Environmental Experts To Rip Out Trees, Build Solar Electric Plant In Snow Belt To “Save The Environment”

I wrote the post below before learning the company that wanted the DNR’s land backed out (yesterday); however, the DNR has similar plans for other plots of land (links and info in this thread) so the details below still have value.

So in some kind of backroom deal, Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources decided to auction off 420 acres of State forest on which a solar plant will be constructed. After the trees are cut down. The idea is to “save the environment”. Which you have to admit is a great joke.

It becomes a knee-slapper when you learn that solar plants result in a net increase in “greenhouse gases”.

This will happen in the northern town of Gaylord, in which I grew up. I am a proud graduate, 28th of 29 (or was it 30?), of Gaylord St Mary’s. What I lacked in scholarship, I made up in obnoxiousness.

Anyway, Otsego county has about 26,000 people, and Gaylord itself is about 4,400. Gaylord has the largest snowfall in the lower Peninsula, a marvelous area for winter sports: I did a lot of cross-country skiing. Besides snow, except in the two to two-and-a-half month summer, there is not a lot of sun, and what little of it there is does not come direct, because the town is at the 45th parallel.

I don’t know how much of the 420 acres can be covered by solar panels, but my guess based on where the site will reportedly be set is something in the 350-400 acre range.

How much electricity can a plant this size generate? Before answering, it is helpful to know there is already in the same county a natural gas generator, the Alpine Power Plant, which produces 816,444 MWh per year, which is 2236 MWh each day, and every day of the year it chooses, it not being beholden to the vicissitudes of the wind and weather. (All data from this remarkably helpful site of all power plants in the States.)

The Alpine Power Plant also has a land footprint—so much more important than a “carbon footprint”—a whole lot smaller than the DNR’s proposed moneymaker. Add to that the important fact Michigan is rich in gas and oil. Indeed, the DNR already makes lots of money leasing out land for well heads. Transportation costs for fuel are minimal.

There is a solar plant near Muskegon, Michigan. Macbeth Solar has about 170 acres, which generates around 36,110 MWh yearly. That’s about 100 MWh each day, which of course is only an on-average figure. Winter days would be a lot less, and summer more.

The Gaylord site is a bit more than double Macbeth’s size, but also in an area with less sunshine and a heck of a lot more precipitation and a bunch more north. Let’s be generous and suppose the Gaylord plant would make 200 MWh per day, on average.

Thus, a gas plant can produce, without interruption, more than 10 times as much electricity as the proposed Gaylord solar plant, which really would only be active about half the year. And only during the days—of course. It could not be built without the gas plant being there first.

A small nuclear plant, such as the size of the Point Beach Nuclear Plant, which is in Wisconsin across the lake, generates 9,682,445 MWh, or 26,527 MWh per day. Michigan used to have a nuclear plant, Big Rock, on the lake a bit north of Gaylord (the lake has lots of free cooling water; my dad used to fix their typewriters). The site now sits empty, but I imagine it could be reopened.

If the concern is, as they say it is, “carbon”, then a plant which is more than 100 times as efficient as a solar plant, and no burning, would be the ideal solution. But the word “nuclear” frightens the same people who shiver when hearing “electromagnetic field”. Incidentally, tell one of these people that they are, right now, being bathed in a pervasive EMF, and that the government is doing nothing about it, and watch them squirm.

The official US Energy Information Administration says that wholesale prices for electricity are about $60 per MWh. The Gaylord plant would therefore generate, on average, about $12,000 per day. A gas plant would make 10 times this and a nuclear plant 100 times. That’s before solar subsidies, of course, which if this official Michigan contract site is accurate seem to be substantial. Some small plants are being paid $3,741 per kilowatt-hour. However, that’s in Wayne county, i.e. Detroit, which is notoriously corrupt. (Many contract prices are listed as “Redacted”, which is curious.)

Numbers vary, but costs to build commercial solar plants are about $1 per watt to about $1.80. The Gaylord plant, which we’re guessing would be double the nameplate capacity of Muskegon, would be a 40 MW plant (don’t confuse this with MWh) would thus cost about $40 to $72 million, before any subsidies. Which of course, Michigan residents would pay. This is also before the cost of the lease, which I have not been to discover (since it will be auction). It would take, counting the cost of building alone and before all other costs, about 9 to 16 years for the plant to turn a profit (given $12,000 daily income).

Gas plants are also about $1 per watt to build. The nameplate capacity of Alpine Power Plant is 454 MW, which would cost $454 million, which would pay off, given revenue of $134,160 a day, in also about 9 years. But at 10 times the pay off in electricity. Nuclear plants cost between $5 and $8 per watt, and so are the most expensive, but of course bring the highest possible benefits. And work in the dark. And in the snow. And in a much smaller area.

The last argument is “climate change”. I have written 100s of articles on this, many in places like Journal of Climate, which you can find linked here, with my bona fides listed here, and all show there is no reason whatsoever for concern. A slight increase in operationally defined global average temperature, remembering the decades of over- and busted forecasts and blatant false claims, is of no danger to anybody. And if it was, then nuclear would be a far superior option.

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