[HN Gopher] Jimmy Carter's White House Solar Panels (2019) ___________________________________________________________________ Jimmy Carter's White House Solar Panels (2019) Author : doener Score : 45 points Date : 2022-04-13 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.powerhome.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.powerhome.com) | tomohawk wrote: | I remember them being taken down. The panels were taken down | because they were ugly, costly to maintain, and ineffective. | | The panels did not generate electricity. They were used to warm | some of the water used at the White House. | UncleOxidant wrote: | I can recall our neighbors house in the 90s having a solar hot | water heater on the roof that was installed sometime in the early | 80s most likely to take advantage of the tax incentives before | they went away. By the late 90s they had disconnected it because | it was leaking. Whenever I'd see it on their roof I'd be reminded | that at one point (in the Carter Administration) we had much | better policy towards alternative energy then we had had since. A | few years later probably around 2000 they had the unit completely | removed since it wasn't doing anything anyway. It took until the | Obama admin for most of those incentives to come back. | thangalin wrote: | Here's mine, installed around 2010: | | https://i.ibb.co/HNQt4Dn/solar-heater.png | | The reality of cost savings fell short of the theory. At the | time, installers were crawling out of the woodwork, of varying | knowledge levels. The worker who installed this one is no | longer around. Did some rather "creative" solutions that made | the system more long-term expensive in practice than in | promise. No major leaks, fortunately. Still, the hot water | remains heated for free once spring is in full bloom. | | It'll be removed next year when the roof is upgraded to metal | solar shingles. | fsociety999 wrote: | This article puts "roof repairs" in quotes to suggest that was an | excuse, but it sounds like that actually happened from what I can | tell. I think this answer on Quora provides a more reasonable | explanation about why they were removed: | | https://www.quora.com/Why-did-the-Reagan-administration-remo... | | At the time they were not very effective at all and super costly | to operate. They were intended more as a public relations | promotion than anything else. | AtlasBarfed wrote: | Here is a question I have: if we had basic science pushing | battery and solar and wind tech in the 1960s, how far would we | have gone in effective alt energy on the grid that far back? | Wind certainly would have been effective, it's just electric | motors and windmills. | | But how much of 1960s tech would have enabled LFP/Lithium Ion | densities and the various solar cell efficiencies? I get that | silicon cells are reliant on fab technology, but perovskites | and others? | jaltekruse wrote: | I think it is important to remember that anti-renewables | messaging has been around for a very long time. The panels | might have needed to come off for repairs but definitely could | have been put back up. Casually discarding even a public | relations action like this likely had negative impacts on the | discussion and many people taking the issue seriously for years | to come. I don't know specifically how anti-renewables Regan | was personally, but he definitely was the leader of a party | that most strongly fought climate change messaging and actions | in recent years. | | Here is Carl Sagan testifying before congress in 1985 | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp-WiNXH6hI | | Admittedly this hasn't necessarily been as strongly polarizing | as it was during the 2010s, there was a time that it was a | bipartisan issue that unified both parties in the interest of | reducing foreign energy dependence. | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzDjjUAt3zc | fsociety999 wrote: | Right. Very valid point. It's entirely possible removing them | was partially politically motivated or perhaps more | accurately, it was politically motivated to LEAVE them off | after the work was complete. | | It has traditionally not been in the best interests of many | politicians (in both parties) to promote renewable energy | over fossil fuels sadly. | | It may have changed since then, but even the "Green New Deal" | originally did not include cutting tax subsidies for fossil | fuels as part of its terms. | dylan604 wrote: | > tax subsidies for fossil fuels | | Does an industry that produces billions of dollars in | profit per quarter _really_ need subsidies? | brimble wrote: | I remember my dad talking, in the 90s, about how silly the | solar panels were and how good it was that Reagan took them | off. It's how I became aware of that having happened, in the | first place, in fact. | | Whatever the intent behind removing them, by the time it | filtered through pop culture and the media, the message was | "Reagan thinks the solar panels were dumb and wasteful and | you should too". | chihuahua wrote: | The improvement in Watts/$ between 1979 and 2022 must be | staggering. Still, I think it was a good gesture to install those | panels at the White House back then. | opo wrote: | The panels installed on the White House were not photovoltaic | solar panels - they were solar water heater panels. | [deleted] | technick wrote: | Some weirdo tried talking to me on the site, can't recommend. | assttoasstmgr wrote: | This article briefly touches on an interesting fact, which is | despite popular opinion, George W. Bush is a not-quite-closeted | environmentalist who loaded his personal home with alternative | energy sources like solar, a geothermal heat pump (which are not | cheap to install), and rainwater collection. | | https://www.geothermalgenius.org/blog/george-bush-goes-green... | | https://www.netafimusa.com/492d96/contentassets/e04072012ace... | AtlasBarfed wrote: | Alas from a policy standpoint, Bush's two terms occurred in | likely the most crucial window for averting global warming, and | the policy was not up to snuff. Admittedly so were the Clinton | years, and he didn't exactly change the course aside from the | usual Democrat "words not action" on environmentalism. | | Plus alt energy is a great tech for the libertarian/offgrid | people. It doesn't necessarily mean they're all gung-ho on | green tech at a policy level. | | Schwartzenegger was basically the only GOP politician that was | a vocal environmentalist while he was in office, and it wasn't | just to appease the California voting base, he probably limited | his political career by advocating strongly for global warming | policies. | dylan604 wrote: | >he probably limited his political career by advocating | strongly for global warming policies. | | Arnie was governor of a state. Where else could he go after | that? He doesn't really come off as Congress/Senate type? | He's not eligible for el presidente, so Sacramento was as | high as he was going to go. | gwbas1c wrote: | > Schwartzenegger was basically the only GOP politician that | was a vocal environmentalist while he was in office, and it | wasn't just to appease the California voting base, he | probably limited his political career by advocating strongly | for global warming policies. | | Randy Hunt (R), who was believed to be who would have taken | Senator Warren's (D) Senate seat if she was VP, was also | quite the environmentalist. | | When I watched him debate a democratic contender for his seat | in the MA house of reps, he was much more knowledgeable about | how to combat climate change. The democrat just wanted to | throw solar panels everywhere, but Hunt was working with MIT | to develop storage technologies for renewable energy. | abraae wrote: | Putin may yet turn out to have the most positive effect of | anyone in history on weaning the world from our fossil fuel | addiction. | | I'd love to see him get an award for that (posthumously). | MaxHoppersGhost wrote: | Russian oil can just be replaced with American or Saudi | oil. They produce a lot but I don't think this helps reduce | demand for oil other than high prices making green | alternatives relatively cheaper. Higher prices also means | that more people invest in oil and gas exploration and | drilling. | brimble wrote: | Carter was probably exactly on track for when we needed to | start taking it seriously if we wanted to avoid significant | warming entirely, given how long even relatively fast action | on these kinds of things usually takes, and considering | energy use and sources are a lot harder to change quickly | without major economic harm than something like reducing use | of chlorofluorocarbons or lead. | | Instead, we waited until we were well into "well it's already | gonna be bad, but we can _maybe_ keep it from being even | worse " territory before we even _sorta_ started caring, on a | policy and governance level. | pirate787 wrote: | And Al Gore famously had a heated pool and sidewalks. | | https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/GlobalWarming/story?id=29068... | azinman2 wrote: | This is mostly an ad with a little bit of interesting history. | [deleted] | micromacrofoot wrote: | "mostly an ad with a little bit interesting" kind of sums of | the internet in general | azinman2 wrote: | Unfortunately that's very true. It didn't used to be this | way. | noizejoy wrote: | or at least the Internet the first 10 pages of Google would | steer us to | brimble wrote: | It's as if they can't make any money by sending you to | sites that don't serve, or buy, ads. | | I miss 15+ years ago when they were still the good guys :-/ | TAForObvReasons wrote: | Did we read the same article? Yes it's on the blog of a company | that sells solar panel solutions, but in Reader mode the sales | pitch is only in the last paragraph. | azinman2 wrote: | And that last paragraph is the reason why this entire article | exists. It's basically astroturfing. | souplesse wrote: | Wouldn't that make it mostly interesting history with a | little bit of an ad? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-04-13 23:00 UTC)