 42 years to pay off at approximately $99 per house per month.

[wolfpat]

...at 25 megawatts, it will generate nearly twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the U.S.

I work next to a coal fired plant that has boilers almost 60 years old, and each of them produce more power than that.

[GBA]

$150 Million? They would do better selling or even giving the panels to homeowners to put on their roofs and leaving that land as an orange grove or something else.

That way homeowners and their neighbors would have a personal interest in and benefit from the program rather than paying for, but receiving only indirect benefits from the solar plant they built.

[pallis]

The initial costs on a solar energy plant are just the beginning of a long line of maintenance expenses. Free solar energy isn’t cheap. Expect to have every panel there go bad sooner than it should, over and over again. At some point it will provide plenty of jobs, because it will be under constant construction. The $50,000 per home will turn into $100,000, $150,000 and on and on.

[UnbelievingScumOnTheOtherSide]

Just need 999 more of these plants to power the state.

[Zeppo]

But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs for draftsmen, carpenters and others whose work dried up as the southwest Florida housing boom came to a closure and the recession set in. Once running, it will require few full-time employees.

And as we all know, if they had constructed a coal-fired or natural gas plant, it would not have created any jobs.

Er, well, no, actually it would have created plenty of jobs, not only during construction, but also when the plant would have been running...

IMHO there's nothing wrong with creating a "proof of concept" solar plant of this size in order for a utility to gain experience in the construction process and hurdles as well as in both operating and maintenance, along with providing a benchmark for operational life calculations. It's also a useful test case for comparing construction and operating costs with fossil-fuel generating plants and nuclear plants.

Serious problems will arise, though, if this one is intended to be replicated with the goal of replacing or even just supplementing other types of generation, because the net result will probably be to decrease the flexibility and reliability of the system (for example, due to lack of excess generated energy storage and lack of evening/night generation capabilities).

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs for draftsmen, carpenters and others whose work dried up as the southwest Florida housing boom came to a closure and the recession set in.

Change "are" to "were" at the beginning of the sentence -- now they're unemployed again. Given that the housing crash and recession are still in full swing, the net economic effect was nil.

[wita]

In other words it costs about $50,000 per household.

I would venture to say based on experience and study, that given 50,000 bucks per household, one could have one heck of a solar system for each household with a big pot of money left over, not to mention the possibility of selling back some of the power produced each year the system is operable.

Then one should also factor in what a “NORMAL” power plant would have cost, and run the numbers on how much more, solar is going to cost, over the inexpensive, available, and affordable fuels that are at present in plentiful supply, like coal and gas.

[cynwoody]

According to FPL, it takes 90,500 solar panels to crank out 25mw. That's about 275w per panel.

The FPL page also says 42000mwh is enough to power 3000 homes for a year. IOW, the average house uses 14mwh / year, or about 38kwh / day.

If a panel operates usefully four hours a day on average, an average house would need about 35 panels plus a hefty battery bank, an inverter, and control electronics.

There's a guy who posted an article on how to make a 60-watt panel for about $100, not including batteries and inverter and labor. It was to power his remote campsite in Arizona. He wrote another article on how he made a windmill using sliced PVC tubing for the turbine blades. Oh, well. A start.

[Cheetahcat]

Such a deal! But in Florida it gets dark at night..

[ColdWater]

…The Desoto facility and two other solar projects Florida Power & Light is spearheading will generate 110 megawatts of power, cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than 3.5 million tons. Combined, that’s the equivalent of taking 25,000 cars off the road each year, according to figures cited by the company.

The writer again mixes up watts and watt hours.