New Jersey suburbanites are upset about solar panels appearing on utility poles:
“I hate them,” Mr. Olsen, 40, said of the row of panels attached to electrical poles across the street. “It’s just an eyesore.”
Around the corner lives Tom Trobiano, 61, a liquor salesman, now adapting to the lone solar panel hanging over his driveway. “When it’s up close,” he said, “the panel takes on a life of its own.”
[…]Some residents consider the overhanging panels “ugly” and “hideous” and worry aloud about the effect on property values.
You know what else are hideous and ugly eyesores? Utility poles and power lines. I realize that the kind of stupidity that would let birtherism become mainstream is killing us, but its handmaiden is the inability of the average white burbclave-dwelling Christian to accept even the smallest change or sacrifice to their culturally venerated 100% American way of life.
gnomedad
The horror, the horror …
Mary
I noticed these all over the place in my parents’ town and my thought was “hey, cool!”
People are dumb.
Alex
Goddamn those ignorant proles! why won’t they see the self-evident wisdom of the enlightened policy we elites want to impose on them!
Uloborus
@Alex:
You know, I WAS going to be tolerant and gentle towards their hidebound resistance to an excellent renewable energy policy, but you’re right. You really would have to be a dumbass to think that putting solar panels on already hideous power poles to reduce the electric bills of the city’s residents is anything but fucking genius, huh?
JPL
No problem, Chris Christie will
ridewaddle to the rescue. He’ll issue an edict stopping the socialist program.JPL
UH OH I’m in moderation for using the soc-i-alist word..
Superluminar
OH NO! The panels…they’re…they’re..a-a-alive! Run Awaaaayyyyy!
Journalists should really stop interviewing people tripping. It doesn’t help.
Southern Beale
People are just confused about alternative energy. When we redid our house one of the workmen told me about how back in the old days when homes were first electrified in our area — that would have been around the 1930s — people would put a cap over an electric light socket they weren’t using, they didn’t understand that electricity wasn’t like gas which kept flowing .. they thought the electricity would flow out the light socket.
It’s kind of the same thing. People have had to deal with a lot of change in the last 20 years and older people especially have a hard time with it, I think adapting to change gets more difficult as one ages. And there’s a lot of older people in the country now. So I can see how seeing solar panels on utility poles would be just the kind of thing to put people over the edge.
Captain Howdy
It’s “burbclave,” goddammit, not ‘burboclave.’
(Burbclave is coined in the cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash.”)
DBrown
Tell the 174 people (counted so far)in the South who died in the storms – yet another wave of storms killing large numbers of people this spring – AGW is bitting so get use to this level of death so you are ready for even bigger, deadlier storms over the coming years. Eye sore to generate clean energy – what AO’s. Enjoy the next 50 years of increasingly deadly storms because this level of death/destruction ain’t nothing, yet.
RosiesDad
This isn’t any different than the people on Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard (and elsewhere) fighting wind turbines because they don’t want to see or hear them. (Although how wind turbines, 5 – 8 miles offshore could create enough noise to be heard on land is beyond me.)
drew42
There was a bit in the Robert Crumb documentary where he was asked why he draws so many utility poles and power lines in his comic scenes. And his response (it’s been years, so I don’t remember quite how he put it) was because he draws exactly what he sees — it’s just that everyone else erases them from their minds.
Ever since then, I’ll sometimes look around and really “see” the poles and lines. Reality seems to shift when I do. They’re everywhere.
mistermix
@Captain Howdy: Fixed, thanks.
ChrisS
Sorry to anyone living there, but New Jersey suburbs are a fucking eyesore.
What kills me is that these same people and same attitudes want to convert picturesque and functional little New England villages and towns into the same sprawling wonderland complete with its own Subway, Applebee’s, and BedBathBeyondLowe’sDSWBestBuyPetSmart.
tBoy
The white ghetto.
Superluminar
Wind turbines do bring out the worst Nimbyism in people. I mean they start talking about how no-one will think of the poor little innocent birds, mercilessly pureed by the unstoppable evil blades…blah blah blah, and suddenly become experts on electricity grids overnight “but they don’t generate electricity at the right time of day”….
dr. bloor
I don’t click through to the Times anymore. Which exit were the interviewees from?
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
I remember the first time I drove through the big California wind farm near Bakersfield (I think?) and thinking it was the coolest damn thing I’d seen in a long time, so it blew my mind when I saw people complaining about them. Same thing goes, I’d suspect, if I saw solar panels everywhere. I’d dig them even if they weren’t cleaner than other energy types.
Captain Howdy
@mistermix
“I’m really glad you corrected me, Lisa. People are always really glad when they’re corrected.” /Homer
The NIMBYism from the New Jersey crotch pheasants really lances my boils. You finally get a community getting some positive policy on the ground and there are goobers complaining about the “eyesore.” Jersey’s an eyesore, douche!
(I do wonder how prevalent is the stoopid. Suspect the Times reporter sought out naysayers to shape her narrative.)
Egypt Steve
Free markets, bitches. You don’t like it, bend over and smell the sweet Santorum.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Superluminar:
I think of that as a feature, not a bug.
Morbo
We’ve been having a roundabout debate here (there already are several in town if anyone’s paying attention) and you would think that we were debating a toxic waste dump. It’s just ridiculous. There are times of day when it for all intents and purposes impossible to turn left on the street they’re discussing, but fuck you if you want to do anything about it.
mistermix
@dr. bloor: If you want to cost the Times money, turn on an ad blocker for their site and click the link. You’ll have the satisfaction of taking a fraction of a cent straight out of Pinch Sulzberger’s pocket.
satby
When you click through to the link and see the panels on the poles on the street, you’d have to laugh. The entire view is ugly and it ain’t the solar panels, it’s the poles and wires.
People are really devolving, not evolving. We should be back to apelike creatures in another 20 years at this rate.
jeff
Why the Christian jab when you’re talking about well to do NYC suburb? Many are Christian, but just as many are not.
RGuy
From the picture in the article the spiderweb of power wires crisscrossing over the street look worse.
Ty Lookwell
… ? … but they are an eyesore, as are the utility poles and the overhead lines shown in the photo. If the neighborhood is already marred by the utility poles and the overhead lines – which the residents have little say over as is – they just have to shut up and accept additional uglification of their neighborhoods?
I’m be upset (or at least annoyed) if my local power company started installing these things in my neighborhood without consulting (and getting an OK from) the locals. Why should the local power company have the unilateral right to make their neighborhoods less attractive – as defined by the people who actually live there – without any say by the residents? I’m a big supporter of solar and wind and wave power, and would like to see massive, wide-scale adoption of these and other renewable technologies. But there are other, more logical and aesthetically pleasing ways to install these panels then just sticking them helter-skelter on utility poles…you don’t have to be brutal or stupid in how you deploy tech, appearances matter. Calling these people – who are, in this situation, relatively powerless at the hands of a company who doesn’t really give a shit about their concerns – selfish, ignorant “average white burbclave-dwelling Christians” doesn’t cut it. This isn’t just about power, it’s also about power, who has it and who doesn’t.
bemused
People with conservative minds and most senior citizens really, really hate and are very resistant to any kind of change even if it is positive for them.
The photo in the article shows how we blind out eyesores. The poles and lines are so much more obtrusive than the solar panels.
Omnes Omnibus
I suspect that the people who hate them do so because they think that alternative energy is something that liberals want, ergo it’s bad, hippy-ish even.
stuckinred
How about the pine tree cell towers, the richy riches in Atlanta had a fit when they put them up in their hood!
Peter
@Ty Lookwell: Because improving our energy policy is more important than making neighborhoods look pretty. Also, I’m not seeing the big eyesore here.
@DBrown:
…what?
Sly
Bergen County. I could tell without even looking at the article.
spark
You know what else is hideous and ugly eyesores? The ten metre seawall they’re going to have to build around Manhattan when the polar ice sheet finally goes.
rea
one of the workmen told me about how back in the old days when homes were first electrified in our area—that would have been around the 1930s—people would put a cap over an electric light socket they weren’t using, they didn’t understand that electricity wasn’t like gas which kept flowing .. they thought the electricity would flow out the light socket.
Your workman has read James Thurber’s My Life and Hard Times, and is trying out one of Mr. Thurber’s little jokes about his ditzy female relatives on you.
suzanne
This is one aspect of Arizona that kicks much of the rest of the country’s ass. Solar panels are becoming ever more prevalent here, on utility poles, on homes, on churches, etc. And the freakout never really happened, and I keep seeing more and more of the things.
Perhaps it’s the desert mindset.
magurakurin
you know what else is an eyesore? the steaming rubble of the remains of four nuclear generators that are spewing radiation all over the country side. THAT’S a fucking eyesore and we got one right here in Japan a scant 500 miles from where I sit right now. People here would have zero problem right now with solar panels jammed up their asses if that would lead to shutting down the rest of the nukes. I would hope that the residents of New Jersey would be smart enough to realize the benefit of this without having to having a smoking reactor poisoning their soil for generations.
but I guess not.
I say fuck em. If you complain about the solar panels on utility poles…firing squad. Time to stop fucking around and give the Tea Party a real goddamn reason to fear FEMA death camps…by giving them REAL FEMA death camps. Stalin, move over buddy…
Brian R.
I live in New Jersey and we have these in my neighborhood. I’ve never heard anyone complain about them.
And to the person above who thinks the power company shouldve had us vote on their installment, the power company here comes by regularly with trucks and chops off tree limbs near the power lines without asking too. They dig giant holes for new poles without asking either. This is much less intrusive of sacred private property *and* saves me money. Who the fuck cares?
WereBear
For pity’s sake, people, the pace of change has already zillion-tupled in my lifetime.
Part of my “aging strategy” is to NOT become the kind of whiny asshole who would miss a weeping sore on their leg because they “got used to it.”
We’re in this sinking boat because of a whole lot of people who want to freeze the country in amber; so I have absolutely no pity for these whiners when the power poles themselves are 800 times as ugly as the panels they are complaining about.
We’re in a crisis here, whether they know it or not. Just shut up and deal with it; they remind me of the kind of people who are standing in sewage up to their ankles in the bathroom and they want to complain about the crooked light switch.
jibeaux
@Ty Lookwell:
Seriously? I’ve seen these in NC and it didn’t occur to me to think anything other than “Cool! that utility pole has a solar panel!” I don’t think they’re ugly. But then, I can’t understand why people think windmills in the mountains here are ugly either. They’re not on the ridgelines, for heaven’s sakes, they’re just on the sides, with blades so skinny you can’t even figure out how they work. Even if they were ugly, you have to say that if we’re going to resist clean renewable technology on nothing more than grounds of sightliness, then our chance of actually doing what it takes to wean off of fossil fuels is approaching zero even faster.
charlied
I was of the mind that the residents reactions were probably overblown until I saw the picture that was with the article. Then my first thought was they are doing this on purpose. the way they have mounted the solar panels are ugly and obtrusive and they (the public utility) are doing it out of spite. You want renewable energy? We’ll make it as ugly as possible. We got yer renewable energy right here. that’ll teach you to want renewable energy.
Pat
I think the “dishes” hanging from everyone’s house are pretty ugly too. I know…don’t tread on me and my private property and all that jazz, but I still think they are pretty damn ugly.
The ugliness abounds in America…like the new leaves the trees in my town are sprouting, plastic sacks with the Walmart logo flying in the All American breeze. I guess that part of Americana hasn’t hit their neighborhood yet. So let them complain about another ugly addition to an already ugly utility pole.
A little discomfort in life just makes you stronger, or so I’m told.
karen marie
@Captain Howdy: Did you look at the photo in the linked article?
The whole mess — poles, wires, solar panels — really does look like trash that blew in. But I think @drew42 hit that particular nail on the head — the poles and wires had become invisible. Adding the panels made the poles and wires visible again.
It might not have been such a problem if they had put the panels higher up on the poles. The article says “the panels … are mounted 15 feet high,” but it doesn’t explain why they can’t be placed higher. If they were higher, they would be less visible.
But, also according to the article, the complaints are mainly from Bergen County. Perhaps, in exchange for not putting panels on poles there, PSE&G could simply double their electric rates.
beergoggles
@Superluminar: This should be used as grounds for a no knock raid on the guys house. Say something stupid and it becomes probable cause that ur high on drugs.
beergoggles
@charlied: I was thinking that it was the perfect height for someone with a tree trimmer to steal them and sell them off cheap. U want to theft proof it, mount it near the top of the post.
Ty Lookwell
@charlied:
yeah, I thought about that too. “Here’s your fucking solar panels, suck it.”
I’m pretty disheartened by the comments suggesting that a need for moving away from fossil fuels means doing it in a brutal and ugly and stupid way. As I said in my earlier comment, there are thoughtful and attractive ways to deploy these things that take account of the rights of people who live near or under it.
And I don’t understand the point of view that says “Who the fuck cares, I don’t give a fuck, so nobody else should.” The people interviewed in the article care. It doesn’t bother you, OK. It bothers them.
Ed in NJ
Here’s the most important part of the article:
2nd most important was the area they interviewed- Bergen County. Of course there have been solar panels throughout the central part of the state for a couple of years now without complaint.
Oh, and congrats to the flaming idiots who never miss a chance to rip NJ instead of offering anything to the thread. Feel free to go fuck yourselves.
Alex Gurney Halleck-S.
Solar panels don’t work. They are just disguised government spying modules.
DBrown
for Peter and his “What?”
Didn’t define my terms: AGW is Anthropogenic Global Warming – i.e. human induced global warming. Or the CO2 produced by many sources (all human made) like coal fired power plants that feed us electricity produce CO2 that makes AGW worse.
Now to my issue; One of the main points of AGW is that storms (see thunderstorms that hit the South) will get worse (see massive number of tornados that have been striking the South) and this will directly kill people due to CO2 increase in the atmosphere. The count is now over 192. While no single event can be traced to AGW, a series of events that break the norm provides powerful evidence.
Now to the main point: Solar power generation can reduce CO2 production (in the long run) and this will help prevent stronger storms = fewer deaths. Hence complaining about a minor eye score is really, really utter stupidity compared to the massive number of people who will die (and probably are dying like now in the South) as the Earth warms even more. What a terrible sacrifice these NJ are making just so CO2 production need not increase as rapidly as it otherwise would- those poor suffering souls – I guess the Southern deaths pale in comparison to the pain these NJ’ers are enduring.
Yes, some of these things that must be done are ugly (and wind turbines are in the land/ocean) but we are fucking reaching the end of what we can do to slow AGW and frankly, I’ll live with some ugly if lives are saved.
Simple when explained.
jibeaux
@Ty Lookwell:
You did say that before, yes, but you didn’t explain what the “thoughtful and attractive ways to deploy these things that take account of the rights of the people who leave near or under it” Are. What, exactly, is it that you propose? Why do you think this violates people’s rights when the utility poles are on easements? AT & T didn’t violate my rights when it, with no prior notice, dug up a giant-ass hole on my property to put a big green box there that I don’t even know what the hell it is, because it’s on an easement.
Omnes Omnibus
@Ed in NJ: So what is it about Bergen County that is significant?
jibeaux
@Ty Lookwell:
I could live to be a thousand and I will never understand what is “brutal and ugly and stupid” about putting a solar panel on a utility pole. The ugly thing in that picture is the fact that there’s really tall utility poles with four thousand wires hanging off them. For the life of me, I just don’t feel brutalized or threatened by the sight of a solar panel 15 feet off the ground. Do they live in fear that they’re going to fall on them, or do they really think they’re going to jump off the pole and kick their ass?
Tlachtga
@jeff: Don’t you know? There are no Jews or Atheists in New Jersey, and those that do live in Jersey would never engage in NIMBYism. Only Christians. They’re always the bad guys.
It’s a dumb jab, and I say that as someone who isn’t Christian.
PTirebiter
@Omnes Omnibus:
That was my take as well. Alternative energy is a gateway technology. To the folks, a solar panel is tantamount to a billboard for the gay/liberal agenda. Nothing says “this town is open for business” like children playing on an oil derrick.
Omnes Omnibus
@karen marie: I think you might be right that the change made the poles and wires “visible” again. As a result, people are noticing the total effect of poles, wires, and panels.
Personally, I would be in favor of putting solar panels over parking lots. They could provide some shelter for vehicles (from rain, snow, and/or sun), they cover vast expanses of real estate, and they are ugly as sin anyway.
JustMe
It doesn’t bother you, OK. It bothers them
I live around enough people that I’ve come to realize that everyone’s going to complain about something. People complain about dog parks being build on the other side of town. People complain about the fact that a restaurant serves beer at night.
There’s something that someone is going to whine about. Good government types are all about “building consensus,” but this just tends to be an invitation for the self-important to try to extract concessions for their personal amusement.
bago
I think it’s beautiful in a cyberpunk kind of way. Reminds me of the windmills powering the farms of Reach. The endless connections of the Grid. The sky-forest of wires from Serial Experiments Lain.
Brian R.
Bergen County is as stereotypically suburban as you can get.
Put it this way — when Republicans did focus groups for the Contract with America, they did them at the giant malls in Bergen County. The idea that NIMBY politics are alive and well in the heart of suburban self-centeredness isn’t surprising in the least.
AliceBlue
@JustMe:
Exactly. Like my mother says, some people aren’t happy unless they’re miserable.
JM
You know what’s really ugly and in the way and dangerous?
Cars.
D-Chance.
Thank God, our liberal Hero, Edward Moore (Teddy) Kennedy set the example for us by allowing that wind farm to be built in Nantucket Sound.
Oh, wait…
Earl Butz
I’m sure this has been said above but…really? You’re bitching about a small new eyesore bolted to the gigantic eyesore you’ve been looking at for the last fifty years?
Christ, that’s like complaining about a zit on a corpse.
I don’t get people, I guess, but this is some serious high-order idiocy.
Omnes Omnibus
@D-Chance.: Less that perfect person was less than perfect. So what?
piratedan
@suzanne: well the desert mindset does include reflective tinfoil hats, so we got that working for us!
artem1s
they didn’t do their research…they could have installed these
http://www.siliconsolar.com/flexible-solar-panels.html
flexible panels. but they the NIMBYs would be bitching about the extra cost.
chopper
@JM:
new jersey?
Earl Butz
@magurakurin: Right there with you. I am running out of patience with rampant, wanton, purposeful stupidity that both directly and indirectly kills people.
wenchacha
My only question is the horizontal mount on the pole, as opposed to vertical. I’m guessing it’s for better solar collection? I think the horizontal mount makes it seem as though it would be easier for a really strong wind to catch the panel and tear it loose. Maybe vertical would mess more with the beautiful wires, though.
Some people will complain about anything.
Maude
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bergen County has upper class folks in it.
NJ has rich counties and I live in one. It isn’t very snotty for the most part.
If they did solar panels in my county, they would be works of art. There wouldn’t be ugly ones put up. The public works in my town is exceptional.
I heard that wind turbines make a sound that is disturbing.
NJ is beautiful in places. The pictures people usually see are of bad spots and a few blocks away it is normal and not ugly.
mario
I live in New Jersey.
we’re fracking idiots.
mario
let’s not forget this great moment in nj history:
N.j. Runny Egg Law `Bad Yolk` On Diners
COMMENTARY
January 17, 1992|By CHARLES OSGOOD, Tribune Media Services
The state of New Jersey, where I happen to live, has many firsts to its credit. And now the Garden State is the first in the Union to make soft-boiled eggs against the law. It is also against the law for public eating places to serve fried eggs over-easy.
Paul in KY
I think they look cool. Sorta ’21st Century’. I was a kid in mid 60s & I thought (back then) that 2011 or thereabouts would look much more futuristic than it does.
Omnes Omnibus
@Maude: The only part of NJ in which I have ever spent any time is Princeton. As far as the noise from wind turbines, I have been near them in northern Illinois and I have not noticed anything.
bago
@Paul in KY: I think it the “in KY” part that’s the problem. Here in Seattle, we’ve tron’d up the space needle, have LED lit parks that change color every few minutes, and bars full of people staring at their smartphones.
Omnes Omnibus
@bago: I’ve been to Seattle; what is you say is correct as far as it goes, but where are the unitard jumpsuits and hovercars? Well?
Paul in KY
@bago: Could be, but back then (mid 60s) everyone thought it would look sorta like ‘The Jetsons’ by now (minus the flying saucers & floating buildings). People were really optimistic about technology back then.
Earl Butz
@Paul in KY: As a kid I thought FOR SURE by 1999 we’d have daily commuter flights to the moon, backyard nukes, solar panels and big-titted hot chicks in formfitting spacesuits.
I didn’t get any of that. By 1999 I was living in a nation of fat dumbfucks driving cars the size of my parents first house, screaming against the evils of science. Four years later we abandoned, for good, supersonic passenger flight. 12 years later we lost our spaceflight capability with no concrete plans to replace it with anything; the best idea we could come up with is that we’d just hitch a ride with the Russians, our former mortal enemies.
In short, the future has not worked out the way I thought it would. It’s a lot dumber, fatter, more strident and less civilized than when I was a kid, and that is, to put it mildly, disappointing.
Paul in KY
@Earl Butz: I hear ya, Earl. Here’s another one: Back in the 30s trains regularily ran at 85 & 90 mph! Now, I think 1 or 2 may reach that speed.
America, fuck yeah!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@mario:
I thought I read that it was mainly over in your neighbor Pennsylvania that people were being idiots about Fracking. Maybe the good citizens of Bergen County object to the solar panels out of spite for Pennsylvania. Why pass up a chance to ruin the state next to you via energy demand and improve Jersey tourism in the bargain?
Bubblegum Tate
New Jersey suburbanites. Boom!
mm
@Brian R.:
I agree 100%. The solar panels are up and down my street and don’t bother me one bit. I hate what the power company does to the trees, but I guess they have to so that the wires aren’t knocked down.
You know what is really ugly? Those big green boxes on the lawn when they bury the utility cables.
Your brain edits out familiar things. I live near an airport and near a train line and I hardly notice the sound anymore.
Random thought: Is there a technical reason why solar panels can’t be made in the shape of spanish roof tiles and put on the roof? A roof-full of blue flat solar panels looks funny. Maybe the spanish tiles would be less efficient, but you’d get less resistance to them.
bcw
What’s weird is that power poles are alright but cell towers are somehow ugly. I think it’s that cell towers, because they lack wires, trigger some “something’s wrong” circuit in our brains and we notice them. It would be interesting to talk to some teenagers (who have always known cell towers) and see if they notice them or think of them as any different from power poles.
"Fair and Balanced" Dave
@ChrisS:
You beat me to it. Someone in New Jersey is complaining about eyesores? Has this jagoff ever been to Trenton? Complaining about ugly scenery in New Jersey is like complaining about the heat in Phoenix.
sukabi
what a bunch of whiny assholes… what they ought to be doing is getting together and proposing to LEASE THEIR ROOFTOPS to the utility company to install solar panels there… making their power bills part of the deal… utility company gets to install solar panels, is responsible for the maintenance of the panels and any damage to the roof they may cause, in exchange for at least 50% of the power generated going toward the homeowner’s power usage…
it would be a “win – win”. solar panels wouldn’t be hanging above the street, no longer an “eyesore”, the power company would be able to generate far more energy than it is now from the street… and the customers would actually directly benefit with a decrease in their utility bills…
Caz
So you have a story about solar panels, which means you discuss what? I know! How about you use this as an excuse to talk about birthers, which is totally unrelated to the story. Also, throw in a little “white people are racists” for good measure, which also has nothing to do with the story.
Pretty much a good juicetard response to ANY story or issue is: (1) birthers are all racists, and (2) whites are all racits.
“Did you see the republican budget plan?” “Why, yes, I did, and I have to say, birthers and white people are racist; therefore, the budget plan is evil and conservatives are evil.”
Lame, immature, ignorant, and cowardly. What’s really funny is that you actually think you are engaging in witty, intelligent discourse on the issues of the day, lol.
gelfling545
@Brian S (formerly Incertus): Same here. There are some wind turbines along Lake Erie here and the first time I saw them I thought they were beautiful.
And while I think utility poles are ugly as long as they’re there we may as well get the good out of them by using them to help produce clean energy.
Peter
@bago: It made me think of Lain too, but I couldn’t think of a way to properly integrate it into this post’s comments.
Christophe
“I’m a big supporter of solar and wind and wave power, and would like to see massive, wide-scale adoption of these and other renewable technologies.”
As long as every single person who could possibly persuade themselves they could be affected by it has a veto. Coolness.
Citizen Alan
@Southern Beale:
I keep seeing this argument. It makes me think the evil computer in “Logan’s Run” had the right idea — just kill everyone at the age of 30. And I say that at the age of 42! If the price for a generally long life-expectancy is a large pool of voters who are so pathologically averse to change that they oppose money- and energy-saving solar panels because they somehow find them aesthetically frightening, then obviously we need to start reducing our national life expectancy.
sukabi
@Caz: ummmm, you’re the only one on this thread saying birthers and white people are racist… why don’t you go ask for a better script from your handlers.
sukabi
@Citizen Alan: I really don’t think it’s that older people are adverse to change, so much as a lot of them aren’t being thoughtfully engaged and helped to make the changes… a bunch of older people are closed off (some by choice, some by circumstances) and live with their TVs as their main source of information… and we all know how uninformative TV has become over the last 20+ years…
Dealing with my parents & grandmothers over the last 20+ years and in particular my parents in the last 10 years… there was a lot they didn’t understand, but were willing to figure out, if they had help navigating… repeatedly. And most of the older people in the nursing home my dad eventually ended up in weren’t adverse to learning new things… in fact they enjoyed it, and liked the added attention.
Raka
Anybody else with an eighth-grade (or higher) science education catch this? “Each panel produces 220 watts of power, enough to brighten about four 60-watt light bulbs for about six weeks. ”
Is it just me, or is that like saying “The car has a max speed of 120 kph, which is enough to drive north on I35 for three days”?
David Brooks (not that one)
As most people have observed, it’s the newness of the eyesores that people find objectionable. I can attest that when I moved to Massachusetts from England, a largely buried-cable country, I found the overhead cables hideous ugly, especially by contrast with the neat and charming architecture. It took me 10 years to edit them out.
But, really – some of the people in that article are complaining about spoiling the view? You know what else spoils the view? Building a house, that’s what. You started it!
Serious points: when the issue of buried vs overhead comes up, the first comparison I hear is that the US has a greater distance to serve. But what’s really interesting is that, despite storms that knock them all out at once, the overhead lines have a lower failure rate (about half, IIRC) than buried lines, as well as a lower capital cost. It’s to do with heat dissipation, moisture resistance, vibration, natural earth movements etc. So don’t expect that to change.
Commish
So much hate for Jersey.
The panels are damn ugly. And unlike skinny wires, you can’t see around them. And they cast big dark shadows. And can throw blinding glare into drivers’ eyes, and into the windows of the house across the street.
If people want to set their thermostats at 65F in July, and run their 300w plasmas 16 hours a day, we’re going to have to make some aesthetic compromises. But what about concentrating the panels in “farms,” as much as possible on public lands? There’s not a lot of shade at landfills, or on the south sides of Jersey’s plentiful highways. How much more would it have cost to mount the panels at the top of the poles, where the negatives would be reduced and they’d be harder to vandalize? If the utility had done more public consultation, they might have been pushed in these directions.
Utilities already trim trees that impinge on their wires. Are they going to start butchering trees on private property, that shade their panels? Which with the 15 foot panel height, is going to be a lot of trees.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Captain Howdy:
Pity it isn’t a bourboncave. I would have to stop by.
ciotog
Why not put them on the roofs of the houses themselves?
Duncan Watson
People who oppose this stuff oppose bike lanes, oppose buses, oppose anything that isn’t their image of the cleaver house in the 50s.
VAdem
Why not put them on people’s roofs instead? They could share a portion of cost of the energy generated with the house and get a lot more power generated.
sukabi
@Raka: you’re right… they left a huge part of that equation out… “Each panel produces 220 watts of power, enough to brighten about four 60-watt light bulbs for about six weeks. ”
Is that 220 watts of power per hour, per day, per week, per month, per year or per the lifetime of the panel…
my guess is it’s per hour, otherwise they wouldn’t be installing them / there wouldn’t be a profit in it for them. and is probably why they didn’t consult with the public over installation… the less the public knows, the better for maximizing profits… and the less likely public would say “Hey, you can install on my roof if I get a discount on my bill”.
uptown
Only 15 ft off the ground?
Vandals and thieves will have a field day.
Calouste
@Earl Butz:
The Americans never had supersonic passenger flight. That was done by the French (with some help from the British).
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
And in Baltimore County’s horse country, residents are upset that cell towers could disrupt the historic character of the place.
To which I wonder: What’s historic about asphalt? Should we rip up the roads?
I guess it’s only the changes made in your lifetime that matter.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@sukabi: It’s 220 watts peak power production, is my guess. No timing involved. So that at peak power, it can run 4×60 (=240) watt light bulbs. It puts out less when cloudy, nothing at night.
Still, that’s 220 occasional watts you won’t get otherwise, and it’s 220 watts at the point of use, so you don’t lose 30% of the generated power in the distribution system, like you do with coal and nukes.
sukabi
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: if it’s “peak power production” it’s still only a “snapshot” in the life of the panel, and doesn’t do anything to inform the reader about what the average daily production of a panel would be, or even what one of these panels, if installed on a house to provide power for that house, would have on the electric bill… how much of the electrical load would one of these panels provide for one average house, ect… it’s almost like they went to great lengths to provide relatively meaningless numbers…
PanurgeATL
@Omnes Omnibus:
http://www.myspace.com/panurgeatl/photos/37397439#{%22ImageId%22%3A33043147}
Can’t do the hovercar, sorry. ;-p
Really, though, a big part of it is that liberals have turned their backs on The Future, too. (Gosh, that Tom Tomorrow is SO FUNNY! 25 years of neo-1966 indie-rock!) And the Mass Media Mechanism inculcating a sort of traditional Real Guy-ness for the last 15 years or so (though really it started in the mid-’70s when they first started turning the screws on them damn longhairs…) I know there’s a strain of liberalism that has problems with futurism as we know it (big corporations like Modernist skyscrapers–ergo, futurism bad and not real, man).
Well, at least we’ve got smartphones and iPads and MP3s. And solar panels. And it’s not like it still can’t happen–thinking it can’t happen because it hasn’t yet is just another part of the problem. If I can’t have Utopia, I’ll just be my own Utopia.
Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason
@sukabi: I understand your sentiment, but they really didn’t go out of their way to provide useless information. They gave the basic rating in Watts, which is about all you can say without more detail on installation.
When it comes to how useful they are in lowering your electricity purchases, it’s highly dependent on location. There are calculators scattered around the internet (try homepower.com) for figuring out how many Watts of generation you need, based on your latitude, average cloudiness, etc.
I calculated it out for our house. We average about 650 kWh a month in electricity use, and it worked out to needing 6,000 Watts worth of panels if we wanted to break even selling power back to the utility. That comes to roughly 30 of the things the utility is putting up on its poles.
sukabi
@Brother Shotgun of Sweet Reason: what I’m getting at is that the info they gave is pretty useless to most people, considering that on your electric bill they do put your kWh usage per month and at least on my electric bill give you a crappy graph to show where your usage is for the last several months and how it compared to the same time period during the previous year and a list of the average temps during each month… that’s a bit more useful than saying 200 kWh peak power.
providing a better description of the amount of energy each panel produces per day or even per month would go a long way to actually informing people of how useful they are / or aren’t in the current implementation.
pattonbt
@Caz: Awww. Sounds like you haz a sad :(