Congressman Ron Paul's Stance on Solar Power

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Yesterday I saw all the Ron Paul people holding signs down the street from me so I figured I’d jump on his website to find out his stance on renewable energy and solar power. Admittedly I’m ashamed I don’t already know.

So I Googled Ron Paul. I found his site and headed straight for the “issues” page. Dude!

It’s all right-wing-hot-topics. WTF! Energy concerns MATTER! Why the F isn’t it on here?! It matters! Haven’t you seen “An Inconvenient Truth?” You can’t home school children, arm them with handguns, and defend their low-tax jobs from Mexicans if they’re under water, Ron, can you? CAANNN YOUUU!!!???? Speaking of hot-topics… I’ll be right back I want a hot pocket.

Ok, yum. Well, then, as I click a few more links… It looks like Ron Paul’s got some seemingly not so shabby views on the environment and solar power… and some that are, we’ll say, idealistic. LET’S GO THROUGH THE POSTITIVES AND NEGATIVES (as I see’um) SHALL WE?

• MAYBE NEGATIVE: He said this on the Dennis Miller Show (here’s the clip): “the environment is better protected under private property rights… We as property owners can’t violate our neighbors’ property. We can’t pollute their air or their water. We can’t dump our garbage on their property…. Too often, conservatives and libertarians fall short on defending environmental concerns, and they resort to saying, ‘Well, let’s turn it over to the EPA. The EPA will take care of us…. We can divvy up the permits that allow you to pollute.’ So I don’t particularly like that method.” huh? That makes me think of him as an old codger in a rocking chair on his porch, telling kids to “Get the hell off my property!” or he would shoot them with rock salt. Only the kids are pollution?

• POSITIVE: But then Wikipedia (so it MUST be true) says that he “has voted against federal subsidies for the oil and gas industry, saying that without government subsidies, alternative fuels would be more competitive with oil and gas and would come to market on a competitive basis sooner.” Well, that sounds pretty awesome and coherent, although it’s not a quote. I reckon the quote probably had a “I reckon” or two in it.

• POSITIVE: Also, he seems to be pro hemp biofuels and pro nuclear power. Sweet.

• POSITIVE: I just ate a hot pocket, and it so delicious I stabbed my cat.
• NEGATIVE: Ron Paul is a nutjob?
• MOSTLY NEGATIVE:

Voted NO on criminalizing oil cartels like OPEC. (May 2007)
Voted NO on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies. (Jan 2007)
Voted NO on keeping moratorium on drilling for oil offshore. (Jun 2006)
Voted YES on scheduling permitting for new oil refinieries. (Jun 2006)
Voted NO on passage of the Bush Administration national energy policy. (Jun 2004)
Voted NO on implementing Bush-Cheney national energy policy. (Nov 2003)
Voted NO on raising CAFE standards; incentives for alternative fuels. (Aug 2001)
Voted NO on prohibiting oil drilling & development in ANWR. (Aug 2001)
Voted NO on starting implementation of Kyoto Protocol. (Jun 2000)
Repeal the gas tax. (May 2001)

So the bottom line is pretty simple. Ron Paul wants the government to stay out of yo ‘biness, and to stay the hell off yo propertay. Unfortunately, when the government stays entirely out of your business, people F up the environment.

Video: Solar Power as Cheap as Fossil Fuels?

CNET just ran a nice piece yesterday featuring Charlie Gay’s spin on the solar industry over at the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. (Charlie is the general manager of Applied Materials’ solar business). Behind the phallic backdrop of the Washington Monument, he cheerfully describes reasons why large-scale manufacturing will bring down the price of solar electricity. Instead of huge technology breakthroughs, he argues investments will result in incremental improvements in panel efficiency. Take a look!

Oh, and I made this post while enjoying perhaps the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had in my life. I’m at a café called Crema in Portland, Oregon. Check this thing out:

California Passes Sweeping Solar Water Heating Legislation – Republicans Sit on their Hands

Last Friday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law the most progressive solar water heating legislation in any state. It’s called the California Solar Water Heating and Efficiency Act of 2007. This new law will provide consumer incentives in the form of rebates to those installing solar water heaters for their homes or businesses. Specifically, a fund of $250 Million dollars will be appropriated from a 13 cent per month surcharge on natural gas bills and disbursed over 10 years. This initiative contributes to the goal of getting 200,000 units installed on California roofs by 2017. While Schwarzengger is a Republican, not one single Republican in either houses of the state legislature voted for the approval of this bill (AB 1470). The main question I have is, why the hell not? The list of supporters of this bill is on the right.

More and more, I’m thinking that if you’re a Republican, you’ve probably sold your soul to a conglomerate of corporations who have promised as many golf tournaments, colorful retirement parachutes, and ham hock dinners as one could engorge themselves with so that you might be able to forget the fact that you are supposed to serve the best interests of your constituents instead of large, environmentally destructive corporations. I don’t care how red your precinct might actually be if you’re a California state legislator. The fact that all of those groups listed below rose in strong support of this bill and not one republican legislator voted for it is freaking ridiculous.

A report from the Environment California Research and Policy Center estimates that the law could curb the demand for natural gas in the state by about 5%. While that may not sound like a whole lot, that cut in demand could equate to a 25-35% reduction in wholesale natural gas prices – to the benefit of every consumer.The law just makes sense: California predominately uses natural gas to meet water heating needs and solar water heating can reduce the amount of gas needed to heat water in homes and businesses by 50-75%!

 

Main Features of the program:

• Goal set of installing 200,000 solar water heating systems by 2017
• Establishment of eligibility for qualified solar water heating systems
• Establishment of installation guidelines
• 10 percent of funds set aside for low-income and affordable housing projects
• A declining rebate program with performance-based incentives.
• Funding through a surcharge on natural gas customers based on the amount of natural gas consumed.

More Links:

Full Text of the California Solar Water Heating and Efficiency Act of 2007 – signed into law October 12, 2007

Interview with California Assemblyman Jared Huffman, sponsor of AB 1470

Solar Water Heating: How California Can Reduce Its Dependence on Natural Gas – by Environment California Research & Policy Center

Underdog gaining ground in Solar vs. Coal showdown

This past Tuesday, American Electric Power Company agreed to a $4.6 billion settlement over pollution controls at its power plants. The company will also have to shell out $15M in civil penalties and $60M in cleanup and mitigation costs.

For the same price of cleanup and settlement costs, you could build 18.7 concentrating solar power plants, like the Nevada Solar One plant (pictured above) that went online earlier this year. 18.7 of those things could generate more than 1,196 megawatts – but without the additional carbon, natural capital and other pollution costs attributed to coal generation.

In fact, while a 1,600 MW coal-fired plant could run you about $2.9 billion upfront (based on the cost of Peabody Energy Corp’s new coal-fired power plant in Southern Illinois), the CO2 bill for an estimated 40-year lifespan will run more than the initial construction costs.

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a typical coal plant generates 3.7 million tons of CO2 per year. Based on the December, 2008 contract price on the Chicago Climate Exchange of $22.88 per ton of CO2, you’re looking at a bill of $84,656,000 per year.

Multiply that by 40 years, and we can go ahead and tack on another $3,386,240,000 onto that original $2.9 billion price tag…giving us a new total of $6,286,240,000.

Now for $6,286,240,000, you can get either a dirty, 1,600MW coal-burning plant that will continue to be nickel and dimed for decades to come, or a 1,600MW concentrating solar power plant, 25 times the size of the most recent Nevada Solar One plant, in the middle of the desert, without NIMBY issues, but near transmission lines…and still have about $36,240,000 leftover.

And by the way, that $6.4 billion for the coal-fired plant is still being extremely generous.

There are a few more issues that still aren’t being accounted for.

For instance, a typical 500MW coal plant:

• Draws about 2.2 billion gallons of water each year from nearby
lakes, rivers and oceans. (That’s enough water to support a city of approximately 250,000 people)
• Generates 170 pounds of mercury. And it only takes 1/70th of a
teaspoon in a 25-acre lake to make fish unsafe to eat. Enjoy that
freshly-caught trout on your next fly fishing trip!
• Relies on the transportation of coal. A cost that will continue
increase as the price of oil increases. Funny how the two of these
things can not only screw us, but each other as well.

Thanks to Jeff Siegel of desert-rock-blog.com for the majority of the figures in this post

The Future of Small Scale Wind Power

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State of Wisconsin Solar Incentives

Wisconsin state solar power incentives, tax credits, and rebate programs have been reviewed here.

What the Hell is the Difference Between a Kilowatt (kW) and a Kilowatt-hour (kWh)

So you look at a light bulb and it says “100 Watts.” What the hell does that mean?

Your power company charges your for “Kilowatt-hours” that you use… What the hell is a Kilowatt-hour?!

For starters, a Kilowatt (kW) is just one thousand watts, just like a megawatt (mW) is one million watts. A “watt” (W) is a measurement of POWER. To be precise it’s using one joule per second. However, since no one has uttered the word “joule” since that physics class they took fifteen years ago, we use watts instead of Joules per second, because they’re printed on light bulbs and people have an idea of what they mean. To put it in perspective, a car engine cruising uses about 25,000 watts, which is about 30 horsepower.

But that’s a car… Mechanical energy. We want to talk about electricity since we’re concerned with solar power. With electricity, POWER is voltage time amperage. Or 1watt = 1volt * 1ampere.

A good way to think about electricity is that it’s a lot like water. Voltage is the pushing, or the pressure, and amperage is the flow. A damned up lake, although it has a hell of a lot of pressure (voltage), doesn’t flow anywhere (zero amperage) so there’s no power (lots of volts * zero amps = zero watts). On the other hand take a super soaker water gun. Super fast stream (lots of amps) but a tiny little compressed reservoir (not a lot of volts). I wouldn’t go so far as to call that “powerful.” Finally, look at a rushing river. Lots of volts, lots of amps, huge power. So wait, Dave, you got off subject, we’re talking about Watts here…

Oh yah, Watts. Ok, so a Watt is energy burned per second. If you flick on a 100 Watt light bulb it’s eating up 100 Joules of energy every second (interestingly, a standard candle is exactly 1 Watt). So now what’s a watt-hour (wH)? Well, don’t get confused when you see a confusing or seemingly incorrect usage of watt or watt-hour in mass media. The two terms are often interchanged and misused.

“Watts per hour” doesn’t make sense because it’s already a measurement of “joules per second.” Does “Joules per second per hour” make sense? No. A Watt-hour is what your power company uses to charge you, and it’s a way of removing the “per second” from Watts. So now instead of talking about Joules per unit of time, you’re just talking about Joules period…. but we call them Watt-hours because no one knows what the hell a “joule” is.

Think of Watts as the speed you’re running and Watt-hours as how far you’ve actually ran. A kilowatt-hour is the amount of energy equivalent to a power of 1 kilowatt running for 1 hour. If you leave a 100 Watt light bulb on for 1 hour, you’ve done gone and used up 100 watt-hours, and PG&E is going to bill you accordingly.

Ok, I feel like I’ve made that explanation 100 times longer than it should have been. Hope that helped.

ASES report wins a 2007 IREC Innovation Award

IREC, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (see our links page) announced the winners of the 2007 Innovation Awards at its annual meeting on September 24th. The American Solar Energy Society was a proud winner with Brad Collins (executive director) receiving the award on behalf of ASES.

Tackling Climate Change in the U.S. – Potential U.S. Carbon Emissions Reductions from Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency by 2030, a 218 page report by ASES can be donlowded here.

(IREC’s Chair, Ken Jurman, presents the award to ASES’s Brad Collins.)

Eliminating the need for fossil fuels with sunrays

Stumbling through documents regarding “feed-in tariffs” and solar legislation, I stumbled upon this incredible graphic. Those 6 little black dots represent the square land area required to completely satiate the entire world’s energy demands using photovoltaic cells. If it weren’t for big oil, lobbyists, corrupt leadership, and old money, I’d ask why we can’t just plop down our dot’s worth of these solar cells in southern Utah.

Direct explanation of the above figure from WikiCommons:

“Solar power systems installed in the areas defined by the dark disks could provide more than the world’s 2006 total primary energy demand (assuming a conversion efficiency of 8%). That is, all energy currently consumed, including heat, electricity, fossil fuels, etc., would be produced in the form of electricity by solar cells. The colors in the map show the local solar irradiance averaged over three years from 1991 to 1993 (24 hours a day) taking into account the cloud coverage available from weather satellites.”

Solar Powered Vending Machines

Imagine climbing a mountain and realizing that you really want some Gatorade. Of course there are no vendors on mountain peaks, but maybe the possibility is not so far off….

Solar Vending has created a completely independent, off-grid vending machine that powers its vending and refrigeration mechanisms with solar power. The technology would allow businesses to place vending machines in locations otherwise impossible, such as on a beach, or on a golf course…. or, well, anywhere.

In addition to the endless new opportunities for locations, the devices don’t require power, saving you money. As an added bonus, it may be possible to receive energy efficient incentives or tax-credits as a business installing these vending machines.

Here are some specs on the machine from the website:

· 12 volts direct current

· 120 watts photovoltaic power supply

· 60 watts DC compressor

· R134a (refrigerant)

· 12v coin validator

· 7 day power supply gel batteries

· Auto (empty no coin acceptance) power off

· Height 1.9m, witdh 0.6m, depth 1.0m

· Weight 80kg (nett empty)

· Foam insulation (highest “K” valuation)

· Outer casing – PVCU