Tuesday, June 15, 2010

More on Solar Panels

The Morning Call has a feature article on the installation of solar panels in school districts in PA (read it here). In essence, the state has allocated $650 million to fund these projects. Since schools are the leaders of building ‘green’ buildings, it only makes sense that they are the first to step up and be granted this allocated money.

Again, however, there is no explanation regarding the economic model. And no one appears to be concerned with schools using publicly owned property for privately held for profit companies to operate.

The state provides grant money of $1M or more to fund a for-profit company, who agrees to provide a fixed cost for electricity that will save a school building, in the case of Lower Nazareth it was initially indicated as $50,000, but in this latest article was over $80,000 per year, in exchange for building a for-profit power generating facility on public owned property.

How much profit will these companies be able to generate? The only way this program is successful is if these plants are selling most of their energy to consumers. In this way the company can pay back its investment as well as paying for salaries and other expenses.

As we learned when Nazareth considered building a MS, they can take your land at any point in time – ask the Calandras. What if school or other government institutions, began to confiscate land in order to gain grant money for solar fields?

I’m surprised that so few people are concerned with our school districts taking public property and turning it over to private for profit companies for what turns out to be an extremely nominal part of our overall budget.

Posted via email from Ross Nunamaker

3 comments:

NazoRanter said...

To your point about seizing land, we all saw what happened when the district tried to do that. The public rallied to the Calandra's side and the district backed off.

We are talking about unused open space at LNES. Other than soccer, the wide expanses of fields there are rarely if ever used. From my understanding, no personal property is involved, so that reference just doesn't apply.

Will the company make a profit? Sure, that is why they are in business. Do we as taxpayers benefit? Yep, to the tune of $50K-$80K per year depending on which number is correct.

Yes, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the rest of the budget, but if we replicate this to all six schools in the district, you are talking potentially $300K-$480K savings per year to the taxpayer. Not a small amount of change.

The out of state tag doesn't work as well. Met-Ed is a provider in some of the local areas, and they are not headquartered in PA. With deregulation, good chance the company providing power will be out of state.

I say build the solar farm. Science teachers could use it as a great teaching experience, and we get to save a few of our tax dollars.

But then again, that is only provided that this administration doesn't spend the saving, which unfortunately we all know they will do.

Unknown said...

There are LOTS of problems with this solar project.

1) The school is in a Residential zone. Imagine if you had an acre or two and tried to "plop" down a solar farm that butted up against your neighbors - thereby lowering their property values...

2) The school and LNT are going to try and get this approved as an accessory but it is nowhere near an accessory. An accessory is a pump house or something similar. It is NOT a for profit co-generation facility.

3) Townships all over are scrambling to prevent this from happening again. Bushkill has recently rewritten the ordinances to prevent this from happening in Residential zones. The new Buskill Township ordinance requires zoning approval for any solar installation over 500 sq feet in a residentail zone. This site at LNT will be nearly 130,000 sqft... Quite a bit larger....

Townships and municipalites all over got caught with their pants down. They didn't expect anyone to build co-generation plants in the middle of residentail neighborhoods so there was nothing to in the ordinances that addressed this... but now, they are scrambling to preven this from happening again. Unfortunately, it's probably too late to help the people that this thing will border their property on...

Again... in RESIDENTIAL ZONED land...

and NazoRanter, you're right... the school will never "save" this amount of money.... they'll find some way to spend it on something....

NazoRanter said...

Brad,

Then the school shouldn't be there. There is a sewage treatment plant, not a normal septic system, in the back field. That is not a normal "residential" use of the land. And, it is next to homes as well.

LNES has a lot of dead open space. It isn't used, period.

Per the article, the farm will be surrounded by fence and decorative trees to hide it. It won't emit any gases, smoke, smells or anything else. I struggle to understand how this will decrease a person's home value.

Do you mean that if I put solar panels on my roof, it will decrease the value of my and my neighbor's homes?

Where were the people that are complaining now when they stuck all of the portable classrooms in the back of LNES? They are much more of an eyesore than solar panels. Why are they still there now that the population of the school has been dramatically decreased with the opening of the IS?