By way of full disclosure, our home has solar panels. They came with the house, and we didn’t have them installed by one of the many companies that used to send college kids out to troll subdivisions during the spring and summer. Every day, there was a knock at the door from some person who wouldn’t stop talking long enough for me to tell them to go away. But for a while, there were solar companies everywhere, it seemed.
Our panels do make a bit of a difference in our utility budget, but one of the problems with them is that they can only be serviced by the company that installed them. The company that made ours is now defunct. And at some point, a previous resident took the metering device, so we don’t know how much money we are saving or how much power we are generating. And we obviously can’t call the company for a new one. Ditto if a panel is damaged and needs to be repaired or replaced.
And after a heavy snowfall, as the temperature rises pound after pound of snow will start sliding off of the panels and hit the ground with sufficient weight and velocity to at least stun if not injure a water buffalo. During one such incident, our metal fire pit, which I had moved closer to the house until we could use it again, was turned into scrap in less than 60 seconds.
That our solar company no longer exists is not unusual. A multitude of companies has come and gone in the last few years. A friend of mine went from pushing solar panels to selling CBD oil. Last I heard, he was working for a financial company that helps with asset management and retirement planning when its employees are not recruiting people for their downlines. And I have heard several stories of people who had solar panels installed, only to discover it might take years to recoup their investment through savings or selling back power to their electric company.
All of this is to say that, while solar can play a part in a diversified energy portfolio, it isn’t going to carry the day. For the present, we still need to keep power plants running, nasty coal and all. And a town in Illinois would seem to agree with me. The company Bundleflower Solar LLC had asked the city of Pontiac to rezone a parcel of land to install 5,568 photovoltaic solar panels. But Bonner Cohen, writing at CFACT, reports that Bundleflower withdrew its application after the citizens of Pontiac, including the owner of the lot, said they were opposed to the project.
Why would such a wonderful product, from a company with such a cute and innocuous name get a thumbs-down from the people of Pontiac? Solar is after all ostensibly environmentally friendly and not known for being labor-intensive. And anyone who uses it knows that they will exude that green vibe and enjoy some serious social credit.
CFACT had taken notice of the project and had posted an article on its site and on Real Clear Energy about it. That article was shared among the residents of the city. Opponents of the plan outnumbered the few supporters at a planning and zoning meeting, and Bundleflower backed down. One of the things that the piece pointed out was that, while the project might be able to meet the electricity needs of 300-400 homes, that did not mean it would do so on a continuous basis.
As you probably already know, the keyword in solar power is “solar.” No sun, no power. That means the solar farm would be useless on cloudy or rainy days, if they were covered in snow (at least until it slid off, like at my house), or at night, which coincidentally is a time when people use things like ovens, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, and you know, lights. In those instances, people would still need to rely on their usual power provider. And given the length and nature of winters in the Midwest, those panels might not have been useful for long stretches of time. Also of note, Bundleflower never even planned to install backup batteries to serve customers when the panels were not working.
But to get to the heart of the matter, we must, as a certain someone said in the days of Watergate, “follow the money.” Yes, it is true that “going green” can mean tax rebates in some instances for a homeowner or business. But in the case of Bundleflower, under Illinois’s Climate and Equity Jobs Act, or CEJA, it was creating what was known as a community solar project. Residents or businesses would “subscribe” to the farm for their power needs. Bundleflower would receive financial incentives not only from the state but also from the federal government, all while selling power to the people of Pontiac. Weather permitting, of course.
Armed with all of the information above, the people of Pontiac saw that they were headed toward an energy dead end. They may have realized that a solar farm would not meet their needs, or they saw that the project may have existed as a money-maker for the company that would have little benefit to them. The lack of batteries, for instance, may have been a big tip-off that the company was not taking the idea that seriously. Whatever the case may be, the people of Pontiac took the time to discover what the Green New Deal is all about, albeit on a local level. And to their credit, they weren’t having any of it.
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