We're making progress on our plan to install solar panels on 100 homes occupied by very low-income folks in South Dallas. It appears that all of the players needed to make it happen are lining up! More on that to follow.
Regarding new jobs and the new frontiers of energy technology, I found this piece by Bob Herbert encouraging. Let me know what you think.
Signs of Hope
By BOB HERBERT
Published: November 23, 2009
I came to Detroit and its environs, the seat of America’s glorious industrial past, to see if I could get a glimpse of the future. Is the economic, social and physical deterioration that has caused so much misery in the Motor City a sign of what’s in store for larger and larger segments of the United States?
Or are there new industries waiting in the wings — some of them right here in the Detroit metropolitan area — with new jobs and bright new prospects for whole new generations of American dreamers?
I found real reason to hope when a gentleman named Stan Ovshinsky took me on a tour of a remarkably quiet and pristine manufacturing plant in Auburn Hills, which is about 30 miles north of Detroit and is home to Chrysler’s headquarters. What is being produced in the plant is potentially revolutionary. A machine about the length of a football field runs 24 hours a day, seven days a week, turning out mile after mile after mile of thin, flexible solar energy material, from which solar panels can be sliced and shaped.
You want new industry in the United States, with astonishing technological advances, new mass production techniques and jobs, jobs, jobs? Try energy.
Read on here.
What are the budgeted particulars of this project? Cost per panel, maintenance, kwh produced?
ReplyDeleteJust how will solar panels help low income folks? It takes thousands of dollars to put in solar panels and it takes years to get a return on your investment. By that time they will need to be replaced. Of course it might be a good investment if someone else paid for it.
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