Wind and Solar, Sound and Fury

Some problems with solar and wind  sources of power; not all are trechnical:

1.

 The problem with wind and solar as power sources is that their energy cannot be stored. Solar works when the sun shines. Wind works when breezes blow. Both often provide energy when it is not needed and fail to provide it when required. Battery technology has made few advances over the last four generations so we cannot store enough of the energy when we do not need it so we can release it when we do need it. We simply do not have the technology to make such inconsistent power sources reliable. Any legal diktat that puts these renewable sources first will only produce a prolonged economic dislocation.

2.

California’s largest county has banned the construction of large solar and wind farms on more than 1 million acres of private land, bending to the will of residents who say they don’t want renewable energy projects industrializing their rural desert communities northeast of Los Angeles.
Thursday’s 4-1 vote by San Bernardino County’s Board of Supervisors highlighted a challenge California could face as it seeks to eliminate the burning of planet-warming fossil fuels.
State lawmakers passed a bill last year requiring utility companies to get 60% of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and 100% from climate-friendly sources by 2045. But achieving those goals will require cooperation from local governments — and big solar and wind farms, like many infrastructure projects, are often unpopular at the local level.(lat)

3.

After a nine-hour meeting at which more than 100 people spoke, reports the Virginia Mercury, the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors delayed a decision on whether a 500-megawatt solar facility will be built in the western part of the county.
A large majority of the hundreds of people packing the Spotsylvania County auditorium opposed the sPower project, which would be the largest east of the Rocky Mountains and would almost double the amount of solar energy Virginia is currently producing. The concerns expressed seem utterly without merit, but the raising of theoretical and groundless fears has been the hallmark of the environmentalists and now that technique seems to be turning against them.
Hundreds of Spotsylvania citizens have convinced themselves that the 6,000-acre solar farm with 1.8 million solar panels would pose a hazard to their community.
Despite nearly 6,00 pages of documentation on the project, says Virginia Mercury, citizens insist that questions remain about nearly every facet of the project from its effects on erosion, human health, economic viability, and impact on property values of people living nearby.
Cadmium was a particular target.
“This project, as planned, is much too close,” said Spotsylvania resident Pamela Rizzo, while Vivian Stanley, who said she represented “We the People,” characterized it as a “solar monster” that was a threat to the “lives and welfare” of the people of the Livingston district, where the facility would be located.
“How much poison does it take to cause cancer?” she asked the supervisors in the first of several impassioned speeches, alluding to sPower’s plans to use cadmium telluride panels for about 30 percent of its installation. The opposition has claimed that cadmium telluride poses a threat to human health if it leaches into water sources.
The fear of cadmium telluride seems especially misplaced. The chances of cadmium, a heavy metal, leaking into the groundwater are nil, even in the event of breakage or melting in a fire. Even if the panels were pulverized, sPower says, the cadmium would not leach. The only away for the cadmium to leach would be through “aggressive extraction” involving the crushing of panels into millimeter-scale pieces and agitating it in an acidic solution — a scenario that in no way mimics a real-world environment.
The fear of cadmium leaching is irrational. But the fear of heavy metal contamination of groundwater has been stoked by environmentalists, precedents have been set, so...now the whirlwind.
Insincerity, manipulation, lies--for whatever grand motive--once woven into the social and legal fabric, stay.