The reasons why solar power doesn't work in BC in winter when we need it most.

Solar panels lose power every year as they age, they don't last forever, so all that solar propaganda that they will make power forever.....complete BS!

A few points

1. When you purchase a solar panel it may say it’s a 250w panel it will never make that power.       Typically a 250 watt solar panel might make 200w.  A 20% loss right off the bat.

2. Solar panels age and make less power every year, after 20 years consider it a bonus if you are still making power, manufacturers claim losses are from .5% to maybe 1%/ year, see fig. below.

                                                                                Figure 1

Fig 1 shows an ongoing Japanese study, notice in 5 years some panels have lost 50%, pretty risky, could you have panels that will do this?     There was a recent major installation in Los Angeles, 34% of the solar panels were defective.

The largest solar plant at the time in Sarnia Ontario suffered major solar panel failures,  they put down the cost to "utility dollars",   will we be seeing that here in Nelson?  

Below is an actual Nelson solar site  showing daily solar power, the darker the block the less power is made.

Extrapolating this smaller system to the proposed 50 kW Nelson Solar garden, the solar garden power for January would be virtually Zero, the panels are in the snow.

Notice the dark squares, they are when no solar power is made,  the one highlighted shows .12kWh for the day,  to power a 100 watt light bulb for one hour  would require 833 days like that.                                              

         

This is a picture of the solar system providing the data shown.  Even though the solar panels are only covered near the bottom, they make virtually no power.

You have to understand that solar panels only make the power that the worst solarcell in the string can make, if the bottom cells are snow covered the panel is next to useless.   This picture is from November.  These were still covered as of the last day in January shown in the data .  

Would Nelson send out the electric crew to clear their solar garden for maybe $10 worth of power for the month?

The Reality of Grid Tie PV solar power in BC

Understanding this concept will eliminate a lot of the myths around solar.  Solar power  does nothing to avoid the need for conventional power in BC that is clean green water power. Solar only avoids the fuel that might otherwise be spent.  In BC that is water, we have to build Site C if we are to meet future projections, why spend any money on solar power?  Solar works on hot summer days, what do we do in winter and all night? We use power from conventional sources of course.


Think about it.   Solar cannot be stored, is intermittent and unreliable.  Only works in the hot midday sunlight when the angle of sunrays is most perpendicular to the panel.

Imagine a powerplant running your home that only gave power in the midday sun.   When do you need power?   I think it was first created for lights in the dark as I remember?   Solar power calculations use a sunhour(this is not a sunlight hour)  a sunhour is noon maximum sun.  It can take several morning or evening hours or depending on clouds etc.,  In Nelson we get about 1000 annual sunhours for solar purposes.

What do we do the other 8000 hours,  we use power from conventional sources.  So anyone who thinks solar can avoid building Site C dam doesn't under stand solar basics, but you hear this all the time.  I think we all know how our modern western lifestyle comes to a complete halt when the power goes off.

I am not anti renewable,  I just happen to know solar is very expensive and won't solve future energy problems, I don't know what will but continuous bleeding of billions in public dollars, because all solar is government subsidized, will not help us.   The Nelson community solar garden is a complete waste of money because we don't need the power, we sell the cleanest and greenest power for a profit that runs the city.

Nelson is unaffordable enough without sticking us with this feel good very expensive useless project for some misguided and misinformed agenda.   You would think our highest paid man in the city would say Nelson isn't going to do anything with solar.  We are the last place that should consider this, when solar becomes viable we will all know it, we don't need another half a million for another solar experiment here.

At the Nelson hydro budget meeting in January Mr Alex Love manager of Nelson hydro stated they have identified 5 potential microhydro locations.   I personally know they have one completed study on the 5 mile water intake showing it would not only pay for the infrastructure upgrades required, but make power and payback,  our Nelson dam has been making power and has an original generator from 100 years ago still capable of making power.   Why would we waste money on solar panels that work only on hot summer days in sunlight when we don't need the power?   We need power on long dark cold winter nights, microhydro does this all year round at night when solar doesn't work, why solar here?



google "german solar failure"  "Ontario solar failure"

Nelson mountain location for the Community Solar Garden

 I met with Mr. Alex Love, manager/engineer of Nelson Hydro.  Gave him years of solar data for Nelson, he told me he was an engineer, and all the data I had was irrelevant.


I sent all this information to city council and Mr. Love, yet in October he sent his men up  to install his sunlight data collection equipment in view of the future community solar garden being installed up on Nelson mountain.  Mr. Love came to us from Yukon Power where he was Director of Technical Services, they have two multi million dollar wind turbines on their hill outside town that never will turn again, rime icing and expense of travel for maintenance they shut them down.  Rime icing in the Yukon, who wuda thunk it?  But they tried heat tapes, likely took more power than the power the wind turbines made?
                                                                                                                                                                         Just where is this solar garden going?

                              Nelson Mountain showing 80 ft tower and 131 ft tower and guy wires 

I first went onto Nelson mtn 40 years ago to maintain equipment, the 80 ft. tower in the foreground collapsed a few years ago due to extreme ice loading.  The city electrical crew were involved in the repair, did Mr. Love ask his crew about winter conditions on Nelson mtn?

There are several users,  CBC, City police and hydro, Min. of Trans., Forest Svc., Rogers Cellphone, no one has a solar panel near those towers, they won't survive.

                                                                     Remember the Port Mann bridge
ice bombs, well your solar panels could look like this if you put them on Nelson mountain anywhere near these towers and guy wires.










One more view of the two towers
 on Nelson mtn.  You can see what
look like platforms, these are ice fall
 protection steel grids to protect
antennas beneath from falling ice.


When the guy wires load up with
ice they also shed ice bombs.
  I have had to climb that tower
using an axe to chop ice for steps
 to repair antennae.

This mountain is no place for
 a community solar garden.


So when a city councilor says to me we have qualified people, I leave that up to you to decide.  All I can do is try to help.  I gave them all this information.

So if you feel this is wasting your money let city council know and pass it forward to all Nelson hydro customers who are paying.

                                Nelson mountain towers

    

                                    

         

Here is what happens in severe winters, this is one of my solar sites, the foreground frame held four solar panels in the fall, and there are no guy wires or towers here, this damage was caused by high winds blowing ice chunks onto the panels that are nowhere to be seen.

google "german solar failure"  "Ontario solar failure"


If you think Nelson hydro should act like a business, instead of spending our money on a feel good philosophical but misguided project  contact city council at link below.

http://www.nelson.ca/contact-staff/emailContact.aspx?id=42515

Public money in Nelson for yet another solar power system

.  One more example of wasting public money on solar power for the misguided and misinformed, but this involved professional people who should know better?   In my experience professionals know nothing about solar except the same propaganda everyone else gets from the sustainable green misguided and misinformed.
This is the Nelson skatepark washroom solar power system, you can read the story at the link.

http://www.nelsonstar.com/news/176638201.html


On the roof are two engineers and a technologist, one engineer a past city councilor.

                                         Picture from Nelson Star and story from link above.

This had a lot to do with grant money and volunteers,  I have heard rumors of from over $50,000 up to even $150,000.

The solar panel was provided and installed by our local solar company, the same engineer that applied for and installed the now missing LiveSmart BC  grant solar system, $25,000 public money, they sold the system after 20 months and kept the money.

This solar panel is under the trees and sees very little sunlight, the washroom a fairweather seasonal washroom.  Its locked at dusk and winterized and closed.

This is the kind of spending this city taxpayer doesn't understand how this can happen with apparent intelligent minds involved, but it keeps happening over and over.

This solar is to power lights and hot water, reading the meter, it hasn't made enough power that a mouse could wash its feet.

This is a seasonal washroom, closed at locked at dusk by the city workers and closed for the winter.  We could have had a seasonal washroom in all of our parks for the cost of this misguided project.