California schools $120M solar project

I believe they gave $119 million to Al Gore's efforts, and spent the remaining million on publicity.

Actually quite "cost effective" for a school!

Many schools are "building rich" and "operating budget" poor. That is they can easily find millions and millions of dollars to build new buildings - and this money can only be spent on that.

Yet they can't find enough money to pay day to day expenses. They might have trouble coming up with an extra $5 for blackboard chalk. Seriously!

So quite smart of them to use that construction money for something like solar which would reduce their day to day expenses. Perhaps they will be able to buy chalk in the future?

The request was for information about what the California School District has done, not an invitation for you to exercise your incompetent imagination.

Admittedly, anyone asking for information about a political solar energy initiative here should expect to get answers drawn from the imagination of our resident right-wing nit-wits.

A quick google picked upt these initiatives

which do seem to involve expenditure of the order of $120M.

At the moment solar energy is only cost-effective if you figure in the uncosted consequences of the CO2 emissions associated with fossil fueled energy generation. Political initiatives that subsidise solar energy generation are designed to fill in that gap, and often a bit more beside, since increasing the market for solar energy installations helps the economies of scale, which are currently expected to make solar power competitive with fossil-fuel generation around 2015, though this rather depends on the way the demand for oil and natural gas influences fossil-fuel prices over the next few years

The German government subsidised solar gneration in ?Germany a few years ago - with success - and is now ramping down subsidies originally designed to encourage the purchase of solar generating plant produced on a much smaller scale (and rather more expensively) than it is at the moment.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

California is a very sunny place. In a lot of it, just a little gain from some solar heat can save you from having to turn on the furnace. Since schools are generally large buildings, the volume to surface area is large so the solar heating system doesn't have to be all that big per student.

Solar electric can make sense if you sell the excess power into the grid. Storage makes it not make sense. It takes about 12 years for a solar power system to pay for its self assuming you get a mortgage to buy it. If you have cash today, it makes a good way to invest for the future because after the system has paid its self off, you will get several year of use before it needs to be replaced.

I suspect some (huge!) portion of this comes in the form of a subsidy (?).

Even if the school district's share is $120M, it's not unreasonable to think some bean counter considered this as a "good investment".

- schools tend to remain schools (not like business/residential properties that change hands)

- schools have little "after hours" energy needs

- schools have reduced "summer" energy needs (typical school year)

- cogeneration lets weekend and summer power "turn a profit"

- creative accounting: bond issues to pay for construction so you don't "see" the cost (vs. the electric utility's monthly cost!)

- "feel good" factor ("Let's spend all this money instead of, perhaps, learning how to turn off a few lights when not in use. Or, installing some skylights in the halls, etc.")

I've not yet seen a good analysis of the maintenance cost of PV systems -- failure rates, replacement costs, labor costs.

We looked into a solar hot water heater here and laughed at the presentation. "Do people actually *think* about these things or do they just get mesmerized by all the hand-waving?"

Since when does a government institution have to be sane or spend taxpayer money effectively?

I don't believe in these alleged economies of scale. Solar panels already represent a large industry. The economies of scale, such as they are, have already been obtained.

Sylvia.

That thought did come to mind. I'm hopeful that we (the people) are taking the power that the constitution says we have and telling our reps it's time to cut the spending. When our reps stop having town meetings because the people are angry, that is a change. November is coming, please support candidates that believe in the ideas that provided a great standard of living in 200 years. Limited government, freedom, liberty and property rights. Mike That property rights is a getting to be big. Getting so you can't dig a hole on your own property and in PC Fl. It's is a $1000 fine to cut down a pine tree over a certain diameter, on YOUR* property. Government and the environmentalist are out of control.

• If you can call it yours, try not paying that rent. Also known as property tax. end of rant.

Not so, especially not so at the consumer level. At the consumer level PV panels remain a nitch product, so lack of retail competition and huge shipping costs because of a lack of any local distribution channel presents significant barriers.

Vaughn

It is a NIMBY problem. Everyone wants the government to cut spending but not on the things they care about. They want more spending on things in their area. You never see protesters showing up in great numbers at a ribbon cutting.

A bunch of fake outrage stopped the meetings. Protesters who claimed to be just average folks but turned out to be party officials made the meetings stop. This did nothing to reduce spending. It just cut off communication with the public. It added noise an no signal. The reps know that those folks yelling at the meetings were bussed in for the purpose.

The right to act and speak is more fundamental than the right to own. This is why there is no right to own another person.

Depends on what value you place on brainwashing children.

They put windmills on schools which won't generate enough electricity to cover maintenance costs never mind installation but the children get to see a big eco green tree hugging bollocks symbol every day......

I think your wrong! The producers are very angry at government overspending. But we have to many sucking the tit probably don't care. give me give me.

Apples and oranges. Mike

Harbor Freight sells several panels & systems. They do mail order and have a lot of retail stores in the US.

"Michael A. Terrell" wrote in news:YcKdnVzaNLRnrJjRnZ2dnUVZ snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.com:

OUCH! the larger panels there are 6-8 dollars a watt

Much better deals to be had:

But I guess schools must buy at a union shop and use union labor to install, so ...

That is still $5.00 per watt, and then you STILL have to pay for shipping. There are far better deals to be had, but shipping can be a deal killer.(See

My point was that you can probably find several places within driving distance to buy (say) roofing materials, but you will be lucky to find even one place that stocks a variety of PV panels. That one place will have no completion, so no reason to offer you the best deal. When you buy a heavy/bulky item from a local vender, it has likely arrived by the pallet load via a bulk shipper. Then you just pick it up and take it home, or pay a small amount to have your order delivered the "last mile".. When you buy that same heavy/bulky item from a remote retailer, they have to custom pack it, and then send you your order via an expensive retail shipper. That huge expense at the end of the distribution chain KILLS any economy of scale that may have occurred earlier. The consumer will rarely get a fair shake until an item truly becomes part of the mass market.

Vaughn

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Seriously, would you trust a Harbor Freight solar cell? I don't buy anything from that store that needs to plug into the mains.

---------- George W. Bush had an honorable discharge and proved to be the dumbest f*ck ever to hold a political office. 'nuff said for your sig.

The school day is poorly scheduled to take advantage of any solar energy. They start way too early in the day.

Some element of price gouging unless they are fancy ones.

$4/W is about where it starts to get interesting. But PV is pretty much a none starter economically unless you get some kind of install grant and a ludicrous price for the electricity generated. And yes there are fraudsters "generating" way more "solar" electricity than the PV array they installed could possibly manage (even on cloudy days). It took the suits in charge of the green refunds a while to catch on...

One thing I will say was that I was surprised how well they did on on a cold clear winters day in the UK. The cold more or less compensated for the low angle sun and the array managed nearly 50% of rated output.

Regards, Martin Brown