Solar Panels, Really?

After listening to the lecture given by a representative from Constellation Energy, I am left with a few concerns about the proposed plan to install solar energy on the Washington College Campus.

1. Where is it really going to go? The magnitude of the solar power project is quite large. There are only a handful of places on this campus that I can think of to put solar panels and most of those are athletic fields. It could be that WAC owns more land than what I realize, but in order to generate 2 MW (which I believe was about what this project entailed, a large chunk of the campus that could be otherwise used for recreational activities, etc. will be required for this project?

2. Are they going to be safe? And by this question I am not referring to whether or not they will give off any toxic gases or be a detriment to the surrounding area. What I mean is, are they going to be safe from a bunch of drunk college kids on a Friday or Saturday night. This isn't a normal question you would probably ask with this project, but from personal experience, I don't think a large portion of the students who attend Washington College are mature enough to handle solar panels. I may be wrong, but I know in my dorm in particular (Sassafras), the brand new elevator was put out of service for several months because certain students would not stop breaking various pieces of it. I think that if we do install solar panels, especially ground panels, they will need to be fenced in (possibly a guard dog as well, haha).

3. Is Chestertown really a great locale for solar panels? It may just be me, but this town seems to be constantly under a rain cloud. Maybe it was just this year, but I feel like it has been raining four or five days out of the week this semester. With so much overcast, are solar panels going to be efficient?

4. Is it worth the price? I don't exactly recall the price of the project in total (somewhere in the 16 million dollar range maybe), but considering that when installed and working, the solar panels will only be used to meet roughly 15% of our energy demands it's hard to justify spending that amount of money to meet the energy demand of about a sixth of this campus.

Broken Promises?

There has been a very steady trend of disappointment throughout the United State's different presidents. Much of the projected plans and great ideas to improve our country that are promised during a president's election campaign are rarely put into action as swiftly as promised. Is the same happening to our new president?

An article published in the New York Times Yesterday reported on how Obama's big plans to tackle the climate change have already started to slow and fizzle. According to the article, while combating global climate change "remains a surefire applause line in his speeches here and abroad," his administration has taken a more passive role then initially promised. One of the programs discussed in his campaign speech was a cap and trade emission plan that would create a revenue of close to 650 billion dollars over 10 years. However, in the budget review in Congress last week, the plan was removed in order to put more dollars towards health care.

It seems like the executive branch is leaning more on congress to tackle the global warming issue while Obama focuses on getting the U.S. out of the economic crisis. It is still very early in the presidency though, so it should be interesting to see how much energy Obama puts towards this issue later on in his term.

For more on this article:

Obama Turns More Cautious