Battle in Court Over Redwood Trees That Shade Solar Panels

[Eagle1]

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — In an environmental dispute seemingly scripted for eco-friendly California, a man asked prosecutors to file charges against his neighbors because their towering redwoods blocked sunlight to his backyard solar panels.
But the couple next door insisted they should not have to chop down the trees to accommodate Mark Vargas' energy demands because they planted the redwoods before he installed the solar panels in 2001.
Experts say such clashes could become more common as California promotes renewable energy and solar systems become more popular.

as if this wasn't funny enough I stumbled onto this little gem


Treanor and Bissett, who drive a hybrid Toyota Prius, argue that trees absorb carbon dioxide, cool the surrounding air and provide a habitat for wildlife.
Vargas, who recently bought a plug-in electric car, counters it would take two or three acres of trees to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as much as the solar panels that cover his roof and backyard trellis.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331551,00.html

[DeclinetoState]

"There is nothing wrong with Southern California that a rise in the ocean level wouldn’t cure." -Ross MacDonald (in Eagle1's sig)
The same could be said of the Bay Area, where Sunnyvale is.

[DoctorDoom]

A 500-foot-high tsunami would do a lot of cleansing.

Vargas says the law protects his $70,000 investment in solar power, and he believes it should be strengthened.The imbecile spent $70,000 on solar panels? Does the stupid son of a biscuit-eating bulldog think that he is going to live long enough to recoup the cost?

Solar power is growing rapidly in California, which is by far the nation's biggest generator of solar energy. In 2007, more than 30,000 California homes and businesses had rooftop solar panels, with the capacity to generate 400 megawatts of electricity.

That's as much as eight power plants, according to the nonprofit Environment California.You can always tell when the wackos haven't done their homework. First, who the hell builds puny little 50-megawatt power plants? And second, saying that the solar panels generate 400 megawatts is deceptive, because that is evidently the peak output, to make them sound impressive, not the average output, which is how they should be rated.

The Gaiabots owe us the facts on the annual output in megawatt-hours of the 30,000 panels. Then we can compare that to the annual output of 400 megawatts worth of power plants which are online essentially 24/7, not just when the sun is shining.

Numbers time: 400 megawatts x 8760 hours/year = 3,504,000 megawatt-hours. If there are 30,000 panels, they must each generate an average of 116.8 megawatt-hours per year, 319 kilowatt hours per day, or a continuous output of 13.3 kilowatts.

Since the article is dealing with a bay area locale, let's look at the average daily insolation in San Fagsicko, from this page (http://www.sfog.us/solar/sfsolar.htm). The average of the daily insolation numbers is 4.44 kwh/m². We'll round it up to 4.5. That's the average daily solar power input on a square meter of surface. To achieve a daily average of 319 kwh, assuming solar panels of 20% conversion efficiency, the average size of the 30,000 arrays would be 354 square meters or 3810 square feet.

Of course there is the little matter of there being minimum insolation in the winter months. Here's a graph from one of the SF monitoring stations.

http://sfwater.org/files/powerpolicy/SolarMonitoring/MonthlyOutput_101.png

In the winter, the average daily insolation drops to a minimum of about 2 kwh/m². To achieve 319 kwh/day per the Environment California hyperbole, this means that the average panel must in fact be 8572 square feet. There are big houses in CA, but I submit that damned few of them have a roof area of 8572 square feet, with the roof oriented to the proper azimuth and elevation for maximum solar energy collection in December.

BTW, the total area of the 30,000 panels, based on the fdigures above, would be 257,190,000 square feet, or 9.23 square miles. And that figure assumes insolation values for SF, not for the California average.

Methinks that Environment California is stretching the truth by a considerable amount.

[Beowulf]

Gotta love Liberal illogic! They want alternative power yet people like Vargas want to cut down the precious tree that cleans the air for his solar power. And of course Libs in Mass want wind power but don't want windmills that ruin the landscape.

[DoctorDoom]

The western MA town of Florida wanted years ago to build a wind farm. The ecowackos opposed it because it would be noisy and ugly. There is only one thought in the tiny brains of the enviroloonies: oppose ANYTHING that might contribute to adequate energy for America. They want chronic shortages that result in rationing of energy, with them as the arbiters of who gets what and how much.

Stripped of their hypocricy, they are typical leftist elitists who lust for control.