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On the Blog Post Demand Sensible Gun Safety Regulations
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On the article Democrat Kathleen Murphy to Oppose Comstock in November
Ivy Main
9:15 am on Friday, February 1, 2013
ReplyI'm looking forward to hearing more from Kathleen Murphy. Delegate Comstock has voted too often with the far right of her party, and not just on the hot-button issues. She also voted for the "outer beltway," a developer boondoggle (and highway to nowhere, since it won't cross the Potomac) that will lead to more traffic congestion here if it gets built. You just can't say you care about transportation if you vote to make traffic worse, simply because sprawl is part of the Republican ideology.
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On the Blog Post Greenwashing Virginia's renewable energy law, part 2: Check, please!
Ivy Main
1:42 pm on Monday, December 17, 2012
Yes, we've run into the same problem that invisible changes are harder, even when they are clearly cost-effective, like insulation. That's where stronger building codes come in, I think.
A few more responses have come in from solar owners showing better numbers, depending on the assumptions. You're right that solar prices will continue to decline, and Dominion's rates will likely keep going up, so the ROI calculations will continue to improve. By the way, the numbers in Maryland and DC are much better, which may be why you were surprised they aren't better here. They have stronger incentives and higher utility prices, plus policies that allow small businesses to compete with the utilities by offering financing models that aren't available in Virginia, due to Dominion's actions to protect its monopoly.
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On the Blog Post Greenwashing Virginia's renewable energy law, part 2: Check, please!
Ivy Main
8:59 am on Monday, December 17, 2012
Rob, I put this question out to members of the VA-SUN listserve, which includes many solar installers. Someone ran the numbers assuming $4/watt (the current residential price), or $20,000 for a typical 5 kW system, and calculated a 19-year payback period. (It's lower in other states.) Given that the solar panels will last 30-50 years, some people would consider this a better investment than they can get putting their money in the bank, but the greater motivator today is that people would rather use solar power than fossil fuels. The calculus often isn't about what is cheapest, but about how we want to live our lives and what we are willing to do to slow climate change. One of my friends bought solar panels instead of a sports car for his mid-life crisis. Solar definitely has a better ROI than a Porsche!
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On the Blog Post View the Winners of McLean Photo Club's November Competition
Ivy Main
8:21 am on Monday, November 19, 2012
ReplyThese are terrific. I'm glad to see this great talent in McLean.
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On the Blog Post Coal and the big lie
Ivy Main
1:36 pm on Monday, November 5, 2012
Kathy, the reason people are without power in NY and NJ is that the transmission grid was knocked out in places. Outages have to do with delivering the power, not with the sources of electric generation. But you might be interested to know that the five wind turbines in the middle of Atlantic City came through the hurricane just fine.
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On the Blog Post Coal and the big lie
Ivy Main
8:09 am on Monday, November 5, 2012
Bill, I agree we need more R&D, but new technologies take time to mature after the R&D stage, so I think he's wrong to suggest that as some kind of cheap and easy solution. Changing our entire energy economy isn't cheap and easy, but we are paying such a high price for fossil fuels now--in added health care costs, air and water pollution, and now climate change--that we have to bite the bullet on this. In the long run, it will reinvigorate our economy. But I'm not seeing the political will anywhere to take on big challenges, are you?
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On the article Saturday Afternoon Update: Hurricane Sandy to Bring 60 mph Winds, Heavy Rain Monday and Tuesday
Ivy Main
2:56 pm on Saturday, October 27, 2012
ReplyWith plenty of time to prepare, no one should be buying bottled water and ice (unless you have no freezer). You can make ice yourself today by putting containers of water in the freezer, and fill soup pots and other containers with tap water. Leave the bottled water and ice for people who actually need it when the time comes.
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On the Blog Post Is Offshore Wind in Virginia's Future?
Ivy Main
8:29 am on Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Dave, the bird kills have gotten a lot of publicity, and no one is happy about it when it happens, but wind turbines are way down on the list of human-caused threats to birds. Over 58% of bird kills attributed to humans are from buildings (windows), while wind turbines are less than one-tenth of one percent. (Besides windows, the other big killers are transmission lines, cats, automobiles and pesticides.) Offshore wind has the additional advantage that there are fewer birds ranging out past 12 miles from the coast, and even then, some neat European studies with radar show birds tend to avoid wind farms.
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On the Blog Post Why Virginia lags on solar
Ivy Main
3:31 pm on Sunday, September 9, 2012
Hi Rob. Your assessment is pretty spot-on. The history is complicated, far too much to go into in an article anyone would want to read, but essentially Dominion thought it had closed off the option for third-party providers when it implemented its Green Power Program, only to be told by the SCC that its program didn't count because it relies on renewable energy certificates rather than actual power. So Dominion tried to shut out third parties through language in its tariff. Interesting legal question whether it can do so. Anyway, I agree with you that it should be obvious that the independent solar providers are not big enough to be a threat to Dominion's monopoly, and the value that solar distributed generation brings to the grid outweighs the small loss of business. The real problem, I think, is that monopolies by nature abhor competition of any size.
Ivy Main
2:20 pm on Thursday, February 14, 2013
I'm with you, Kathleen. The NRA thinks the answer to gun violence is more guns, but most of us don't want to live in a society where everyone has to be armed to be safe, and it's a nut's fantasy that somehow we would BE safe if everyone walked around with a gun. It's long past time for sensible restrictions. Every buyer should go through a background check and take a gun safety course; every gun should be registered with the police; and no one should have access to an automatic weapon or a semi-automatic that can fire more than a few shots without reloading.