{"id":1433,"date":"2011-10-07T13:47:46","date_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/do-you-have-solar-energy-yourself-why-yes-yes-i-do.html"},"modified":"2011-10-07T13:47:46","modified_gmt":"2011-10-07T17:47:46","slug":"do-you-have-solar-energy-yourself-why-yes-yes-i-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2011\/10\/do-you-have-solar-energy-yourself-why-yes-yes-i-do.html","title":{"rendered":"Do you have solar energy yourself? Why yes, yes, I do"},"content":{"rendered":"Grady Blankenship wrote a LTE in the VDT Wednesday, in which he asked\n“do you have solar energy yourself?”\nWhy yes, yes, I do.\nAnd I have some questions for everyone at the end.\n

\nBack\n\nin 2009 we installed solar panels on our farm workshop.<\/a>\n\n<\/a>\nAt the time the closest certified solar installer I could find was in Marietta.\nFour years ago there were 4 in the state.\nnow there are forty.<\/a>\nAnd that’s in a state that’s trailing\n\nNorth Carolina<\/a>\nand even\n\nNew Jersey<\/a>\nin solar installations.\n

\nAlso, I applied some weeks back for a USDA REAP grant for solar\nfor Okra Paradise Farms<\/a>.\n\n<\/a>\nMuch to our surprise, last week we\n\n\nlearned we got the grant!\nThis was possible due to the able assistance of Sherry Wheat and Alina Yakusheva\nof \nHannah Solar<\/a>, who had all the paperwork lined up ready to go\nwith explanations of what to fill out where.\n\n<\/a>\nWhy Hannah Solar?\nBecause they had demonstrated capability by installing the\n\nWiregrass Solar plant in Valdosta<\/a>\nand because they had their ducks lined up in a row about that grant application.\nThe REAP grant plus federal and state rebates will pay for around 90%\nof the cost of this additional solar installation.\nSure, I’ll end up paying the difference out of pocket,\nbut the whole thing will end up net positive in 3-7 years.\nWhat else can you say that about with any certainty:\na car, a house, stocks, even a job?\n

\nAnd before anybody starts griping about subsidies, remember\n\nfossil fuels get 12 times the subsidies of renewable energy.<\/a>\nThere is private venture capital available\nfor large-scale solar projects right now\n\n(here’s one example)<\/a>.\n\n<\/a>\nGadsden County, Florida and National Solar Power just announced\n\na large-scale solar project mostly privately funded<\/a>\nonly about a hundred miles west of here.<\/a>\nFor house-scale solar projects, financing is a business opportunity\nfor some local bank or banks.\nGadsden County, Florida, got their project because\n\nthey got on with doing something.<\/a>\n

\nWednesday, Sherry Wheat drove down from Atlanta to help at the\n\n<\/a>\n\nRenewable and Sustainable Energy Network<\/a> forming up at the Chamber of\nCommerce’s Opportunity Central.<\/a>\nThe participants are trying to do something about educating\npeople about renewable energy hereabouts.\n

\nThat same day Blankenship’s LTE also asked\nthe silly question, “what it would cost to keep one freezer running.”\nHe had trouble finding an answer because nobody really sells solar\nat the per-freezer level; it tends to be for household or larger.\nThat’s like asking how much coal would it take to run a single freezer.\nExcept, wait, for solar no fuel is required!\nDr. Noll\n\nhas already provided pointers to where to find quotes\nfor house-scale solar power.<\/a>\n

\nLet’s go beyond Blankenship’s nit-picking and look at the big picture.\n

\nRenewable and sustainable energy is a matter of national security,\n\n<\/a>\nas the U.S. military discovered in Afghanistan,\nwhere trucking in oil to run air conditioners in the desert\nwas a major security risk until they\n\nswitched to solar electricity generation instead.<\/a>\nWho wants to owe our power generation to Saudi Arabia,\nwhere they flog women for driving?\nWho wants to fight another land war in Asia for oil?\n

\nWhich is cheaper,\n

    \n
  1. \nFinancing solar for your house, which costs less\nthan a car out of pocket and starts paying back in 15 years or less,\n
  2. \nOr buying an extra car you don’t need that depreciates anyway,\n
  3. \n\n<\/a>\nOr paying for power from\n\nthe nation’s dirtiest coal plant near Macon<\/a>\nplus \nthe extraordinary negative side of coal mining<\/a>,\n
  4. \nOr paying increasing fees to\nGeorgia Power for building its two new nukes, including\n\nany cost overruns<\/a>?\n<\/ol>\nMe, I’ll take number 1.\n

    \nThe real questions are:\n

      \n
    • \nHow can we afford to continue subsidizing fossil fuel companies\nto pollute while they make record profits for any companies in history?\n
    • \nHow can we afford to continue paying for wars for oil?\n
    • \nHow can we afford not<\/em> to get on with renewable and sustainable energy,\nespecially solar?\n
    • \nWhy not use the south Georgia sun to lead in the fastest growing industry in the world?\n
    • \nAnd what are you doing to help?\n<\/ul>\n

      \n-jsq\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Grady Blankenship wrote a LTE in the VDT Wednesday, in which he asked “do you have solar energy yourself?” Why yes, yes, I do. And I have some questions for everyone at the end. Back in 2009 we installed solar panels on our farm workshop. At the time the closest certified solar installer I could […]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[97,216,40,14,15,264,265,8,18,2,3252,104,21,23,24],"tags":[8868,8783,2421,2647,2899,3690,8713,8714,2117,411,3691,859],"class_list":["post-1433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-coal","category-community","category-economy","category-education","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-georgia","category-georgia-power","category-government","category-hannah-solar","category-nuclear","category-planning","category-renewable-energy","category-solar","tag-hannah-solar","tag-military","tag-national-security","tag-okra-paradise-farms","tag-reap","tag-renewable-and-sustainable-energy-network","tag-renewable-energy","tag-solar","tag-sustainable","tag-usda","tag-venture-capital","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-n7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}