This is our favorite photo of the month. It’s a run down, weed-infested field of solar panels near Markranstaedt, Germany.
A thousand years from now archeologists will uncover these vast fields of silicon panels around the world and wonder what their purpose was.
We, on the other hand, don’t have to wait a thousand years. We’re already wondering what their purpose is.
Source: WattsUpWithThat
This post was last modified on July 12, 2011
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"We will create thousands of clean, green energy jobs", BHO. These jobs will be as weed pullers.
Now, come on. You know that weed puller is one of those jobs that Americans won't do. You need illegal ali,......er,....undocumented workers for that.
"And another 2 million jobs created!"
Hilarious. They are paying money to mow it, but the union mower operator undoubtedly cites work rules when they ask him to pick up a damned weed eater. I'm sure there are a few committees studying this problem.
This is more a study of bureaucracy than failed Green Tech. Well, I guess they go hand-in-hand.
Hey look, it's the Thousand Year Light!
My favourite Euro solar FUBAR story was the Spanish solar company getting a government subsidy per kw-hour of electricity generated that was so much that they began using diesel generators to power WW2 arc lights to generate "solar power" after dark. I think they got caught when a bureaucrat finally recognized that the hours they were billing for were all after dark. [It's probably in the archives at Watts Up With That if anyone's interested in the full story.]
I can't beat that, but I think this might come in as a close second.
The province of Ontario is paying 80 cents per kWh to solar farms, and selling it for 8 cents per kWh.
Only a liberal could think that you can buy for 80 cents, sell for 8 cents. and not go out of business.
It's all about quantity, Barb. You just have to sell a LOT at those rates to make money. Ask a liberal, they'll tell you. I bet Coddy could explain it in layman's terms.
While I still lived in Kalfornia, I and my wife and kids happened upon a solar farm in the central part of the state and thought, at the time, that it was pretty cool. I wonder what it looks like now? I wonder if it looks like this one? These guys were trying to generate money more than they were solar radiation, just like all the wind beaters up around Tehachapi are beating the air but aren't producing a watt of electricity. It's always been nothing more than a big scam...follow the money!
I don't have a lot of knowledge about the windfarm in Tehachapi, but the windfarms in the desert north of Palm Springs are putting out quite a bit of electricity. I worked on the crew building the power line and roads for the line that took power from the Deevers power station in North Palm Springs to a power station in Hemet, CA, quite a few years ago.
RHG, you might be the only guy who's actually worked on one of these greenie weenie programs that is really working! At the time I lived in Pine Mountain club, up there near Frazier Park, when I visited my friends in Tehachapi I drive by all these slick looking, modern windmills spinning their wings, looking cool, and doing absolutely nothing because they were not hooked up to the electricity grid. Now that smacks of hoax to me! Somebody was selling the energy these windmills were supposed to be creating, to someone...who was ripping off whom? Remember, this was in the late 90's!
I hate to sound like a fuzzy thinking liberal, so bear with me on this. First, there is no magic bullet to solve energy needs. Right now we use oil, natural gas, water and several other ways to generate power. Its silly to say"X" item will replace all of these. I suggest though we do open our minds a little and say," perhaps several new items, working in tandem, like wind and solar and geothermal and wave technology and cold fusion and etc etc etc. Why not try them all on a bigger scale and see what we can operate effectively. I agree that massive subsidies are not an answer, but we should encourage more "home grown" energy solutions with tax incentives for investment. Oil WILL run to extremes in price in the future, might as well be ready for it instead of putting our heads in the sand and ignoring it.
Just for the record, I'm also in favor of much more drilling for oil.
I know waht a liberal is.
I know what a fuzzy liberal is.
There is no such thing as a thinking liberal.
Did you just misspell "stinking"?
Didn't see coal on your list..
Let me tell you, having a good solar setup (with plenty of backup batteries) has saved our cookies quite a few times. Yeah, it's expensive to setup, but the first power outage, and they pay for themselves in full. My dad runs his business out of his basement, and requires electricity. The solar system that we have powered not only his office, but fridge and deep freeze for 4 days during one particularly nasty power outage. The panels recharged the batteries during the daytime (and powered the fridge, deep freeze, and office), and the batteries kept the fridge and freezer going during the night. The amount of money that my dad would have lost during that outage would have paid for more than half of the cost of that system.
Now, is it practical to power the world? Absolutely not. Nuclear is the greenest, safest (yes, safest, even with Fukashima and Chernobyl), and most energy dense power production method we have. If all these anti-nuclear nuts would allow the new reactor designs to be used, then we wouldn't have had Fukashima, and we could have cheap, bountiful energy. But NNNNNNNOOOOOOOO that would make sense. And we can't have that, now can we? Nope. Absolutely not. Flipping power nazis. A day never goes by that I don't want to slap the stupid out of Washington.
I had a small array of solar, and a 600 watt wind generator when I lived in the desert. It powered my garage, along with laundry room and a chest freezer. I guess you could say that my giant rocking horses were built with green power, I put out a lot of green to install that system. I installed it mainly for power outages and such, but found that I could use it year round in the area I lived in. It paid for itself. But again, will it replace oil, nuclear, coal, and hydroelectric? Not hardly.
You would get tired of slapping all too quickly...
Such a shame that they banned herbicides.
Oh, the bitter irony.
/snork!
This is a really good, and telling photo. We've all been led to believe that all ya gotta do is just slap a bunch of these damn panels out in the middle of nowhere and just let 'em electrify the world. Not so fast, solar breath! Solar energy will never replace fossil fuels as a primary energy source. If individuals choose to "go off the grid" they certainly can, and in fact I have family members that have done just that. More power to 'em! But on a scale necessary to replace oil? Not gonna happen!
Laugh it up, you nasty Global Warming deniers! In its heyday, that field of panels could power 2 or 3 hearing aids! ...On a very sunny day.
Does Obama have a solar-powered teleprompter? I'm guessing whenever he goes "um" or "uh" that probably a cloud passed overhead or something... I guess maybe Al Gore's plane could do it.
Algore's ass puts out quite a shadow all by itself.