Did you know Nelson now has $50,000 dollars of grant money in solar power panels? This is grid tie PV solar, or in other words, it is hooked to the power grid and if there is excess power the meter spins backwards making money. The data for the first system on a public building has been in place for two years now and shows it has made $300. If it were real money and not grant money, a 25-year loan would have cost $3,167 by now or $2,800 more than if nothing were done. This was a Solar BC grant.
Now LiveSmart BC recently gave a grant for $25,000 to our local Energy Heroes, on a private building the grant applicant, a new business, doesn’t own. Statistically this business may not be around in five years. Then, who owns these panels? Also the panels were not installed at the optimum angle because the building owner didn’t want attachments to his roof, so the panels were laid flat? Now the efficiency is reduced, go figure? As an electronics technologist with experience in remote solar power where it makes sense because there is no alternative, this makes me very angry.
I am sure there were many deserving grant applicants for this money. How do they feel knowing this second set of useless $25,000 solar panels now lie buried in the snow doing nothing for the community!
Our pockets are being picked by people who produce no value, never have, and never will. It is being done in the name of saving the planet.
As the bumper sticker says: “If you are not outraged, you have not been paying attention.”
Of course the greenwashers mantra is “we have to start somewhere.” I have to yell “Start somewhere that makes sense.”
Subsidies don’t make unaffordable power affordable. It just changes who pays. You and I are paying for this, I don’t want to pay!
Max Yanke
Nelson