SOLAR PANELS

The Morning Call has a feature article on the installation of solar panels in school districts in PA. 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