[HN Gopher] Jimmy Carter's White House Solar Panels (2019)
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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?
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