Massive East Coast solar project generates fury from neighbors

“sPower has said the project “will be safe, reliable, quiet and screened from public view.”

Perhaps they will plant some trees?

And thus the US, with VA and CA leading the way, will Green the US to VZ economy.

Prophet, wise or fool.
In 20 years, nature will be littered full of obselete “green energy” contraptions, strewn everywhere and politicians will avoid adressing who is responsible for cleaning up the mess. The mess they made.
Land will erode where trees are cut down.
I have this strong feeling of deja vu, am I a time traveller or insane? Or am I wise?
I dont know anymore, how can I tell if I am sane in an insane world, or insane in a sane world?
Is there a Turing test for that?

My solution to stay sane is to interpret the world like this:
I say politics are governed by emotion. What I interpret as insanity is just fear driven irrational reactions to a percived threat. I wrongly assume that most people have powers of reason to control their irrational emotions. Supposedly this is what separates us from the animals. I only have to accept that many people are basically animals driven by emotions with only modest powers of reasoning not strong enough to break free from the emotional grip of fear.
Basically, I must accept beeing stranded on the planet of the apes and try to accept that my-our fate is decided by lesser evolved humanoids.
Depressing but at least Im not crazy.

And where are the solar panels made? As far as I can tell, we don’t have much of a solar panel manufacturing industry here in the U.S. (remember Solyndra?). I suspect the utility is buying panels made in China, but I don’t know for sure.

There is yet another solar panel maker that shut down its operations in Portland, Oregon, a while back:
https://www.bizjournals.com/portland/news/2017/08/10/solarworld-ripple-effect-hillsboro-supplier.html.

I recall reading that it will cost about $500,000 to clean up the toxic mess the Hillsboro plant left behind.

So we have many acres of trees that need to be cleared for solar farms and the toxic waste the panels leave behind. Add in grid stability issues when the sun goes down or when the weather clouds up. Total it all up and you have idiocy on a pretty large scale. Green energy?? Ummm, yea. Right. And AOC is a Republican.

I assume that “500 megawatts capacity” figure is nameplate capacity. In reality the average output
would be based on 4 to 5 “suns” year round, or somewhat less than 100 megawatts of actual output.
Virginia has several nuclear reactor sites (North Anna, Surrey) and was planning on adding another
reactor at North Anna. Virginia’s nuclear plants provide 41% of Virginia’ power. That additional reactor would likely have a actual capacity of 1200 megawatts and would produce that amount at all times, resulting in 12 times more power generated than that from this huge solar farm. Adding that additional reactor at North Anna would have required no additional land. They provide two land sizes for the solar farm. 3500 acres for the panels. I don’t know whether the other 3000 acres is required or not. If it is, then you would have to find 12 X 6000 acres (72,000 acres) to obtain enough land to collect the same amout of energy that the additional North Anna reactor could provided
Even the Federal Energy dept only recommends solar farms in deserts. Virginia (my birthplace) is NOT a desert. And 100 megawatts of unreliable power is practically insignificant – its likely only effect will be to disrupt the local power grid.

The proper response to these crazy power schemes is to point out just how idiotic they are
when compared to alternatives low or no carbon generation technologies. In the first place, the technologies are primitive 16th century technologies and secondly, they have an enormous enviromental footprint. The future of power generation is molten salt nuclear power, of that there is no doubt -just ask the Chinese, Indians, Russians, Bill Gates, the Canadians, etc. The costs of molten salt nuclear power will be far less than that of solar or wind and its environmental footprint is tiny.

The local newspaper The Fredericksburg Star carries articles regarding this fiasco.
One trouble is that the Fredericksburg Star is well known for publishing what they are handed by businesses and politicians. They are not known for investigative reporting or even verifying facts.

The people pushing this nonsense brought in a press relations team from Germany; big money is involved.

As is Virginia’s democrat leadership; the obviously conflicted Governor and his cohorts.

The “poll” they link to above;

“December 15‐17, 2018
N=400 Voters (40%Cells)
Margin Of Error: +4.9%”

I do not know anyone who was polled.
Nor are many people willing to take polls after the polarized partisan last two years.

Spotsylvania County has an estimated 133,000 people as of 2017.

Fredericksburg City whose borders with Spotsylvania are poorly defined, on which more than one survey taker has erred has a population of 28,000 plus approximately 4,400 students attending Mary Washington University.

If a company needed poll results positive for renewable energy,guess where they’ll solicit answers.

Direct questions regarding the cost of solar power and who they are going to sell it too are not answered directly.
The local electric company Dominion Power is coming across as supporting the solar project.
Which causes many residents to suspect there are promises and contracts that will ensure profitability.

No-one here expects electricity prices to stay cheap. Too many overt signs of political persuasion are already evident.