Doesn’t seem really necessary for county to contract out to build out solar for government uses ☀️
I was reading a county legislator’s post the other day, and he was highlighting what another county was doing with a contract to a privately owned solar farm to provide renewable energy to county office buildings at a fixed price. While it seemed like a good idea in principal, it seemed also an wasteful example of government privatization.
So much of cost of solar these days isn’t the equipment, but of the labor to install solar panels and make the electrical connections up to code. But the thing is county governments already employ workers in Department of Public Works that have strong backs and are familiar with building maintenance and repairs. They can probably mount panels, including custom fabrication of any kind of stand or bracket the county would need for a solar installation. Moreover, county governments inevitably have small fleet of electricians on the payroll to fix common electrical problems in county buildings, and are fully qualified to make the connections between solar panels and the buildings’ existing electrical infrastructure. For design of system, they can contract out, but they don’t need to rely on external help when county employees can do it cheaper.
The county might be hesitant to plunk down a bunch of money for panels and electrical interconnection equipment, but they can bond them, especially if they have clear evidence of the savings in the out-years. By the county buying equipment directly, installing it and maintaining it in-house, this will make solar much more profitable for county in future. Why pay a separate electrician, when the county’s own staff can be dispatched to fix any problems with their panels? With so much of the cost of solar being labor these days, using county labor for solar panels on county buildings, it makes sense for county to purchase panels and supporting equipment themselves as a tax-exempt entity, and use existing labor in-house to install and maintain the system.
State lawmakers this month advanced a bill that would enact a statewide ban on the use of coal tar-based sealant products commonly used for driveways and parking lots.?
At issue is the chemcials found in the sealcoats, including concentrations of?polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are considered toxic to aquatic life and lawmakers say are cancer-linked.?
The bill now goes to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's desk for his consideration before it becomes law. The measure has been sought for the last decade by Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and environmental advocates.
One of the things that was clear to me as we dug into the Al literature and recently funded projects is that nearly everyone (researchers, funding agencies, etc.) has been intoxicated by the promises of ultra-high capacity (2981 mAh/g) and energy density (4140 Wh/kg) for metallic Al. This is not new. Al has been explored as a battery electrode material for literally 170 years. A brief summary of that development is shown in Figure 1. However, no battery has come even close to meeting the capacity and energy density numbers above in a lab cell, let alone a practical one. And the pathway forward is quite unclear.
In aqueous batteries, Al is either rapidly corroding or catastrophically passivated. In non-aqueous cells, such as those with ionic liquid electrolytes used in aluminum ion batteries (AIBs), the Al complexes in the electrolyte and the overall reaction does not give 3 electrons per Al atom that is assumed in the high numbers above, but actually gets only 3 electrons for every 8 aluminum atoms. Most of the extra Al is not solid, but dissolved in the electrolyte – meaning a lot more weight and volume than “theoretical”. In addition, these AIBs typically use graphite cathodes that need many C atoms per Al, adding mass. The combination of electrolyte mass and cathode mass (in addition to other practical things like packaging, etc.) significantly drives down the achievable energy density to values closer to 50 Wh/kg. And the true limit when all practical components are taken into account is only around 80 Wh/kg. Though these values may be competitive with Pb-acid batteries, they are not competitive with Li-ion batteries at all. And primary chemistries that exist based on aluminum air batteries (AABs) have also only been able to achieve practical energy densities well below 100 Wh/kg, far below the alkaline and LiFeS2 primaries that we can already buy at the drug store. Another aspect where Al-based batteries have failed so far is in their lifetime. State-of-the-art chemistries have very poor long-term operational and shelf stability.