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- TheAttacks, on 10/12/2007, -6/+70This is something that we should have been doing since the invention of solar power.
- szelij, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38Solar panels aren't that expensive now. Latest technology has cut costs by huge margins, it's EXTREMELY affordable...it just needs a little investment. So California is doing good now.
- berfmurret, on 10/12/2007, -8/+32what.... acting like a democrat?
- tekmonkey, on 10/12/2007, -5/+28the Democrat kind?
- dirka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+23You dont need to have storage batteries to use solar, you generate the power and then it is put back into the grid and your electric meter runs in reverse.
- RichPowers, on 10/12/2007, -5/+24Arnold is my kind of Republican. Southern California is perfect for solar panels, especially considering how many tracts of new houses they build down there. Same goes for Vegas; it's a shame that few new homes have rooftop panels.
- Everman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+16Not exactly. Historically they haven't made much sence because they didn't generate much power, were fragile, and expensive. However now we are at a point where it's really starting to make sence, and nanotechnology advancements may make it the power source of choice in ten years. I bet that 3,000 megawatts is based on current tech, with future tech who knows...?
- matthewsr2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16WASTE- the newest designs of reactor have very few waste products. besides, comparing nuclear to coal and oil, i would much rather have the waste in an underground bunker somewhere then floating around getting into my lungs.
SAFETY- again, the newest reactor designs are very safe. the way that the containment is designed, even if a complete cooling failure occurred (part of what destroyed Tschernoble) or a containment breach occurred, there would not be any kind of "run away" reaction. a spike in radiation would occur, potentially deadly for the workers, but i doubt that too many other people would be affected.
TERRORISM- most nuclear containment vessels are extremely over-designed. just the exterior shell is concrete several feet thick with a lot of re-bar, iron filings, and lead. layers upon layers of protection are used to protect against any kind of disaster. there's no place I'd rather be if i had to choose a place to take a hit from an airplane above ground.
I'll admit that there have been some terrible nasty things happen in the history of nuclear energy. we jumped into the field with very little understanding of the potential for disaster. but in the many years that we have used it we have gained a lot of technical knowledge and have advanced considerably. don't dismiss nuclear power off hand because of a few accidents in it's infancy. if we used the same criterion for other advancements we wouldn't be flying airplanes or driving cars! both of those inventions had problems at the beginning as well, yet they become safer everyday. - ryogahibiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+13Yes, but the power companies and big oil don't want this to happen. The more energy independent we become and the more energy we put back on the grid, the less money they make.
Schwarzenegger is desperate to get re-elected again and is pulling out all the stops. It just might work too. - jarvuss, on 10/12/2007, -6/+17Or use solar and wind and water that has no harmful waste at all...
- matthewsr2000, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12you also have to take into consideration all of the other ecological costs of other forms of "green" energy. solar cells last almost forever with little to no breakdown, and the system proposed would forgo the use of batteries for storage. still have to use a really inefficient inverter to change it from dc to ac, but you can't win them all.
as far as economics are concerned, this will actually save a lot more money then most people realize. with the newest meters, energy use is tracked by hour of the day. this allows them to charge more for peak usage times, and less for off-peak times. the solar cells on your house are going to be producing the most energy during times of peak use, meaning the energy that you put onto the grid will be sold at the highest energy cost. then later, when your doing the laundry at night, an off peak time, you use their energy for less money. I'm sure that if you were really really good, you could actually have the power company paying you for a change! - canewediggit, on 10/12/2007, -5/+15remember when i said i would sign you last? i lied
- Sagags, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13Why dose he even care about global warming, he should just do what he was sent back in time to do and kill john conner already
- jonesin, on 10/12/2007, -7/+16@KenMo:
So we can force the taxpayers to invest in a war but not some solar panels, is that it? - Dested, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Nice to see a politician not ***** up. I cant wait for 2008.
- mos6507, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9Sheesh, Arnold is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. If he does something you don't like, he's being a Republican. If he does something you like, it's pandering. No wonder people don't want to enter politics.
- mooseboy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8The MAX is quite heavily utilized. I've very rarely been on one that hasn't been close to or completely full. Think if all of those people were to hop into a car and drive to their destination? Riding the MAX to work easily saves me $50 a month in gas alone. I'm sure I don't pay that much in property tax. Plus, I don't have to sit through aggravating traffic.If you don't want to pay for mass transit, I'm sure LA would be happy to take you.
- iKevin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9Great news, this is what I have been dreaming... no electricity bills :D
- Kozy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8Arnold's just being sensible, i respect that he does what he feels is right regardless of whether it's a more "Democrat" idea or "Republican" idea, this is how politics used to be before America became such a partisan and polarised place and political ideas became mutually exclusive. I'm glad he's making the effort to help the environment (certainly more effort than Bush appears to be doing) and i wish we could do a similar thing in the UK *looks out window* but solar power is nowhere near as practical when it's raining all the time :(
- Aleks, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7If you look at Schwarzenegger's track record, he is very PRO-ENVIRONMENT and is a plus for California.
He's 'support' for President Bush and the other Republicans is just for party acceptance. He became a republican member in the 70s after watching Nixon's speeches. Putting power/corruption aside, Nixon was pretty left wing/liberal in the way he implemented his policies. - mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9It's funny when a hollywood action star becomes the Republican's best politician in the country.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -8/+15Great republican move A++
- betacmag4u, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8We've often heard the myth that "it takes more electricity to manufacture a solar panel than it will ever put out." This is simply not true...this myth may have started during the Ronald Reagan era. This is of course a very difficult statistic to calculate, but according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, a study has been done to answer the question. The study found that single-crystal panels reach the energy payback point in 5-10 years, polycrystalline panels in 3-5 years, and amorphous silicon panels in 0.5-2 years. Be advised that because the question is so vague, there is a large margin of error for these figures! We just discovered a recent, very detailed study about solar panel energy payback time in the January 2001 issue of Home Power magazine. This study, by Karl Knapp, PhD, and Teresa Jester, finds payback time for a standard module to be about 3.3 years, and 1.8 years on a thin-film panel. The study factors in energy costs for ALL parts of the panel and manufacturing process.
http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_solar_new.html - PathDaemon, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9So, how long is it going to take for this to be killed like the electric car bill?
- KenMo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7And vote for Phil?
I'll stick with the Devil I know... - benhocking, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8I have no idea how accurate it is, but this web-site: http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/no_CO2.html
claims that solar power produces about half the CO2 of natural gas (the cleanest of the fossil fuels). This also makes it the dirtiest by almost a factor of 10 (wrt CO2) of the green energy sources. - v4r4n, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7There really should be a high speed bullet train from LA to SF...
- olliholliday, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8solar panels aren't free. infact they're a massive capital outlay.
i suspect that if solar panels ever do become popular it will be through leasing from a standard power company who provide insurance for the expensive panels, service and support etc. also additional electricity could be purchased back from you and put back into the grid for other homes.
whatever the end result, you will always have to pay for electricity. - blapierre, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Um, because then the federal government would be grossly overstepping their constitutional duties. Of course they do that already but that doesn't mean they should overstep more.
- drizek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6A new design is being worked on that allows you to create a solar panel with 1/4th the silicon. It was in a magazine a few months ago, i think it was Popular Science but it may have been Wired
- richiestang78, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Oh and the whole Nuke Plants blowing up is a joke, they cant act like a nuclear bomb, Chernobyl exploded due to a incompetence during a dangerous test of the reactor resulting in the rods heating to point where they built pressure up and went boom. Now all reactors are incased in concrete domes for just that case. Oh also for waste issue, you should check out the radioactive material eating bacteria featured on digg a few weeks back.
- wvdavis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Democrat, Republican, Libertarian.... It does not matter, keep the politicians out of it, they just mess it up anyway. I think the rest of the county needs to follow suit and employ wind farms, wave farms and other forms of alternate energy.
- VeryAngryJim, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4fine then take the second option, that's not overstepping anything, just giving information to the general public.
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I don't think Schwarzenegger is the best person for the job. I didn't think Ventura was the best person for the job either. But they both benefitted from not being ingrained, long-term politicians and, as such, seemed to have a more pragmatic approach to decision making. As such, they were both likely better than the other options.
- vprice509, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Arnold for president.
- Motocompo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Mass Transit Sucks if the state pays too much for it and it still sucks. Take MAX transit in Portland, OR. Of course its a nice system, but the city paid WAY too much for it. There are fair raises almost every year yet they keep the city metro area a free ride zone. Now all the homeless people can ride the train through Portland free while I get to pay (fair + taxes) to maintain this overbudgeted train.
I think solar panels are a great idea until someone proves to me that they hurt the environment more than they help it. - a7bat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I submitted an article about a high speed train being driven by local politicians and others. Too bad the site that hosted the article removes them in a few days.
However, here's a photo of the proposed high speed train line in LA:
http://tinyurl.com/evaaz - hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -5/+8This is 83,000 per year. Will it make that much of an impact? How about Arnold signs a bill to have state-wide rail transportation by 2018? I bet that would have a much better effect. Best of all, do both.
- richiestang78, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6You can say nuclear isnt safe which is false and the waste can bestored, at least here in america, where no one will likely like for the next 10k years. Here we sit on one of the largest deposits or uranium and yet we use it for Naval ships, and nuclear weapons instead of a clean powerful and almost unlimited energy source. Oh and if the waste is so bad there are nuclear technologies which will run the material to a point of it being almost nonradioactive. You can use solor and wind all you want but they take huge amounts of land, maintenance and just dont produce that much energy. Five mile Island and Chernobyl were bad but I think they put a huge and over reacted danger to the whole energy, the former guy incharge of green peace is now pro-nuclear for craps sake because in reality its the only clean power source that makes since. Solar and wind isnt going to be supplying the power to the 9billion population in 2050 and sure as hell cant give the 300million americans power now because both of the energy sources arent constant, solar only during the day and wind relies on well wind. I can see the underwater turbine enrgey accompany nuclear since tides are a given and hydroeletric is a joke as a enviromental friendly energy since it destroys ecosystems around it.
- sebnukem, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Ok so there's someone IS trying to do something good about the planet and he is instantly being labeled as a "Republican" AND a "Democrat". What does politic affiliation have to do with this? Go Arnold, and thank you, even tho i don't live in California.
- spurtle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3There were good ideas from both parties way back when, but instead of combining those good ideas, both parties embraced each other's bad traits instead.
- jedikv, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@mildsoup
"well solar power wasn't invented by anyone. it wasn't until the 1880's that solar panels could harness it, however."
What about the sundial
/joke - hobophobe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2tdogg, that's the point exactly. By paying more money in the short term we will save money in the long term by moving to more efficient and maintainable solutions. They will also cut pollution which will save us money in the long run.
The wear on cars and roads is tremendous. Roads are not manufactured, but built on site. We could manufacture rail. We could replace and extend existing rail relatively quickly compared to road building and repair.
Remember the praise you heard in school about interchangable parts? Same thing, but on a much larger scale. - ohearn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2There are plenty of people who run homes purely on solar if they are willing to fill a room with storage batteries. Solar panels have become a lot cheaper and more efficient than they used to be. I'm sure that they will continue to get much better if people invest in them and industry has more incentive to do R&D into more.
As far as replacement cost to damages, most solar panel manufacturers put a 20-30 year warranty on the panels when you buy them. - KenMo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5The worst of the radioactive elements in the waste has a half-life (will degrade by half) of something like 4.5 years, not 100K years.
Even the French use Nuclear. I thought they were perfect? - MITBeta, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3>Llan
Do you know how to read? U238 is STABLE. Try reading the reference you posted. - olliholliday, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3i was always taught, at my university, that in the UK's climate a solar panel uses far more energy than it will ever get back in its lifetime. in addition to this huge amounts of water is polluted in washing the silicon as well as large amounts of cyanide, mercury and arsenic released into the environment - just like normal pc components.
those ones that focus light using a parabolic mirror onto a single spot seem far, far more sensible. - trghpy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2good think i started a solar installation business...
if you're in the yolo county area shoot me an email - Rickler, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4In 12 years sounds like a good time frame... I won't be in the office then.
- mrASSMAN, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4solar panels aren't yet efficient enough to solely power the house.. they are usually used for a single component like cooling or water heating..
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