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Obama's Solar Panels Won't Pay for Themselves
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Harrison
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alternative energy cap and trade Colorado Xcel Democrats Denver Business Journal Denver Museum of Science and Nature Liberals Obama solar power Spending taxes
So Joe, you think those suckers, I mean taxpayers will catch on? I don't think so, either.
An article from March 2009 that seems especially relevant now that Cap and Trade passed in the House and goes on to the Senate:
Before signing the $787 billion stimulus package into law on Feburary 17, 2009, President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden toured an array of solar panels on top of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The photo-op allowed the President to once again extol the virtues of the coming “green” economy.
So far it sounds like your typical politician touting their latest “accomplishment” towards improving the world. But read on, it gets much better:
A 2008 article in the Denver Business Journal sheds further light on the subject. The article notes the total price of the solar array was $720,000. And Dave Noel, VP of operations and chief technology officer for the Museum, was quoted as saying, “We looked at first installing [the solar array] ourselves, and without any of the incentive programs, it was a 110-year payout.” Noel went on to say that the Museum did not purchase the solar array because it did not “make sense financially.”
Imagine that… “it did not ‘make sense financially.’” So how could this solar array get installed if it didn’t make financial sense? Who paid for the solar cells?
It is owned by Hybrid Energy Group, LLC. HEG owns the solar array, sells the electricity to the Museum, and receives tax incentives from the state and federal governments, while also receiving “rebates” from Xcel Energy. The rebates are funded by a surcharge collected on the monthly bill of every Colorado Xcel customer.
So the solar cells are paid for by the taxpayer! Sort of like Cap and Trade will be paid for by the taxpayer!
What’s the best part of this story?
Additionally, most solar panels have an expected life-span of 20 to 25 years.
More retarded Liberal ideas that will cost us all bigtime and have nothing to show for it. Yes, we can!
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17:05
wow- i think its funny that you have an opinion about a subject for which you clearly demonstrate ignorance.
i could try and explain concepts of high finance and the economic rationale for supporting infant industries, but that would likely be over your head and i will rest content knowing i am a better human than you.
17:47
Yes all the humans I know who are better than me are condescending like you.
I’m sure your understanding of economics is as advanced.
17:56
Essentially, all forms of energy are solar energy (except maybe nuclear). Photovoltaics is simply one of the least efficient ways for humans to capture the energy from the sun.
Supporting infant industries is a great reason for having robust venture capital, equity, and debt markets where people with advanced knowledge of high finance and economics can make decisions about which infant industries will end up being good investments rather than spend their time lurking around blogs.
You don’t have to have and advanced degree in finance, but possibly a degree in neurology might help, to know that typically people invest other people’s money more carelessly than their own. This is why the federal government isn’t very good at things like this.
Burro´s last blog ..Cigarette Butts Between the Cobblestones
18:12
I was watching This Old House and they met with a guy who installed solar power and a wind turbine. Those two pieces of hardware alone were $50,000.00 and did not include installation. There were also the electronics required to run them… a dedicated building, numerous batteries, inverters, and a computer to coordinate everything. I’m sure that guy shelled out at least $150,000.00 (more if the building was included) for the whole thing (they only asked him about the batteries and turbine). The guy lived on an island with no grid to plug into but clearly this kind of outlay doesn’t make any financial sense.
19:25
Unless, of course, you are educated in theories of high finance. What more evidence do we need than the thriving nature of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley etc. that the wizards who understand high finance and economics – the same wizards who will be enlisted to run cap and trade – are what the alternative energy industry needs to prove that it can be a successful venture. After seeing the great success of supporting the infant industry of subprime mortgages and their derivatives, we should be more confident that high finance will be able to slice and dice the extremely unprofitable risk of the solar panel industry and spread this risk to hundreds of millions of dolts who will buy into the myth that someday this ponzi scheme will pay off.
If an investment requires someone with a knowledge of high finance to justify that it is a good investment, you should take your money and run.
Burro´s last blog ..Cigarette Butts Between the Cobblestones
14:48
Comparing subprime to solar energy is wrong for a lot of reasons. I have to admit that there WILL be some poorly conceived and executed projects, but I am hopeful that the overall result will be advancement of the technology and less dependence on fossil fuels.
Martin´s last blog ..How to Build Solar Panels
17:39
However, comparing cap and trade derivatives to subprime mortgage derivatives would be a productive issue to think about.
It is nice to see that you have hope. There is no better justification for how to use public funds than to say, “I hope this works.”
Burro´s last blog ..China: Red Star Falling
21:31
It may not make sense in the current economic environment, but that is not an environment that will be around for very long. Either we will have massive problems from CO2 buildup or we’ll switch to green energy. Either way, the “cost” of solar panels involves a great deal more than just the dollars they are labelled with today.
21:34
The problem with your statement is you assume CO2 is a problem. I’m not willing to bet tens of trillions of dollars and too many jobs to count on your hunch.
01:04
Excellent point Roger. Calculating the “cost” of solar panels using today’s dollars is problematic. Especially when you factor in the likelihood that today’s dollars are severely overvalued. Once the inflationary effects of Obama’s debt binge start to manifest themselves, the investment potential of solar panels will just get worse and worse.
burro´s last blog ..China: Red Star Falling
19:55
The government subsidizes everything, now they’re just going to shift slowly away from the dirtier fuels (oil, coal). And performance will improve with increased R&D investment (much like computers and the internet – remember the days of $12,000 PCs as fast as my TI calculator, and modem speeds measured in bauds?). Of course, the initial trajectory was launched from gov’t funded labs, higher ed, DARPA, etc.
Kind of a shallow article and commentary here…if you want to help the conservative movement, well, you’re not
20:01
I didn’t know you were the authority of the conservative movement. I simply pointed out a few facts the rest is up to the reader.
07:22
I was waiting for someone to say “what about the internet and the computer?” To which I reply, “How many trillions of dollars did the government sink into the “initial trajectory” research for the internet and the computer?” I could also respond that the solar panel industry has already received the initial trajectory of which you speak back when these types of solar panels were developed by NASA in the 1950s. Photovoltaics have been around for at least as long as the computers of which you speak, and yet for some reason they don’t ever seem to get past “initial trajectory” phase. So, JC, since you seem to be such a profound thinker on the subject, what percentage of our national GDP are you willing to gamble that photovoltaics will reach the critical mass point where they are actually a good investment, given that they haven’t done so after 50 years and hundreds of billions in private and public capital?
Also, if you are buying into Obama’s Hope Snake Water, you might reconsider how much you are helping the conservative movement.
burro´s last blog ..China: Red Star Falling
13:22
G.W. Bush installed solar panels while in office. How do you feel about that?
14:14
Chrome don’t bring it home.
05:51
?
07:58
Adding chrome to a vehicle’s engine is just for show and serves no functional purpose. In fact it often makes the engine overheat. The same is true with the White House solar panels.
08:09
I’m hoping for a response to Bush’s installation of solar panels, which couldn’t have been one of the “retarded Liberal ideas” to which you referred.
People don’t want to pay taxes which they find is not market-friendly, a conservative cornerstone. But the truth is, many “fiscal conservatives” are just frugal and don’t want to pay more of anything, which is why they care to overlook true costs that include things like pollution and health which are being paid by someone else (or will be) and should be incurred by the people using fossil fuels, emitting carbon, producing waste, etc.
09:05
If that were true then the U.S. would be a cesspool of toxic waste, dying trees, and horrible, smog choked air. It is not. Regulation up to a point is fine, over regulation and over taxation is not. I can only speak to my own beliefs on that one.
09:07
why avoid responding to Bush’s “retarded” solar panels?
09:10
My analogy to chrome on an engine was for Bush and his solar panels. Bush also built a very “green” house in Crawford, TX. If he used his own money then more power to him but if he used government tax credits then shame on him.
23:13
Everyone knows that Bush’s solar panels were just ingeniously disguised telecommunications equipment, so that he and Dick Cheney could spy on the phone conversations of average Americans. By disguising this equipment as solar panels, liberals were too stupid to figure it out.
burro´s last blog ..Gary Locke has got a lock on stupidity