SACRAMENTO SHOCKED! PUBLIC SECTOR SOLAR CAN'T REPLACE PRIVATE NUCLEAR OR HYDRO POWER! (My Title)

Sacramento Bee ^ | 9/6/2002 | Carrie Payton Dahlberg

[SierraWasp]

The showpiece of Sacramento's electric utility, an internationally known solar power program, is in shambles.

It has fallen short of its goals, rocketed past its budget limits, lost its long-term chief and left Sacramento Municipal Utility District directors scrambling to figure out how to salvage their commitment to renewable energy.

[PMCarey]

No problem. The libs will just pass legislation repealing the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

[SierraWasp]

Oh, NO! I shoulda said: "THE DEMOCRAT'S DAVIS POWER & DEFICIT DELUSIONAL DISASTER!"

[Andyman]

With minor modifications, your headline becomes all-inclusive:

Public Sector X Can't Replace Private Y.

True in virtually every case, as long as X and Y are somewhat related.

[WindMinstrel]

This report is patently rediculous. Solar power very well could replace private nuclear or hydro power, damnit! Of course, it'd take something like 1000 square miles of (very expensive) panels to get the same amount of energy, but hey, who cares? As long as taxes and the price of energy goes up, the world will be a better place

[snopercod]

Any freshman engineering student knows that photovoltaic energy is a good economic choice where there is no other alternative. Even in space, nuclear is better.

All this program has done is to populate Sacramento with zillions of lead-acid batteries that need to be replaced every 5 years.

I am still a believer in solar hot water systems where the climate is right. It's the only alternative energy system out there that will - under the right circumstances - pay for itself in ten or twenty years.

[1Old Pro]

WHAT? No free energy?

[chimera]

To hell with them all. They deserve their fate. Those idiots threw away over 900 MW of capacity in the Rancho Seco plant for no other reason than the whipped-up fear and hysteria of the sheeple driven by the anti-nook kooks. And in the process destroyed the lives and careers of many fine Rancho Seco employees and their families.

The kooks promised they'd replace the lost Rancho Seco capacity one household at a time, with solar panels. They lied. They failed. I say good, let them eat sunbeams, and sweat it out during the summer and freeze in the dark at night in the winter.

[MrB]

more energy to produce a PV panel than it could be expected to produce in it's lifetime

I believe this is still the case.

Amazing that people are shocked when they try to break the laws of physics and economics and they fail.

[backhoe]

Meanwhile,

Dam breaching effects questioned

[snopercod]

...the panels, which convert the sun's heat to electricity.

Is the word "radiation" still forbidden in Sacaramento? Or is Carrie a blond?

[SierraWasp]

"They lied. They failed."

Yes! It's time to heap SCORN on SOCIALISM and phony EnvirnoMentalism and the myth of Public Sector superiority!!!

[Dog Gone]

All this comes right after the California Legislature of Kooks voted to require California to produce 20% of its electricity needs from renewable energy sources like this.

[SauronOfMordor]

PV panels are getting more efficient and cheaper. They are not yet ready for commercial power generation.

There are places for them: calculators, keeping batteries charged in out-of-the-way places like emergency highway radio-phones, stuff like that. Applications where it's prohibitively expensive to string a power line, or to keep bringing fuel to a regular generator, and which don't need continous high power levels

The existing market will provide an incentive to keep improving the things. As they improve, other market niches will open up. These stupid projects are counter-productive

[trebb]

I wonder how much energy and money was expended to manufacture and place the panels now in use, compared to what they have produced...

[SierraWasp]

I don't know, but check out the "peanuts" reference at the end of the article. They haven't, or won't learn a thing by this flop. They're gonna keep right on buttin their heads into this wall till thier mystical brains fall-out!

That's the kind of fall-out we're having here from their radiant personalities!!! (as opposed to nuclear fall-out)

[sasquatch]

Applications where it's prohibitively expensive to string a power line

We've got a place on the Klamath that's 2 miles from the grid. 150 Watts of panel is enough throughout the summer (most of the place is propane) and the generator runs for about 15 min. per day in the wintertime. BTW that 2 miles is up to something like $30K.
I'd still like to see an up to date energy balance on PV panels.

[SierraWasp]

Yup! And notice how they ALWAYS put the bad news out on FRIDAY's paper!!!

[balrog666]

Any freshman engineering student knows that photovoltaic energy is a good economic choice where there is no other alternative.

Did you mean NOT? Otherwise:

Any freshman engineering student knows that (any source of) energy is a good economic choice where there is no other alternative.

[SierraWasp]

Did you just make municipal solar energy a BLOND JOKE? Or what?

[Siegfried]

Last I heard this Osborn guy was getting into the business of selling solar monorails! Yes, my friends, that's monorails! Just look what it did for Ogdenville and North Haverbrook...

;-)