More Solar Generation Approved
Share this article
ADVERTISEMENT
(comments below)
Comments
Comments
78 responses to “More Solar Generation Approved”
-
Crony capitalism at its finest. Dominion customers will pay for the inevitable cost overruns and suffer from the reduction in grid reliability (God forbid that Dominion shareholders and executives share the pain). Let’s hope Charlotte County never has enough snow to cover the panels, never has too many days with dense cloud cover and no storms strong enough to destroy panels.
-
Bribe is the correct word. And if the SCC allows that expense to be forced onto the ratepayers, it will only be because the General Assembly rigged this game, too. Billions more in solar projects are coming, and that bribe will prove to be the baseline amount and begin to grow.
Hilarious front page climate catastrophe editorial on the front page of the Richmond Times-Dispatch today. The message: pay no attention to this normal summer, ignore the fact that yesterday had the lowest high daytime temp for July recorded since 1908, The End is Still Nigh! We’re All Gonna Die. They think their readers are stupid.
-
Haven’t you heard? It’s always sunny in Charlotte County!
😉
-
Even at midnight! 🙂
-
Is that when you do your laundry?
-
see what he says if natural gas doubles in price… 😉
-
When. When NG doubles. It’s Biden-flation ya know.
-
an evil conspiracy to encourage renewables?
is “evil conspiracy” redundant?
-
No. There can be “good conspiracies”. See Oaf Keepers.
-
-
an evil conspiracy to encourage renewables?
is “evil conspiracy” redundant?
-
-
-
Charlotte County should also hope that the panels don’t leach chemicals, over time, into the soil. The county might find itself with 6000+ contaminated acres.
-
Doubtful, the potential for leaching of metals is only a concern at end of lifecycle. If it is an issue, landfills these days collect and treat all leachate if the panels are not recycled. Far less end of lifecycle impact than fossil fuel production and generation has.
-
yep. Methinks if Charlotte had approved a mega-landfill, there would be yawns from the usual suspects here.
-
Bribe is the correct word. And if the SCC allows that expense to be forced onto the ratepayers, it will only be because the General Assembly rigged this game, too. Billions more in solar projects are coming, and that bribe will prove to be the baseline amount and begin to grow.
Hilarious climate catastrophe editorial on the front page (!) of the Richmond Times-Dispatch today. The message: Pay no attention to this normal summer, ignore the fact that yesterday had the lowest high daytime temp for July recorded since 1908, The End is Still Nigh! We’re All Gonna Die in Fire! They think their readers are stupid. Perhaps with reason.
And Dick, the nameplate capacity is 800 MW but remember the capacity factor at best is 25%, given nights and cloudy days (like yesterday). Compare it to a 200-300 MW baseload source on cost and energy value. Clover can run 24/7.
-
I do realize that the solar project will not be able to generate at full capacity all the time. That is why I did not characterize the solar project as “rivaling” the coal-fired plant, as the local reporter did. (See, I do pay attention to your informative posts.)
As I was reading about the Clover coal-fired plant, I realized a couple of more down sides. Charlotte County may be gaining tax revenue with the solar project, but neighboring Halifax County, the location of the Clover Power Plant, will lose revenue when Dominion shuts it down. Furthermore, the power plant has about 150 employees, most of whom live in Halifax Co. In Halifax Co., 150 jobs is not insignificant.
-
Well put, Dick.
-
150 jobs ? doing what? Sounds expensive compared to solar….
-
Not when you figure that you need at least 4 such plants to replace the one coal plant and you need the battery capacity to store the output.
-
-
Clover is already a near ghost town. I hope this wonderful little village can find a way to stay on the map. Visit Union Level to see what happens next.
-
And the solar takes up 3.5 times the land area. We’ll all be living under solar panels some day.
-
here’s a decent illustration for one county – Spotsylvania.
This amount of solar will power about 70,000 houses.
Spotsylvania has about 35,000 houses.
-
Yeah,,, it will power 70k homes,,, but only from 9 to 5… then darkness…!!! And 9 to 5 only if the sun shines…
-
yep – true but if it’s the cheapest fuel why would you not use it when it is available?
-
-
“Dominion customers will pay for the inevitable cost overruns”
Solar is not complex and is very predictable from a capital requirement perspective and from an operating cost basis as well. Dominion won’t even take ownership until the facility is operational. What overruns are you envisioning?
As for the rest of your concerns, those are handled readily through engineering and design.
-
might be getting tangled up with offshore wind? Or… opponents to renewables just sling whatever to see if it sticks… 😉
I hope the disaster in Essex County a few years back resulted in some serious changes to design practices for erosion, sediment and stormwater runoff control measures at solar facilities. But the fact that there were stormwater control issues at a facility in Louisa just one year ago does not fill me with confidence in that regard.
-
You should be concerned. These site typically have stormwater compliance issues.
-
actually much less that developments with a lot of impervious surfaces. The one in Spotsy had to meet strict storm water standards including Chesapeake Bay rules.
-
In the real estate development world, the game once (may still be) cash proffers. The county took cash in exchange for the zoning decision, but in that case the cash came from the homebuyers, was built into their price. The county was imposing the cost on its own future citizens. This bribe comes from every Dominion ratepayer, 99.5% outside Charlotte County. So much easier to justify.
I thought they were called “proffers”? Yep, S-Power in Spotsy, another 6000 acre solar project provided millions to the county and schools.
-
Again, if a bribe is paid by a third-party developer, who is selling power into PJM, the price they get for the power is a market price and they face a risk they cannot recoup the cost. Not so with the captive ratepayers of Dominion!
-
same thing happens when a developer builds a new project and roads and schools to serve it have to be paid for by taxpayers, no?
-
That’s an evil word to Steve… taxpayers. Or, is it progress? I forget.
-
well supposedly, Conservatives support property rights for property owners… also..usually
-
Less so when the people paying are getting the benefit. Of course, these solar panels will save the world….hahahahaha.
-
not any more or less than any other thing a property owner wants to do with their property. Like spread biosolids…. or grow 10,000 chickens or clearcut the trees they own, or build a power plant.. Got the idea?
-
They’ll save it more than will coal.
-
-
-
Again, if a bribe is paid by a third-party developer, who is selling power into PJM, the price they get for the power is a market price and they face a risk they cannot recoup the cost. Not so with the captive ratepayers of Dominion!
Again, if a bribe is paid by a third-party developer, who is selling power into PJM, the price they get for the power is a market price and they face a risk they cannot recoup the cost. Not so with the captive ratepayers of Dominion!
-
In the end, the end user pays for proffers one way or the other in both cases. Yes, proffers are bribes but that is about as far as your argument goes.
-
He’s back in the staddle again,
Back where Youngkin’s his friend,
Where the lowly sheeple feed
On the lies of CRT,
He’s back in the staddle again… -
He’s back in the staddle again,
Back where Youngkin’s his friend,
Where the lowly sheeple feed
On the lies of CRT,
He’s back in the staddle again…
-
Spotsy plant is ill conceived in design. I think the Randolph Project is much better.
-
how so? At any rate, wasn’t the property owner entitled to develop his land?
-
Compare the site plans Mr. Larry. The Randolph Project seems to be well thought out.
-
The Spotsy project , you can’t even see it it’s way back off of state roads and where it does affect a couple of houses, they’ve built berms and vegetative buffers.
And the site itself (like all the solar) is at the intersection of two major transmission corridors… much of that land before SPower was criss-crossed with ATV trails.
-
No way Mr. Larry. The Spotsy project is a giant solar mirror eye sore. Examine the aeirial pictures. Randolph is scattered with larger setbacks and a clever use of topography.
-
from the air – yes. from the ground, I dare you to get a picture! Try it!
-
-
More than 40,000 acres in Virginia have bio-solids spread on them yet not a peep from the “save the land” folks….
And guess what, local supervisors cannot review nor deny a proposal from a property owner to spread biosolids. Imagine if that was the case for solar – which has far less impacts than bio-solids… right?
-
Oh poop!
-
I can always tell when you guys have lost an argument and go to the red herring play.
-
property rights is a Red Herring? Indeed… conservatives become chameleons at times it seems…
property rights for me but not thee!
-
They always get the long count like Jack Dempsey did in the Tunney fight.
-
CRT is Marxist… eh?
-
MeAO!
-
-
-
-
Depends on the composition of the biosolids.
-
yep. but allowed by the state without approval from local BOS, right?
-
“One opponent of the Randolph project called it “an out-and-out bribe.””
Guess he never paid a “loan origination fee”.
-
indeed! Or like trying to get a permit from the county and you wonder what all that fee is for….
People who tie solar and coal know perfectly well the sun does not shine at night, so no point saying it. It is a rhetorical device like “Make love not war”, not an actual alternative. Where the juice comes from at night is a different issue, which is simply ignored.
-
don’t need solar at night. It’s actually needed when the sun shines! Solar matches up perfectly with air conditioning needs. The hotter it gets during the day the more benefit solar is. It’s the “right” energy at the “right time”.
but Conservatives supposedly support property rights – the right of the property owner to develop his property whatever way is legal and financially beneficial to him – except when it comes to solar where all kinds of excuses are given to deprive a property owner of their rights – a very “un-conservative” idea…
-
Yes conservatives support property rights,,, but they don’t support subsidies, tax credits, or captive customers or other such nonsense …
Solar wouldn’t begin to be viable if it had to compete on a level playing field with, coal, natural gas or nuclear power…-
You got subsidies and credits for farming right?
Farmland is taxed at a lower rate that non-farm land.
And we have price supports for all manner of farm products.
And allow the taking of property from private property owners for pipelines, right?
Nukes? Do you think they are not subsidized?
See the thing is – you actually got to want to know the whole truth not just the anti-renewable version.
-
-
Eyes wide OPEN.. All types of energy production have an impact on the environment. There is no lucrative amount of salvageable parts on any type of solar panel.
Politician$ are on the gravy train of alternative energy energy experiment despite the human health concerns directly related to the manufacture and disposal of solar panels. Toxic chemicals in solar panels include cadmium telluride, copper indium selenide, cadmium gallium diselenide, copper indium gallium diselenide, hexafluoroethane, lead, nitrogen trifluoride, polyvinyl fluoride and highly toxic silicon tetrachloride, a manufacturing byproduct of producing crystalline silicon that sickens and kills many Chinese laborers.
-
Arizona has a recycling plant for solar panels under construction. To date, given nominal waffer thickness and panel size the total of all panels would fill about 600 boxcars. Not much. So, 1/20 of that is currently ready for recycle.
-
sorta like the stuff that goes into dumps already?
-
Somebody has never seen an abandoned oilfield or coal mine… or a refinery… or a gas processing plant… or a tank farm… or pipelines and their pump stations… or a pipe yard… or an ash pond…
Well Mr. Dick, Randolph Virgnia will never be the same again. I always looked at this part of Virginia as one of great beauty and some of the best agricultural land in the state. It is a whopper in size. Might as well change the name from Charlotte County to Solar County or Ray Ban County.
Still though I did peak at the projects site plans. It is designed in a more scattered approach instead of giant solar mirror field. View sheds also appear to be as protected as possible. They even made some allowances to preserve longtime communities such as Randolph and Saxe. I assume the Clover Power Plant will be dismantled. A great deal of good information here with a cool interactive map.
https://randolphsolar.solunesco.com/about-the-project/
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/e69dfc6269a1c93dacd30b71ac9c43c39d2fc7c4886b1724ee0141d74ad47df9.jpg
-
these rural counties don’t have as many options for generating revenues for county services. They can do cell towers, or farming or timbering but every property owner has to pay taxes – AND has to figure out a way to come up with the money to pay those taxes. Too many people now days can’t generate the money from the land – they actually have to go get a job to pay the taxes on that land that is not producing much of anything other than vegetation and sunlight.
-
A 200 acre parcel in Randolph VA is paying less than $1,500 a year in taxes. Not buying that argument.
-
$1500 is a lot of money if you’re not farming and working a minimum wage job or unemployed.
Before social security – older folks lost their farms and/or had to turn them over to someone who would farm them.
We travel to NC along Rt 29 several times a years. Thousands and thousands and thousands of fallow acres of land. Someone is paying taxes on that land and it’s not producing a penny of income.
-
Roll some hay and cut that tax bill in half.
-
If he could get that much from solar why not?
-
-
-
More power, Scotty! We need more power…
https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/fiscal-notes/2020/august/ercot.php
-
-
Dammit Scotty! The GOLD shirt NOW!
Spock, trade shirts.
Yeah, right. Live long (snicker) and prosper.
-
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.