Posted on 05/11/2014 11:23:57 AM PDT by Nachum
In case you had any doubt about the efficacy of government, just consider the four year struggle to get solar panels on the White House, which has culminated in the breathless announcement that they will now generate the power to run all of six light bulbs.
Here’s the pivotal sentence of the announcement:
And while the energy produced by the White House panels may not be all too significant—they’ll generate an estimated 6.3 kilowatts worth of energy—the message it sends is.
Oh good another “symbolic” achievement by Obama – he’s getting great at those! Not so much at actual achievements, unfortunately:
If 6.3 kilowatts sounds like a lot of energy, it isn’t. The average home consumes 27 kilowatts of power each day. Far more than the 6.3 kilowatts that will be produced by the new solar panels adorning the White House. According to TradeWind Energy, “one 50-watt light bulb running for 20 hours will use one kilowatt-hour of electricity (50 watts x 20 hours = 1,000 watt-hours = 1 kWh).”
In other words, the White House installed enough solar panels to power six 50-watt bulbs for 20 hours each day. And if you’ve ever been inside the White House, or seen it from a distance, you’ll notice it’s lit up like a klieg light.
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Bad math due to bad phrasing from the WH. The panels are in kW hours. It produces that much per hour. With DC being about 5 to 6 hours of average light. Not that it radically changes things but the lights also don’t always run 24 hours.
A 6kwh system would provide enough power to take half the uasage of a small house. Still minimal for the WH
I also think it is stupid that the WH installed panels for show but the author is not even a kindergarten-level engineer.
6.3 kilowatts directly connected would light approximately 6.3 kilowatts of bulb -- the filaments have to be appropriately selected for the input voltage. That's a lot of light and lots of bulbs.
In reality the energy is stored and 110v is output with some loss but not a huge amount.
In my town, they installed solar panels to light a park. The cost of upkeep, and maintenance basically amounted to a cost of $1.00 per KWH. Even at today’s higher electricity costs (as compared to when the panels were first installed), our non solar electricity here costs .93 cents per KWH.
That 6 kW is probably midday, summer, sunny - the total of the panels’ rated output. Usable output will be a fraction of that. And, I doubt that they have a battery bank and an inverter. The panels are probably just tied into the grid where there will be zero noticeable difference in the Hut’s monthly utility bill.
Sham.
We’re obviously running out of electricity, yet they keep letting more and more immigrants in.
6 light bulbs. Near 600 million for Solyndra. Hey! What a deal!!! $100m/bulb!
Typical of the Left. Symbolism over substance.
the bulbs in the White Hut are dim, so they may be able to run a dozen or two
What do you call someone who is smart enough to be conservative but too stupid to do basic math and physics?
This article has zero credibility, because the author confuses energy with power — specifically, it mixes up kWh with kW.
The White House solar panels are rated to deliver 6.3 kW, whenever the sun is shining on them fully. Given the location, it’s likely that the panels will only average about 25% of rated output capacity. That would be somewhere around an average of 35 kWh/day.
While it’s likely that the solar panels make very little economic sense — this article completely fails to make that point; because of the confusion between kWh and kW. This sort of shoddy work does more harm than good. The solar lobby could use this article to mock every conservative that opposes massive subsidies for uneconomic “green” energy.
I remember when President Peanuts put solar cells on the white house. Didn’t generate enough juice to power those little electronic mouse chasers.
My house is about 900 sq feet of space/rooms that I use. I have gas heat, stove, and hot water heater. My electricity usage ending for 4/22 was 31.25 KW per day. I would think most people use more than 27 kw per day.
I was composing my post #14, while you were posting your comments. I agree with you completely. This sort of sloppy, innumerate gibberish is decidedly not helpful. The sooner it’s put down the memory hole, the better.
My 100 watt panels put out within 5% of that most of the year — say 8-9 months — when it is sunny and I’m at 46°N. At peak they can go over rating by 10% or so.
Totally. If the output of the panels is 6.3KW, that’s six spotlights.
Strange how whenever Biden enters the White Hut, the bulbs seem brighter.
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