Spotsylvania County officials have issued a ruling recommending denial to two-thirds of sPower’s special-use permit applications regarding the company’s proposed 500 MW solar farm in the Virginia county.
While the recommendation of denial is for two of the three applications, those two applications represent 470 MW, or 94% of the project’s planned capacity. Furthermore, county officials have included a strict set of conditions for any parts of the project that gain final approval. These conditions include a prohibition on solar panels containing cadmium telluride – which means First Solar’s products – as well as restricting the project to using only public water, setting a bond allotted to cover cleanup of the site when it is retired and minimum-350-foot setbacks from adjacent properties.
If the project is denied, this will be a problem not only for sPower, but also Microsoft. The tech giant already holds a contract for 315 MW of the Spotsylvania project’s capacity.
The crowd in attendance for the vote that led to this recommended denial, over 500 strong, was mostly comprised of opponents of the project, as reported by fredericksburg.com. The consensus issue with the project ultimately boiled down to the opinion that the size was too ambitious.
This slowdown in Spotsylvania is a potent reminder for observers of the solar market of how much room there is for projects to be derailed between announcement and final operation. Just because a project is announced and it’s huge and innovative, doesn’t mean that it’ll actually be built.
This is not just a regional issue, either. As pv magazine reported to kick off the year, ISO New England estimates that 70% of proposed projects never make it off the ground. This is what makes some figures, like the 139 GW of projects proposed in the territory of six grid operators, only the starting point for market estimates.
And it is often the largest, most ambitious projects that are the most likely to be derailed.
And the same Spotsylvania residents that oppose this project are not necessarily opponents of solar; many have stated that they just see this project as too large. This is supported by the reality that officials still voted to recommend approval of the 30 MW project application and resident Dave Hammond’s critique that he “always has felt this was way too big a scope.”
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Very interesting article, Tim! Any indication of who might have populated that crowd of 500 who showed up to voice opposition? As an old reporter who’s covered many a public hearing over the years, I can tell you that’s an awfully big showing for a local development meeting without some financially-backed organizing behind it.
Hello Lyle and thank you. As far as the crowd, that part of the article was sourced from a local publication which provided a supplement to our coverage. Because of that, we don’t know anything more than that source reporting that the crowd was mostly citizens opposed to the project. I do agree that a likeminded crowd of that size for a public meeting seems unusual.
After the whole Louisiana paid crowd if I was a local politician and a crowd showed up like that I think I would be asking every person speaking the question – Did someone pay you to be here?
We apparently had something similar in Colorado for the Xcel RE project, but from what a friend said 2-3 people opposed it and several hundred were for it. At least some of the “for it” people were organized by local environmental groups, but were not paid.
The “too big” definitely seems fishy.
I also wonder how many of the people that were opposed are land rights people.
I am also curious about the prohibition of “burning debris”. Why would a solar farm be burning debris?
To the contrary, Lyle, and others who question whether the attendees were “paid to be there”, let me — respectfully — set out the facts:
The packed room was made up ENTIRELY of citizens who live (mostly) in the Livingston District of Spotsylvania County, where this proposed solar “farm” would be built. Most of those who were in attendance are part of the grassroots group Concerned Citizens of Spotsylvania County; which membership is approaching 1,000 actual residents of Spotsylvania, and specifically its Livingston District.
In fact, the County moved the four most recent Planning Commission meetings from the usual location in the county Board Room — capacity 200, to its Marshall Center Auditorium with a 500-seat capacity. Prior meetings in Nov. and Dec. and the one on Jan 16 have had 400 – 500 in attendance, with many unable to get into the Board room. These have been the largest turnouts the county staff has ever seen for an SUP public hearing. Hence the move to a bigger room.
One of those in attendance, as he has been every week for a year, is Mr. Michael O’Bier, whose response is posted below, and who is within spitting distance of more than 6,000 acres of Spotsylvania County DESIGNATED FOREST lands that have been clear cut — right up to adjacent homeowner’s and neighborhood property boundaries — by the current owners of the lands.
Other citizens are residents of nearby farms, single homes, or residential neighborhoods. They are engineers, scientists, physicians, nurses, firefighters, shop owners, small business owners, teachers … in other words: citizens of Spotsylvania. They are near unanimous in their opposition to this sPower proposal based on nearly a year’s worth of research into the potential issues of such a massive power complex being dropped into the middle of a residential, rural and agricultural county, whose Comprehensive Plan calls for all efforts to be made to maintain it such.
No one in attendance … not a single person … was “paid to be here” in opposition.
It was only sPower staff, attorneys, consultants, “experts” and PR people who were paid to be there.
Reply to John:
The reason there would be burning: a great portion of 6,350 acres — at LEAST 3,500 acres and likely more — have ALREADY been clear cut by current landowners in anticipation of selling to sPower.
Whatever lands are cleared for the solar plant … the resulting debris must be removed. Stumps, brush, limbs, etc… one method of disposal is burning.
Reply to Tim:
Tim … your thought: “a likeminded crowd of that size for a public meeting seems unusual.”
It certainly does seem unusual.
But so is the notion of a power plant 10-square miles in size in the middle of rural Spotsylvania, and right next to its historic Civil War Battlefields — Wilderness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, Chancellorsville. The decisive battles of the Civil War.
Not to mention the removal of … how many … 2 million (?) trees in favor of nearly 2 million solar panels.
This would be the fifth largest such solar plant in the U.S. The other four are in the desert southwest. And none of those four is anywhere near residences.
10 square miles, 6,000+ acres: that is half the size of Manhattan. And sPower planned to have panels within 50′ of homes throughout the site. Quite the viewshed.
(John: the “too big” … is not fishy at all. The scope of this is entirely out of proportion in a rural community such as Spotsylvania.)
The reason the crowds have been so large and so lopsided in opposition to this is that the citizens are unanimously concerned about the potential environmental and economic issues that have been well documented by Concerned Citizens for the better part of a year and presented to the Planning Commission regularly, with unusually large crowds in attendance every time.
In answer to questions posed by Lyle and John, I am a member of a group called Concerned Citizens of Spotsylvania, all of whom are opposing the SPower solar utility. None of us is being paid and the organizers have worked hard and diligently to organize support to stop this massive solar utility. As a result, we have had large turnouts at Planning Commission and Board of Supervisor meetings to voice our opposition. As the article stated, most of us are not opposed to renewable solar energy generation but to the massive scale of such a utility placed so close to residential borders.
The “land rights people” were among the few who support this project. They are landowners from whom SPower will acquire property if the project is approved.
When John says “too big definitely sounds fishy,” please consider that, if approved, the project would be the largest solar utility east of the Rocky Mountains and the sixth largest in the US!
A solar utility (it is NOT a farm) would be burning debris because it is deforesting and clearing thousands of acres of forested land to make way for the proposed solar arrays. The scale of deforestation is yet another reason for the opposition to the project.
Nope Lyle, we weren’t paid. This project does not benefit the residents of our beautiful county. Nor do I wish to have this beast breathing down my neck. I’m a tree hugger for many decades
and don’t understand how it could possibly be productive to destroy 6500acres of land and all the species that ONCE lived there (before they stripped it) to save the planet.
Maybe Lyle you would prefer it be built in your back yard ? Do you know anything about Spotsylvania county or the folks that live here. If you’re a reporter do your research.
The people that populated the crowd are the unpaid concerned citizens of Spotsylvania. We love our community and want to keep it the pristine historical place it has been since the Civil War; not a Solar Industrial Site.
The opponents are people who would be directly affected by this massive solar industrial complex. We are neighbors and concerned citizens of the county. We show up because we agree that this is not the right fit for Spotsy! We are not backed by any “secret” group and no one I know is being paid to oppose this. We are well organized and highly motivated to maintain the county as it beautifully exists now. We don’t want something this huge sharing property lines with the neighbors and we definite don’t want to be stuck paying for the restoration and clean up when they are done.
I am just one of the Spotsylvania citizens fighting this project. I can assure you we are not being paid. we are a large group of people of different backgrounds, income levels and occupations. If nothing else we have proved you can protest without violence or destruction. maybe people should point that out instead of questioning our motives.
Many thanks to all the locals who have commented here and enlightened the rest of us about the nature of the opposition. I absolutely sympathize with your misgivings about the project. I’ve long been a solar supporter nursing a (quixotic?) vision of local solar generation and transmission, be it by the house, block, neighborhood or town. Eventually even the large cities. Big centralized generation projects are simply not necessary and offer no benefit other than investor profiteering (though net metering is certainly a blessing and could eventually be localized as well, with the right long-term planning and political will).
Just a p.s. to those few who got snippy at my (very reasonable, imho) question: please cool your jets. Unprovoked snarky comments are the reason some of us non-Jerry-Springer-fans no longer participate on discussion boards. When someone poses a question, please take it as a question. In this case, we all come well acquainted with how much venality has infested the anti-solar movement (see “Merchants of Doubt,” if you don’t know what I’m talking about) and might understandably harbor suspicions at the size of the opposition turn-out. Supplying the information, as most did, works well. Lobbing little verbal grenades does not.
Lyle,
Yes, throughout the entire process at all levels — Planning Commission, Board of Supervisors, in the media — we have been entirely professional and factual in our presentations. As most were here on when commenting on the article and posts.
We agree with you that distributed solar is the way to go. Several of our presentations have been on this topic entirely. As you said: build out by the house, block, neighborhood … on schools and government buildings, on abandoned industrial sites, and “brown” lands. And we agree that utility-scale offers nothing but profits for investors.
And we’ve said from day one: we are NOT anti-solar. We’re against the scale of this project in a rural, historic, agricultural setting. We also have demonstrated that the project will result in LOST revenue for Spotsylvania County.
Concerned Citizens has been all about a factual dialog about the issues of concern. Thanks for listening!
Lyle, every person opposed to this project that showed up was there as a tax paying citizen of Spotsylvania county and nobody is being paid to be at these meetings. At least not in the opposing side.
That’s an interesting statement. Did you know all of the attendees personally?
Cutting down 6500 acres of forest for a solar farm. What a non sense. Once you allow these corporations to cut down the forest and the owners to pocket the money it is gone forever. When solar will be obsolete they will move forward urbanize and develop and the land.
The only green that interests these companies is money.
People must fight and introduce laws to protect their forests. This is an unacceptable trade off and it will be severely condemned by the younger generations. We have plenty of land over landfills, buildings, and brownfield sites, that’s plenty enough for solar panels
Have any of seen what a 10 square mile of striped Earth looks like! If you have you would know how 500 Spotsylvania County tax payers thought the same way!
NO POWER to the 1000’s of homes like ALL the solar company have put in there publications!
NO HIGH PAYING JOBs ( went from 10 to 30 in a year) put out in publications
NO 600-800 CONSTRUCTION JOBS (only about half that per day)
And the real thing that got to me was the company (Spower)
Could not or would not answer questions or show a complete drawing of project only just enough to keep the county slowly working on it!
I my self have installed solar hot water, geothermal hot water heat, I have been in green construction for a long time between classes,books and construction I am not a solarfob! But this project will be or was to be 50′ to 100′ foot from my home, with no concerns to my family or make this massive project fit the county! The 350′ setbacks are only in SUP because the solar company (Spower) was giving certain community’s a 350′ to 450′ setback from there property lines!
My way of thinking is this we need trees on this Earth for everything to live, how many tree we’re cut off 63** hundred acres,not to say anything about the. Trash the timber company leaves, or the rain water damage,PUT SOLAR PANELS ON EVERYONE’S ROOFTOP GENERATE THE SAME POWER!
STOP THE CLEAR CUTTING!!
GREEN IS NOT ALWAYS GREEN WHEN YOU DESTORY ONE PART OF THE EARTH TO TRY TO SAVE ANOTHER!
Well, I think we found some of the opponents of the Spotsylvania project.
Yes, but the 5 coal ash ponds near the county are A-Okay. The emissions from the plants are a-okay. The fact that there will be no sound or taxation or burden on the counties resources is a bad thing.
The fact that there is no way those panels can harm people is a problem.
Every kWh from solar is a kWh from coal and gas. Which is better??
I think what we have found is the losers of the next round of technology changes. After scanning hundreds upon hundreds of residences in the area, I could not find a single one with Solar on the roof even. Forget ground mounted. This is amazing IMO. Even by accident a few buildings would have solar on them, but zero is something else. There is zero presence of people who have solar on their roofs and know something about the technology.
IME this opposition does not happen by accident. There must be an organizing principle somewhere in the background that makes it so. I think the utility dropped the ball somewhere. It probably doesn’t help that the large land owners will become multi-millionaires overnight from what was cheap marginal secondary growth tree farm land.
There are actually a lot of us out here. The local grassroots effort made sure the local news kept us up to date on public hearings, etc. I am all for solar power but don’t believe we should”cut off our noses to spite our faces. If SPower really wants to create solar power locally they should think about helping the local residents by offering ways for us to upgrade to solar. And they need to find another way to protect our watershed. Mother Earth needs to be protected and they are only looking to make money on our community’s back
Just to clarify. I was one of the 500 opponents in the room. I am a home owner in the area. None of us there were paid. We are a close knit community who love our county. We had residents rise up and create Facebook groups, spend hours of research and organized like minded neighbors all around the area. This was a true “grass roots” movement. Yes, it was highly unusual to have so many people there for the planning commission meetings, but just wait for the Board of Supervisor’s meeting for the final vote! In addition, residents have taken off doing letter writing and email campaigns. All because this monster project is not good for our own county and local community. It is too darn big! Think on it 6,500 acres right next to neighborhoods – very poor siting.
As a Spotsylvania County Taxpayers and homeowner, I vacancy tell you who was in that crowd. my neighbor and I were there. We organized ourselves via Facebook. We are also a group of highly educated, high income, high achievers. Our neighbors include 4 Star Generals (plural), 2 Star Generals, Admirals, Full Bird Colonels, high level State Department officials, high level executives of Fortune 100 companies, high income professionals including most of the doctors and lawyers in the region. My husband is a PhD in Physics from CalTech who is a Research Fellow at one of the largest Defense contractors in the World, some $30 Billion. If you don’t think we know how to organize effective groups, you are wrong.
And these idiots at sPower wanted to erect an industrial scale plant 50 feet from our property lines.
So we organized research teams to figure out this mess and got horrified.
They thought we were a bunch of ignorant hicks in the middle of nowhere and found out this is a suburb of Washington, DC.
As a citizen of Spotsylvania County, I can tell you that the residents of this county have not been paid to attend any of the Planning Commission or Board of Supervisor meetings. The more the citizens learned about all the aspects to this project, the more they became involved.
We are truly concerned citizens who do not want such a large facility literally in our backyards. It’s just too large for this area. There are many issues associated with what would be the 5th largest solar facility in the country being installed in a residential, farmland, and historical area which would be half the size of Manhattan. All the others this size are located in deserts for a reason. This one would be the first of its kind not located in a desert and no one knows what the unintentional consequences of such a large facility would be including sPower.
We are real citizens that live around this project and would be directly affected. There are hundreds of citizens who live around the proposed site. Shocking I suppose that we would show up in mass to voice our opposition. A bunch of bs that the crowd was fake or paid to be there! I have attended almost every meeting and no one has paid me a dime to show up. I show up because I don’t agree with this project
Not one of the 500 opposers are paid or part of any political organization. ALL are residents that would be impacted by this massive solar plant. ALL are dedicated to preserving the surroundings.
I was quoted in the article – and yes the auditorium was full of citizens that are against this project – the only paid supporters in the room were there for sPower (lawyers, employees, and others that will financially benefit). Many of us have spent the last 10 months researching the risks from utility scale solar power plants, and presenting the facts to the county representatives. The article is correct that this is an innovative project – take a massive facility that belongs in the desert located at least 2 miles away from people, and place it in Virginia 50 ft away from residential communities. Our message is loud and clear – we don’t want to be your guinea pigs – go away.
The 500+ residents of Spotsylvania County present at the last Planning Commission hearing AGAINST the massive 500 MW solar facility are all part of a voluntary grass roots group of citizens organized to educate our Planning Commissioners, Planning Staff, and Board of Supervisors . Solar energy development is a scam made feasible only because of current tax incentives that artificially inflate returns to investors and give commercial customers, in this instance, tax breaks on their purchase of electricity through the commingled grid. The false narrative put forth by sPower about job creation, increased revenue to the County, safety, and creditworthiness of corporate “guarantees” rooted in LLCs, took time to expose…but WERE PERSUASIVELY EXPOSED. At EVERY PC and BOS meeting, the entire room was filled with intelligent citizens ALL WEARING RED, armed with scientific, technical, and experiential testimony which, in the end, dominated the Conditions placed and led to the RECOMMENDED DENIALS of the two largest SUP applications. Only the smallest proposal was RECOMMENDED to the BOS for approval.APPROVAL. I can assure there was no organization or entity paying for this opposition. Just good old democracy in action!
The proposed sight is on 10 square miles of Forestry land that had been planted in beautiful green pines, harvested and then replanted in pines numerous times. It is the largest piece of undeveloped land left in the county. The land holds a wide variety of wildlife. I personally have trail camera pictures of deer. turkeys. bear, bald eagles. coyotes. raccoons, owls, rabbits. squirrels and many types of birds. I have lived in Spotsylvania my whole life and have spent countless hours in these woods. This Forestry land has added much more valuable to the county than an industrial Solar plant ever could. You cannot outgreen 6500 acres of pine trees by replacing them with 1.8 million shiny solar panels!
You are 100% correct. We do not want this “farm” in our beautiful historic backyards. We are not being paid to attend meetings or sign petitions. It is a group of concerned citizens you have invested only their time to keep this monstrosity out of Spotsylvania.
Hi there … saw your article and take offense about the residents and tax payers that all turned out to oppose this massive (500MW ) solar utility plant next to my neighborhood.
Yes , next to a neighborhood consisting of a planned community with over 950 built homes .
No one was paid … no one was bused into this planning Commission meeting because residents in Virginia do not operate that way !
Our community of retirees , military , house wives , engineers , scientists, FBI , pilots , Doctors , CEO’s accountants , small business owners , regular folks all decided enough and showed up to point out the discrepancies with the sPower proposal .
So , thank you for covering the story and realizing this massive plant requiring a special use permit brings absolutely no benefit to Spotsylvania County but billions of profit to sPower . Big business vs little people …..
Why do you not post all comments? Censoring free speech? Hmmm….
Hello Ms. Kendall,
Let me explain the comments policy of pv magazine USA. We moderate all comments, but we typically only work during the week. Furthermore, as we rarely get anywhere near this many comments on an article, we weren’t expecting these.
I have personally approved most comments of the comments that were made on this article. Some of those that were rejected were duplicates, although we also do not approve multiple comments from the same IP address under different names, spam comments, or abusive comments (there have not been many of the latter two categories this time).
Finally, I would note that while we like to provide an inclusive space for debate in the comments section, this site is owned by a private company and we are under no obligation to publish any given comment. Nor is refusal to publish any given comment on a private website a violation of your right to free speech. You are free to register an IP address, set up a website of your own and write whatever you wish. You don’t have a right to do so on anyone else’s site.
Christian Roselund
Americas editor
pv magazine
For your information, the nearly 500 people that showed up for the Planning Commission meeting were residents of the county. The massive 6500 acre, 1.8 million panel solar power plant was going to be built adjacent to a beautifully set country club and surrounding farms and rural home. The people with the greatest equity in this joined ranks and organized a group of concerned citizens that did their research into sPower and the issues associated with a plant of this magnitude so close to residents. Nobody was paid; it was a well organized group of people who did not want to see their beautiful rural setting destroyed by a misplaced solar plant. The 1.8 million solar panels proposed for this could have paved a road from Spotsylvania Virginia to Tucson Arizona. Think about that for a minute.
I was one of the 500 in attendance at the meeting and i one paid me to oppose this SUP being passed. I was always pro solar and still am in the right situations. SPowers solar mega plant is not right placed here in Spotsylvania. No where else in our country has there been a mega plant of 1.8 million solar panels placed up against residential homes or on green rolling hills filled with timber, it has been in deserts miles from people homes. Our county is known for its historic civil war battlefields and scenic vistas. Time and time again people from our group have detailed and researched facts as to why this is not the proper place for this plant. Between panels being just about in people’s yards, to burning of thousands of acres of timber waste, cadmium telluride filled panels, danger of solar fires, congestion of our narrow roads and the danger to our citixpzens driving on them with all of the trucks, lack of benefit to us the tax payers. No we do not want this and all of the county meetings have had record attendance now for almost a year.
I would encourage you to investigate the actual level of danger that glass-on-glass cadmium telluride solar panels pose to you and your community. There is little route for exposure to the CdTe in these panels, and First Solar has a dedicated recycling program for all the CdTe it deploys.
Christian Roseland – if there is no concern about cadmium, then why did the firefighters need to be decontamined from the fire in Polk Co. See
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/region-polk/2-1-million-in-damages-caused-after-forklift-fire-in-polk-county
Also, our local firefighters would not be the ones attending to any fires at the Spotsylvania solar facility. A special unit in Fredericksburg would go out in full gear and specially trained.
It’s Roselund. Fires at solar plants do happen, but they are rare. The only examples that I have seen are where contractors and installers do not follow the correct procedures and do things like mismatch connectors.
I would be very interested to read more about this fire, as the news article you cite has very limited information and does not even mention the material in the solar panels. The large majority of the solar deployed in the United States is crystalline silicon, not cadmium telluride.
If you have additional information on this fire, please send it my way.
your solar advocate. says we have five coal ash ponds… would like to know where these are. or is he just nuts.. make him prove that statement.. it is false..
I think this rounding of ‘semi’ organized opposition is very similar to what happened in Missouri WRT wind energy. It is also a reminder of how staggering behind the times the PJM is. Most the west/midwest/SE is dotted with hundreds/thousands of 10-20-30 MW type solar power plants with 50-100 acres. Most folks are used to these. So when 100MW-200MW ones show up it is not a huge shock.
The fact that most of these folks have largely never run into a solar power plant is shocking. And a deep indictment of the local utilities and the consumers of the area for their failure to close down coal and replace with cheap RE.
No worries, the project will probably move down the road and soon Microsoft will follow as well. Which is what happened to Missouri as well, which now ends up importing wind power, and has not wind jobs. Cheap power has its own gravitation field.
If this project gets approval by our Board of Supervisors it will destroy what Agricultural zoned property stands for. A place for wildlife and the beautiful trees that have been timbered and replanted on this huge track of land many times. I am a life long 70 year old Livingston District resident adjacent to one of the properties. The magnitude of this project does not belong adjacent to established homes. We love the Country appearance in this area and we are a dedicated and caring group that has and will continue to work and prove this use does not belong in an Agricultural District with thousands of single family established homes. SPower has never called my phone during their many surveys and very few people adjacent to this have received calls. We love our community and we do not want 1.8 million solar panels next to us.
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I would like to point out that in Virginia we have about 100 truly sunny days a year. To generate 1000 watts, a panel needs approximately 4 hours a day average. Virginia gets 4.1 hours, nearly useless.
https://news.energysage.com/many-sunlight-hours-need-calculating-peak-sun-hours/
Excerpt:
When weighing the decision of whether or not going solar makes sense for your roof or location, one of the first questions you may ask is “how many sunlight hours do I need for solar to be worth it?” The reason this question is important is because there is a significant range across the country for average peak sun hours…
What is a peak sunlight hour?
The first clarification to make with the term “sunlight hour” is that it does not refer to merely hours of daylight. While many areas of the U.S. will have practically the same total daylight, some states may only average two peak sun-hours per day while others will average as many as seven.
A peak sun-hour is typically defined as an hour of sunlight that offers 1,000 watts of photovoltaic power per square meter. Peak sunlight hours describe the intensity of sunlight in a specific area. Peak sun-hours occur when the sun is highest in the sky. The number of peak sun hours will increase the closer an area is to the equator and, more generally, during summer months.
How many sunlight hours do solar panels need?
The simple answer to this question is that there is no simple answer because a home’s suitability for solar will depend on a number of factors: roof angle, electricity bill cost and available sunlight. However, when looking at the best states for solar in the U.S. there certainly is a trend: having at least 4 hours of typical peak sunlight is best for solar panels.
Virginia days of sunshine, part sun, and mostly cloudy chart: just around 100 but 2/3 of the time are partly cloudy or overcast.
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/Virginia/annual-days-of-sunshine.php
This is why few homes have solar and the fact there are no state tax credits for distributed solar power generation.

There are several issues with your analysis. The final number that determines the output of solar per watt of installed capacity is capacity factor. According to the U.S. Department of Energy solar plants in Virginia had an average capacity factor of 26.8% in 2017 (https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/virginia/, table 14). That’s not as high as Arizona but roughly double what you get in Massachusetts, which has been one of the leading solar markets to date.
And as alluded to in the above example (Massachusetts), the amount of solar radiation is not the prime driver of solar deployment or policy. Germany gets about as much sun as Alaska, but was the world leader for deployment until a few years ago.
In the United States, there is a much higher correlation between the number of homes with solar and retail electricity prices. So the fact that retail electricity is only around 9 cents per kilowatt-hour (EIA) suggests that this might be a bigger factor behind deployment. But if there are no incentives for putting solar online, that’s a choice, and not dictated by electricity prices or the amount of solar radiation.
I live in Stafford County just outside Fredericksburg and my panels get plenty of sunlight. The only days they don’t produce is when they are covered in snow.
The 28 panels (the most I could fit on my roof) cover about 80% of my 5 bedroom homes power needs. This is even with some partial shading issues during the peak summer days from the many trees I have around my house. I unscientifically decided the shading provided about as much saving as the little bit of extra power production and left them as they were.
I am looking foward to micro turbines becoming more efficient and cost effective in the future to cover the rest.
Newer panels with micro inverters are very efficient. I was happily surprised at how well they provide electricity and recommend them to anyone that asks. Be sure to use current data when making decisions. Solar panels today are not the ones I looked at and rejected 10 years ago.
Solar panels do work in Virginia and I am very pleased with our choice. I can provide reports if you are interested or skeptical of my claims.
Back in the 1980’s,activist Jeremy Rifkin started a war against Biotechnology.He filed lawsuits and
organized demonstrations against it.He warned it would damage the enviorment.But now,with his
Third Industrial Revolution,Rifkin’s traveling the world calling for a massive switch to renewable energy with solar panels for power.The problem is Rifkin’s not raising concerns and issues with renewable energy like what’s happening in Spotsylvania.The problem is Rifkins in favor of renewable
energy.He’s not going to listen to any problems or complaints about it.He doesn’t care if people get shafted by it like what’s happening in Spotsylvania.Rifkin’s all worried about Biotechnology’s
impact on the enviorment and he’s not questioning the impact of the technology HE’S in favor of.
Look, I get that you don’t like having a very large solar plant near you. But comparing the so-called “danger” of the Spotsylvania project to the dangers of biotechnology? Try to get some perspective here. Your view being changed is not the same as tinkering with the building blocks of organisms.
Also, I don’t consider what Jeremy Rifkin is or is not in favor of to have any real relevance to this conversation.