080518 Sunshine State Versus Solar State

Sometimes the simple things can be the most confusing. I am currently in Citrus County Florida (third highest percentage of senior citizens within the general population within the country) with my father. It would seem that the sun shines down every day. It feels that way. The temperate is currently shooting up nearly twenty degrees warmer than it is back home. Although the gulf coast is several miles away, it would seem like there is a steady breeze coming in every day. Those are perceptions which I think I experience.

I had thought that the conventional wisdom was that as air moved from a large body of water, such as the Gulf of Mexico, and then passed over a land mass, such as the Florida peninsula, it generated wind. I had thought that there was a regular and predictable history of tides raising and lowering the depth of the coastal water on a daily basis. I thought that Florida was called the sunshine state because of its generous and warm sunshine.

That is all wrong and it says so in black and white right in this urgent notice from the power company.

From my experience with this part of the country, the local power supplier SECO has had a history of providing a steady connection to the grid while being responsive to its consumers and keeping prices reasonable. I have had every reason to be happy with SECO. I hold in my hand a mailing from their offices, however, which calls into question either my conceptions of how I can readily observe common elements of reality or my faith in SECO to tell the truth. It sounds almost like it was written by the staff of Democratic congressman Nick Rahill of West Virginia who long time readers will remember as the anti-Semitic coal industry mouthpiece who wants to outlaw wind energy because it is bad for the environment.

SECO is very angry is Florida Governor Charlie Crist who, in my humble opinion, is one of the best governors in the country. Governor Crist has become very proactive in pushing for limits to greenhouse gas emissions and would like to see a greater amount of the electricity generated from new sources to be renewable. Some readers have been confused by my stance in the past. While I have disproved that any global warming is the result of man-made carbon emissions (why is Mars experiencing a warming trend similar to Earth’s), that does not mean that I think it is a good idea to keep pumping such huge quantities of it into the atmosphere. Crist has the right idea. Unfortunately, the same status quo leaders of the Republican Party who denounced John McCain eight years ago have made Crist into an outcast.

SECO wants to build new coal burning plants to generate electricity. Crist questions the wisdom of generating electricity of lighting houses by burning things. SECO contends that Florida does not receive enough sunlight to generate electrical power. According to SECO, Florida is prone to overcast skies which would make solar power impossible to generate. Also, SECO has found that Florida, with its long coastline, is subject to stagnant air incapable of turning a wind turbine. SECO makes no mention of tidal turbines.

This is all very confusing. Especially since I have found that in upstate New York, where the sun comes in at a much more indirect angle than it does in Florida, I can power Drumlin Cove (when I build it) with solar panels and sell nearly half of the power to National Grid. Between the lower cost of the new micro thin panels being manufactured and incentives, the system can be installed at a minimal price. We also have wind farms being built in an area with no ocean to generate coastal air flow. Tidal turbines are being installed in New York City to power Staten Island.

What is the strong allure of building huge plants that we can truck coal in from a distance for burning that causes SECO to see this as the only alternative? Why are they latched onto a plan which is costly, dirty and inefficient and are unwilling to even admit that alternatives exist? And why are they so set on this that they would take on the governor and the regulators?