Solar

While I certainly welcome lower-cost solar panels, and would most certainly include solar power when I own my off-grid homestead, I am deeply concerned about the tens of thousands, and soon to be hundreds of thousands of acres of land being developed for industrial solar farms across the state. Information both on solar farms and smaller, more appropriate uses of solar technology.

State hearing set this week for large-scale solar farm proposal in Cayuga County | Politics | auburnpub.com

State hearing set this week for large-scale solar farm proposal in Cayuga County | Politics | auburnpub.com

significant step in the state's review of a massive solar farm proposal for northern Cayuga County takes place this week when the board that decides if the project can move forward holds an evidentiary hearing.

The state Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment has scheduled the hearing to start Friday morning. It will be held via web conference and teleconference.

The evidentiary hearing follows back-and-forth filings made by state agencies, a concerned citizens group and the project's developer, Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources. The company wants to build a 200-megawatt solar power facility in a project area of about 1,900 acres that would be located completely within the town of Conquest. The town does not have authority to approve or reject the proposal.

Suburban solar power subscribers seeing red over sky-high bills | News | CITY News. Arts. Life.

Suburban solar power subscribers seeing red over sky-high bills | News | CITY News. Arts. Life.

I see all these constant obnoxious ads for community solar, that promise to save you money by milking federal and state tax credits. But it turns out that many of these programs are scams.

If you really cared about the environment, you'd be far better off to just use less electricity, turn down the heat and get rid of your electronics. Walk more places, drive less. Green garbage is just as polluting as non green garbage, so don't buy either.

Solar (Sun) Intensity By Location and Time – Engaging Data

Solar (Sun) Intensity By Location and Time – Engaging Data

This visualization shows the amount of solar intensity (also called solar insolation and measured in watts per square meter) all across the globe as a function of time of day and day of year. This is an idealized calculation as it does not take into account reductions in solar intensity due to cloud cover or other things that might block the sun from reaching the earth (e.g dust and pollution).

How would you react if you turned on the news on Tuesday morning to only find out your house and entire neighborhood had been condemned under the state’s quick take eminent domain law, for a large renewable energy project by a private developer?

How would you react if you turned on the news on Tuesday morning to only find out your house and entire neighborhood had been condemned under the state’s quick take eminent domain law, for a large renewable energy project by a private developer?

The state would compensate you for fair market value and moving expenses but you would have to moved out of your home within 30 days. By filing a quick take deed with the county clerk, the state had already taken title to your property, your only choice is to take the check the government is sending you or sue in the court of claims for additional compensation based on what you believe the fair market value is to be.

In theory, homeowners and other property owners could band together and sue the state under Article 78 arguing that the project was arbitrary and capricious under the law but you could not challenge the individual eminent domain as quick take can not challenged in court. But even there, everything was stacked up against you as the state had decided building renewable energy projects was their priority, and the state with its millions in resources had no interest in defending homeowners and farms against big solar.

Solar and wind energy in many ways is the next interstate highway system. The climate crisis is already unlocking the next generation of Robert Moses and the master builders. The solar or wind farm must be built, the hell with the environment or community. A crisis affords no time to consider such impacts, the outcome has been predetermined by government officials. The bulldozers must come, the cement laid, steel I beams set and the thousand of acres of silicon and glass panels set into place.

I have a friend who visited a CalTrans office during the 1960s, and said the experience was like visiting a war room filled with enormous maps that filled the walls detailing the planned superhighways. The walls were certainly backed by stacks of files that contained detail survey data and rooms of super computers and reels of magnetic tape that would be used to crank out letters and prefilled out checks to owners of condemned property for compensation without much human intervention. Cold hard, statistics and FHWA regulations basically predetermined the route after all.

With massive government subsidies and the climate crisis the renewable energy projects must go ahead without question or significant evaluation of environmental impacts. The future has been predetermined by the planners, there is no turning back, we are told. Historic buildings must be hauled off to the landfills, forests stripped of their timber, farm fields stripped of their soils and concreted, open space industrialized. There are good union jobs, tax revenue, campaign contributions and patronage jobs after all to fill.

At least I’m glad to hear that local governments are asking solar developers about decommissioning plans, requiring some kind of bonding and calculations on landfill space to dispose of the panels when their time is done, not imagine they will be recycled into pixie dust. But no time to focus on that, the tax revenue and campaign contributions are more important than community character in a fucking climate crisis.

While I’m sure it won’t be popular, I sure hope people do rise up and ask before it’s to late:

Why and what cost?