The Florida solar panel plant cost $150 million to build.
(AP)
A field of orange trees makes more sense.
The state of Florida is completing the final touches on a solar panel plant that cost $150 million to build and will only power 3,000 homes.
Barack Obama will visit this solar-paneled cash dump next week.
The AP reported:
The Desoto Next Generation Solar Energy Center will power a small fraction of Florida Power & Light’s 4-million plus customer base; nevertheless, at 25 megawatts, it will generate nearly twice as much energy as the second-largest photovoltaic facility in the U.S.
The White House said President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit the facility Tuesday, when it officially goes online and begins producing power for the electric grid…
…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 investment isn’t cheap: The Desoto project cost $150 million to build and the power it supplies to some 3,000 homes and businesses will represent just a sliver of the 4 million-plus accounts served by the state’s largest electric utility.
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.
The plant cost $150 million to build and will power 3,000 homes or businesses.
In other words it costs about $50,000 per household.
No wonder these government-funded projects can’t make it on their own.
Sounds like an investment only a democrat (and Lindsey Graham) would love.
Related… Obama told an audience yesterday that science will be the key to America’s standing in the world and economic growth.
Science like this?
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:49 pm | #1
Yes, Jim, but you’re missing the point.
It’s how these people FEEL about the planet that matters. They’re saving the earth.
In the liberal alternate universe, results do not count. Intentions, the one that pave the road to hell, are everything.
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:51 pm | #2
“Due to the rising costs of electricity and the terrible condition of the economy, the light at the end of the tunnel has been turned OFF. Sorry for any inconvenience.”
LOL… Found that comment a long time ago on another blogsite.
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:54 pm | #3
0bama:
That the beauty of my plans. It not only wastes the taxpayer’s money but enriches my cronies.
When a Hurricane blows down all the solar panels there will be an environmental disaster of leaking toxic material. That where my EPA and FEMA buddies swing into action. They jet in and test the soil then hand out $5,000 debit cards. It’s a real bonus for governmental employees who get paid $56 dollars hour plus travel expenses to distribute the taxpayer’s money. I would that’s quite and achievement. {Sniff}
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:57 pm | #4
To them it is just Monopoly Money and all a game to enjoy! Whoopee!
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:58 pm | #5
You need to compile your posts in book form………………..you know who you are………I am waiting……………:-)
October 23rd, 2009 | 9:59 pm | #6
How many trees had to die in order to put up acres of solar panels? hmmmm…think about it!
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:05 pm | #7
Mine coal and burn coal for power. It’s that simple. The US has 2/7 of the world’s known coal reserves, and extracting coal is not that expensive. Now to hear from the useless watermelon idiots.
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:07 pm | #8
How much does it cost to build a nuclear reactor? I mean if they didn’t have to go through all the insane permits and environmental impact studies? I mean you could probably build one for maybe twice what these solar panels cost, except that it would power, oh, a million homes. Or you could take the $150 million, put it into fusion research and maybe get a fusion reactor and power the entire US.
But why should I expect anything different from these idiots?
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:12 pm | #9
I think the cost is high too….
but for proper analysis, you would have to see how much it costs to deliver the electriciy to the 3000 homes. If the total cost of solar panel plant creation plus those delivery costs exceed the total costs of the way it was before (say coal generated elec.) for say 20 years, then it is cost ineffective. You would also have to add in replacement costs over the years and as a previous commenter wrote, a cost factor for hurricanes.
But all of this won’t matter anyway as Florida is only on average 10 ft. above sea level. And everyone knows that our Nobel Peace Prize Winner Albert Whore has claimed 20 ft. of sea rise — so everything will be under water anyway.
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:20 pm | #10
You have got to be kidding. More money down the proverbial rat hole. Not unlike our local power company wanting to build more stupid windmills. Total waste of money.
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:22 pm | #11
Algore must not have been consulted. If he was he would have informed them that in 20 years most of FL will be under water.
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:35 pm | #12
TQ
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:07 pm 8
The cost of a nuclar plant of the normal type is in the billions of dollars.
However, work is being done on “miniature” nuclear generators which only need about one acre of ground, last about 20 years (and can then be refueled or replaced easily and inexpensively) and only cost about $12-$15million each. They’re powerful enough to provide electricity for a few thousand homes and businesses; and come very close to the old promise of nuclear power being “too cheap to meter”.
Some of the plants are already in use in Japan and France (France gets about 65%-75% of its electricity from nuclear plants. They’re way ahead of us in that way.)
Of course, the little greenies will fight having anything like that in this country. They’d rather we all use candles. (I wonder if beeswax is vegan?)
October 23rd, 2009 | 10:46 pm | #13
TQ ~ Here’s a short article to start with:
http://www.ask.com/bar?q=small+nuclear+generators&page=1&qsrc=0&ab=6&title=Is+small+the+future+of+nuclear+power+generation%3F+-+thestar.com&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thestar.com%2FBusiness%2Farticle%2F561553&sg=Rjszf%2BTNpdSB86Ez43Pjt9lKTsZKNYd%2F7WVsPfH5JaA%3D&tsp=1256359007611
And then you can search “small nuclear generators” on Ask.com
There’s some interesting stuff there.
October 23rd, 2009 | 11:05 pm | #14
Actually the cost isn’t that far out of line. The benefits are dubious though. Hurricanes shouldn’t be a problem with the oceans cooling at the current rate. The biggest problem I see is the maintenance. From what I read the “farm” occupies about 150 acres, all of which has to be mowed. I’m sure FPL is above hiring illegals to cut grass, however, it seems unlikely they will use electric mowers and trimmers.
October 23rd, 2009 | 11:13 pm | #15
WOW! Texas is not kidding. They will not deal with the stupidity of the Teflon Usurper anymore. They have a real plan and they are not jocking.
The Sovereing Nation of Texas says “Howdy” to America
http://thesteadydrip.blogspot.com/2009/10/sovereign-nation-of-texas-says-howdy-to.html
Excerpts:
FROM: THE COUNTRY of TEXAS
TO: The rest of “youall” out there
In case things get a little tough during the next few months we Texans have a plan…
Signed by the State of Texas
P.S. This is not a threatening letter – just a note to give you something to think about!
N.B.: There is a real nice picture of G.W. Bush on that article.
October 24th, 2009 | 1:43 am | #16
Obama is LITERALLY selling this country a perpetual motion machine.
You’ll be spending exponentially more human effort (which is exactly what money is used to trade) and energy trying to produce solar power than you’ll ever get back.
And at some stage, the economic breaking point will be met because economic systems are NOT linear nor even exponential (as some socialists wish), but dynamic.
Any professional engineer will tell you that to replace even the most miniscule portion of America’s 4+ terrawatt grid with solar power is a feasibility study in futility. There aren’t enough solar panel/semiconductor foundry/manufacturing capacity in the world to make any supposed impact. Any serious ATTEMPT to expand that capacity to make a dent will seal America’s economic fate.
Eout/Ein != 1 no matter how much Obama makes liberals drool.
October 24th, 2009 | 1:46 am | #17
This ridiculous display in Florida is an expensive PUBLICITY STUNT.
When we talk about its COST, we’re talking about MAN HOURS it takes just to make the wafers, masks, digital design and testing/verification, plant design and physical construction, the whole 9 yards, even the damn marketers and their stupid gimmicks.
For God sakes, even the CHINESE with their dirt cheap payrolls can’t make economic sense of solar energy (except to rip-off Americans and gullible American Presidents, leaving us holding the bag).
The worst part is that Obama’s henchmen are currently bullying the engineering community with this nonsense. That’s easier than you think when you have hundreds of billions of dollars (even though clueless Americans think “Billion” is just a number) The Engineering community is being bullied and corralled into accepting the premise that we should limit the scope of our cost/benefit analysis to arbitrary parameters to make them look cost-neutral with supposed “savings” from solar energy that does not exist, or worse, not include it at all (yes, engineers are practical accountants in the real-world).
One of those “constraints” was to use completely unrealistic scenarios of future interest rates (apparently, the accountants knew they were bogus within minutes of looking at the resultants).
Most leave out vague but very real/current overhead costs (I have no intention of naming them for fear of identification and reprisal).
Most of the time, the Obamamaniacs want us to ignore the lifetime studies and cradle-to-grave estimates and planning altogether! The basic problem is that the people making these pronouncements can’t speak the same language of engineers.
Even worse, they think they don’t need to. They talk in legalese and left-wing politics instead of Simulink and Java.
In any Engineering project, there exists the possibility, and the responsibility, that you have to tell the customer that he’s proposing something counterproductive – as in:
WHAT YOU’RE ASKING FOR IS NOT IN THE DATA.
Put another way:
WHAT OBAMA IS PROPOSING IS
BULLSHIT.Obama’s “Green Energy” lackeys are going around board rooms and universities PURPOSELY engendering fraud and uncomfortable ethical dilemmas for engineers of most disciplines (I refuse to acknowledge “environmental engineering”) in what is supposed to be a profession that is based on the immutable realities of mathematics and physics (that’s redundant), not politics.
What’s happened in Florida is an engineering FARCE.
Somebody stop this. Obama is corrupting the American engineering culture with even more billions. There are bound to be unethical engineers (usually green horns who think data and verification is “boring”) who will (and do) take this money to ignore the the public good, enriching themselves while ignoring contrary data. Those habits will compound themselves in a new engineering generation that is inherently detrimental to one of America’s most important competitive advantages.
Engineering based on mathematics and an understanding of inter-related systems is America at its best.
Engineering based on the trendy politics of the day are on par with Lysenko and Mao’s theories for their agricultural industries.
Stop Obama now!
October 24th, 2009 | 4:34 am | #18
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October 24th, 2009 | 4:37 am | #19
Reminds me of a quote from The Cain Mutiny when Bogart said “Your best, Mr. Keith, is only a maximum of inefficiency.”
October 24th, 2009 | 4:39 am | #20
Heh. Somebody thinks Florida’s state nickname will come through, as in, “Sunshine State.” Some meteorology would come in handy in researching the actual amount of sunshine that hits the ground in Florida as opposed to say, New Mexico.
At any rate, the alarming and continuous lack of sunspots on Old Mr. Sol’s face will mock this hurricane-bait of a project.
October 24th, 2009 | 6:43 am | #21
Expensive AND ugly. Way to go!
October 24th, 2009 | 7:08 am | #22
2 words
Marco Rubio
October 24th, 2009 | 7:29 am | #23
150 acres. That will require a lot if people to keep the collectors clean and a lot of Windex.
Regarding hurricanes: if the grid gets toasted in a cat 4 storm then how long before electricity is back online? 2 hours, 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years?
October 24th, 2009 | 7:42 am | #24
Scientists Say “Warm and Fuzzy” Feelings Generated by Environmental Initiatives Increase Global Warming http://optoons.blogspot.com/2009/06/scientists-say-warm-and-fuzzy-feelings.html
October 24th, 2009 | 8:33 am | #25
“But there are some economic benefits: It created 400 jobs”
Great. 150 million invested to create 400 jobs. That comes to 375 thousand per job.
October 24th, 2009 | 8:54 am | #26
From the AP report: “Spain and Germany have made larger per capita commitments to solar power because of aggressive government policies”
And what this article doesnt mention is that in Spain it is estimated that for every 1 “green” job that has been created, wound up killing 2.5 jobs in the private sector.
October 24th, 2009 | 8:54 am | #27
The residents will love how long it takes to regain their electricity when the grid gets wiped out in a hurricane!
October 24th, 2009 | 9:48 am | #28
If you take a look at what else FL & P owns, you will see that their biggest producers of electrictity are not even in Florida, and the electricity is not generated by anything considered “green”. Their largest producer is in Farney, Texas, a natural gas fired plant, and produces 1,792 mw of power.
Also, the Lower Colorado River Authority, Texas’s answer to the TVA, created in 1935 to provide electricity to Texans, recently sold their largest wind farm to FL & P because the cost was going to outweigh the benefits. LCRA is now retrofitting their coal fired plant in Fayette County, Texas to use clean-coal technology where the emmission rate will be under 2% and will not be affected by nature (wind or sun) and will keep electricity prices low.
Solar generated power is not yet cost effective, nor is wind generated power. One only has to look at the T. Boone Pickens wind farms to understand that. When Pickens could not get the federal government to pick up the tab for the construction of the his wind farm (although he already had a contract to supply electricity to the city of Dallas) what did Pickens do? He cancelled construction.
Solar power costs also involve transmittion. This is going to create huge problems in Texas as land owners do not want these huge power line crossing their lands. So FL & P has not only the cost of building their mirrored eye sore, they now have to build transmittion lines to direct that power to the large cities.
How great these solar panels are until you learn that the power lines are going to slash across your property like a giant scar.
How much land will this solar farm utilize compared to a standard gas fired plant? And what happens during dark days when the electricity production drops and because it can’t be stored, people are sitting in the dark?
The greenies need to learn that you have to solve the problems first, then build the means.
October 24th, 2009 | 10:05 am | #29
And, due to its size, it’s also an easy target for every terrorist.
October 24th, 2009 | 10:12 am | #30
[...] Home for solar power??? Posted on October 24, 2009 by tnredstate Well, to be honest here, that’s for just one year. How long is the solar plant expected to operate; 20-30 years? And what are the yearly [...]
October 24th, 2009 | 10:16 am | #31
++
testing 1, 2, 3..
==
October 24th, 2009 | 10:25 am | #32
++
via TRBO
U.S. Unions, Meet Your “Dark” Future
[Attention all unions who helped pave the golden path for POTUS’s White House reign, you had better hope that you don’t suffer a similar fate to that of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union (SME). After all the Politburo has already nationalized banks, segments of the auto industry, and is well on its way to taking over health care and control of the energy grid, if cap & trade should pass next year. Muzzling the media with its Fox News assault should make nationalizing electricity a walk in the park.
The New Socialist Group reports (all emphasis added):
On the night of October 10, [Mexican President Felipe Calderón] ordered federal police to seize the power plants, while he simultaneously liquidated the state-owned Light and Power Company, fired the entire workforce, and thus did away with the legal existence of the union. The Mexican president’s attack on the Electrical Workers Union might be compared to Ronald Reagan’s firing of more than 11,500 members of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) in 1981 or to Margaret Thatcher’s smashing of the National Union of Minerworkers (NUM) in 1984 in which over 11,000 miners were arrested and the union defeated.]
more @ link..
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping it will eat him last. ”
~ Sir Winston Churchill
==
October 24th, 2009 | 10:41 am | #33
++
Glenn Beck Show October 23, 2009
Running America the Chicago Way, Mafia & Baseball Bats -clip#1
If You Stand Up To Obama You Might Get whacked The Chicago Way -clip#2
NBC and GE Have Fallen In ‘GOOSE’ Step with Every Obama Policy -clip#3
Reason For Hope! Some Media Outlets Stood Up For Fox News-clip#4
England Has Been Living Under Obama Prototype For 12 Years -clip#5
Is The Climate Change Treaty The Start of World Government? -clip#6
==
October 24th, 2009 | 10:45 am | #34
Don’t the panels only last like 15-20 years? How much will it cost to replace? Will it even break even?
October 24th, 2009 | 10:55 am | #35
It would have been far cheaper, far, far, cheaper, if each home used solar power to generate energy for their own house, and if they had surplus energy, they could sell it to the state for the use of others.
October 24th, 2009 | 10:58 am | #36
Who are those 3,000 homeowners? They’ll have to live in close proximity of one another. The government will have to likely incentivize them to live in a specific area to use this energy source. Look, I’ve just asked 2 questions and it’s already getting complicated.
October 24th, 2009 | 11:43 am | #37
We will all be living in holes we dig in hillsides and gnawing bark off trees with this administration.
October 24th, 2009 | 11:55 am | #38
Will Suntan Charlie Crisp be on hand to kiss BO’s butt? I hope so as this will help RM!
October 24th, 2009 | 12:16 pm | #39
bg – Glenn Beck may get whacked the Obama way, and I don’t mean villanizing him about his Show, and not execution style, but something much more sinister that will look more benign to the masses, but be orchestrated all the same. Those were great clips of his October 23rd show.
I’m thinking the press stood up for Fox News, not because they care about Fox News, but because they are realizing that if they do not tow the Whitehouse line and remain their controlled puppets, they will receive a similar fate. It will be easier for them to fight the Whitehouse en masse, than to take them on singularly, and Fox News will make sure the nation knows if the Whitehouse is taking one of the left news organizations to task.
October 24th, 2009 | 12:18 pm | #40
I mean ‘ villainizing’….
October 24th, 2009 | 12:31 pm | #41
Ahh! Sunny Florida. Have hurricane insurance or it wii be just so much glass to recycle!
October 24th, 2009 | 2:51 pm | #42
What is the expected life of the plant? If it’s 25 years, then that comes out to $2,000 a year to power these houses. I don’t know how much it costs to power a house in FL by conventional methods like coal or natural gas–I’m guessing it’s less than $2,000 a year but not *that* much less. This actually gives me some hope the solar power could become economically viable at some point in the future, even though it obviously isn’t right now.
October 24th, 2009 | 5:29 pm | #43
They forgot to mention that Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will not attend. Wonder why?
Probably because he is starting to lose his bid to become Florida’s next senator to conservative Marco Rubio in the republican senate primary race.
Crist appeared with Obama to support Obama’s stimulus package. As far as I know he is the only republican Gov. that did so….
October 24th, 2009 | 6:10 pm | #44
http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=2469
Understanding E = mc2
Einstein’s equation applied to renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro.
…
What about solar energy? Solar radiation is the result of an E = mc2 transformation as the sun transforms hydrogen to helium. Unfortunately, the reaction takes place 90 million miles away. Radiation dissipates with the square of the distance, so by the time solar energy reaches the earth it is diluted by almost the same factor, 10-15. Thus, the amount of solar radiation falling on a one square meter is 400 watts, enough to power four 100-watt light bulbs. “Thermal solar” – large arrays of mirrors heating a fluid – can convert 30 percent of this to electricity. Photovoltaic cells are slightly less efficient, converting only about 25 percent. As a result, the amount of electricity we can draw from the sun is enough to power one 100-watt light bulb per card table.
This is not an insignificant amount of electricity. If we covered every rooftop in the county with solar collectors, we could probably power our indoor lighting plus some basic household appliances – during the daytime. Solar’s great advantage is that it peaks exactly when it is needed, during hot summer afternoons when air conditioning pushes electrical consumption to its annual peaks. Meeting these peaks is a perennial problem for utilities and solar electricity can play a significant role in meeting the demand. The problem arises when solar enthusiasts try to claim solar power can provide base load power for an industrial society. There is no technology for storing commercial quantities of electricity. Until something is developed – which seems unlikely – wind and solar can serve only as intermittent, unpredictable resources.
There is only so much energy we can draw from renewable sources. They are limited, either by the velocities attained, or by the distance that solar energy must travel to reach the earth. So is there anyplace in nature where we can take advantage of that “c2” co-efficient and tap transformations of matter into energy? There is one that we have used through history. It is called “chemistry.”
…
The release of energy from splitting a uranium atom turns out to be 2 million times greater than breaking the carbon-hydrogen bond in coal, oil or wood. Compared to all the forms of energy ever employed by humanity, nuclear power is off the scale. Wind has less than 1/10th the energy density of wood, wood half the density of coal and coal half the density of octane. Altogether they differ by a factor of about 50. Nuclear has 2 million times the energy density of gasoline. It is hard to fathom this in light of our previous experience. Yet our energy future largely depends on grasping the significance of this differential.
One elementary source of comparison is to consider what it takes to refuel a coal plant as opposed to a nuclear reactor. A 1000-MW coal plant – our standard candle – is fed by a 110-car “unit train” arriving at the plant every 30 hours – 300 times a year. Each individual coal car weighs 100 tons and produces 20 minutes of electricity. We are currently straining the capacity of the railroad system moving all this coal around the country. (In China, it has completely broken down.)
A nuclear reactor, on the other hand, refuels when a fleet of six tractor-trailers arrives at the plant with a load of fuel rods once every eighteen months. The fuel rods are only mildly radioactive and can be handled with gloves. They will sit in the reactor for five years. After those five years, about six ounces of matter will be completely transformed into energy. Yet because of the power of E = mc2, the metamorphosis of six ounces of matter will be enough to power the city of San Francisco for five years.
This is what people finds hard to grasp. It is almost beyond our comprehension. How can we run an entire city for five years on six ounces of matter with almost no environmental impact? It all seems so incomprehensible that we make up problems in order to make things seem normal again. A reactor is a bomb waiting to go off. The waste lasts forever, what will we ever do with it? There is something sinister about drawing power from the nucleus of the atom. The technology is beyond human capabilities.
But the technology is not beyond human capabilities. Nor is there anything sinister about nuclear power. It is just beyond anything we ever imagined before the beginning of the 20th century. In the opening years of the 21st century, it is time to start imagining it.
October 25th, 2009 | 5:20 am | #45
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by conservatweet: [GP] Obama Will Attend Opening of New Solar Panel Plant That Will Power 3,000 Homes at a Cost of $50,.. http://bit.ly/ImU5b
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October 28th, 2009 | 3:33 pm | #46
[...] Energy. Tags: Congress, Democrats, Government, Obama, Solar Power, Spending, Stupidity trackback Because it makes investments like this – which Obama and the Democrats [...]
November 2nd, 2009 | 1:27 pm | #47
[...] of cutting off domestic production of oil and coal causing prices to skyrocket and implementing costly solar and wind programs that absolutely will not meet America’s energy [...]
November 4th, 2009 | 4:22 pm | #48
[...] on the eighth day God created green bulbs, and expensive solar panels and protected land for booming polar bear populations. An executive has won the right [...]
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