Jimmy Carter Builds 1.3MW Solar Farm For His Hometown Of Plains, Georgia | Hacker News Reader

Jimmy Carter Builds 1.3MW Solar Farm For His Hometown Of Plains, Georgia

cleantechnica.com

85 pointsJaruzel30 comments

"Shortly after Reagan occupied the White House, he had the solar panels ripped out and thrown in the trash. You can watch a short video about one of America’s first solar initiatives below."

sigh

Reagan is gone, Carter is still doing good, and solar costs are falling at an incredible rate. No sigh necessary!

Agree. Carter is the last President who asked his countrymen to actually sacrifice for the good of the country instead of just offering to give them a bunch of free stuff. We didn't want to listen then but someday, we'll probably regret it.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=32596

I remember him offering double-digit mortgages, hostages, failed rescues, overall "malaise". The Carter era was a disaster. I respect his charity work and his service in the Navy but he was a terrible president.

He had little impact on mortgages or inflation. Nixon drove most of the stagflation of the 70s with his wage and price controls not to mention taking us off the gold standard. Failed monetary policies exacerbated the problems. Carter inherited all of that and it took the fist of Volcker to fix it.

If a failed rescue of some hostages is what you gauge your views of Presidents on, you must be particularly low on the Bush and Obama war torn years.

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/1970s-grea...

Fiat currency has little to do with the eventual housing crisis that resulted. It would be exceedingly rare to find a democrat these days who would prefer the gold standard since it would limit the ability of public bonds to raise money for public works. On the other hand, as noble as the intent might have been, the Community Reinvestment Act had a detrimental effect. It's the same thing that's wrong with student loans today. If you promise Bank's low risk loans, they're naturally going to continue to lend more and more until they end up with bundles of underwater mortgages. If we foolishly bail them out each time, why would they stop?

Well, the president did just get out of the Paris accord, which was probably kind of a minimum in the first place.. so, sadly, a bit necessary still ;P

Bear in mind that these were not photovoltaic (electricity-generating) panels. They were used only to heat water for laundry; they did not replace the fossil-fuel water heating used elsewhere throughout the White House (e.g. in the residence, offices, guest rooms, sinks, tubs, or showers).

Far more energy was used in their manufacture and installation than conserved by their use.

This is not to say that solar water-heating isn't a good application for large-scale water heating over time (e.g. a swimming pool), or a campsite shower.

"Sometimes it take history a while to fully appreciate the depth of character of those who helped make it." Especially if solar continues it growth. Being the first president to install rooftop solar on the White House will certainly help his legacy.

I don't think anybody questions his character (aside from the BCCI scandal and the Bert Lance appointment), just his competence in that particular role.

Carter was a US Navy nuclear engineer in the Rickover era - that's a pretty strong indication of the man's qualities!

Qualities or qualifications? Quite the difference ;-)

Read a bit about Rickover, he required both.

If only he had made Rickover Secretary of Defense...

What does the wattage of a solar farm represent? The article says it's expected to produce 55 million kwh per year, but doesn't that imply 6.3MW ((55 000 000 / (365 * 24)) / 1000) of constant production?

The capacity and total generation numbers do strike me as odd. OK, the reporting is wrong, and I made an error in my initial response.

Capacity: 1.3 MW

Output: 55 GWh over 25 years, or 2.2 GWh/yr, or 0.25 MW sustained.

19% capacity factor.

Thanks, dennyabraham.

________________________________

The rated output is the nameplate capacity of a facility. That is the maximum power it's capable of delivering under ideal conditions. This applies to any generating plant: coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, solar, wind, tidal.

https://energymag.net/nameplate-capacity-or-rated-output/

That's reduced by the capacity factor of an installation. A key difference between different generating modes is what their capacity factor is. Nuclear may run as high as 95%, whilst solar is typically rated as 20-30%. This means that the mean output, over a year, is, say, 20% of the nameplate rating.

The US EIA (Energy Information Administration) publishes data on actual achieved capacity factor for different modes:

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=14611

There are other aspects of generating which also vary by source:

Dispatchability: can the source be turned off, or better, on?

Response time: Nuclear and coal generation take hours to adjust output to capacity. Natural gas turbines, diesel generators, and hydroelectric turbines can respond in minutes or seconds.

Total energy delivery. A high-output, fast-reacting mode may only be able to deliver energy in short bursts, or for a short period before recharging. This is the case for virtually all energy storage modes: hydroelectric, batteries, flywheel kinetic storage. It also applies to some fuel-based methods: diesel generators and gas turbines used for peaking power may not be able to run for more than a few hours before fuel reserves are exhausted.

Maintenance and downtime: How long to scheduled (or unsheduled) maintanance tasks take? How much capacity is involved in such tasks?

Regular vs. irregular variability. Solar tends not to produce high output at night. Wind power is variable, but may provide energy at any hour. Tidal power is governed by tide tables. Any or all of these might be moderated by storage mechanisms (e.g., solar thermal energy storage, which can bank heat for hours, possibly days, and hence, "deliver solar power at night").

55 million kwh is 55 GWh, not 55 MWh. Hence the GPs implied question about a 500% capacity factor.

The answer lies in the press release, the 55 GWh is over the 25 year PPA:

http://www.solamericaenergy.com/news/carter-farms/

Implying a 25% capacity factor.

edit: more like a 19% capacity factor. Whatever, something sensible, the reporter screwed up calling the output annual.

Thank you. My error on million kW (I should have caught that), and very poor reporting.

This makes so much more sense now, thanks!

Team effort :)

It's amazing that you can get that kind of power from a low-impact installation on 10 acres of land. Modern, large wind turbines are more impressive in terms of output but putting them in is quite a chore.

It's unfortunate that most of the article is a political story about President Carter's reputation. That part should have been about three sentences.

Even mentioning his brief stint at Georgia Tech would have been more apropo than the politics (I am of course biased as I went to the school). I do appreciate that Carter is one of the few presidents with <strike>at least some albeit very minor</strike>(apparently he had more than I thought) technical schooling.

thats right, our delicate, virgin ears cant take any of this "political" talk about a former president. Truth be damned, keep out hurtful "politics"!

It's not a matter of political talk being "hurtful" or not.

It's that every damn thing these days has a political angle. And most people are sick of it.

Oh I know - I tried so hard not to read it because I hate opinion so much. But I couldn't! I just kept reading and reading. Then I thought, Damnit! fuck you politics. Thats it, I'm never reading again

I wasn't offended by the political content. I was just more interested in reading about the solar farm because of the article title. If the title had been, "Jimmy Carter was unfairly persecuted, and by the way he built a solar farm", I would have expected the political content.

Does anyone have good resources (or can provide a good estimate) for the cost of a moderate sized photovoltaic solar plant like this? Both up front capital, and ongoing maintenance?

What you want is NREL's Annual Technology Baseline spreadsheet/presentation/scenario viewer[1]. Plenty of fun numbers and formulas to look at there (Disclaimer: I worked on the hydro section, so I'm a bit biased to think it's useful).

[1] http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/data_tech_baseline.html

The DOE does some work to estimate the upfront costs:

http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2016/37745

Ballpark of a couple bucks a watt.

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