Orange County Getting New 5 Megawatt Solar Plant

by William Teach | July 17, 2013 7:39 am

And it only requires that 35 acres of trees be clear cut

(Raleigh N&O[1]) Orange County, one of the most environmentally conscious areas of the state, is finally getting a major league solar farm of its own.

Except for the clear-cutting of 35 acres

A 5-megawatt solar project under construction in the rural community of White Cross will not only be that county’s biggest by far, but also the second-biggest in the Triangle.

Remember, the average capacity factor of solar is around 16%, meaning it will deliver around 160,000 watts. It will be sitting on half a square mile of clear cut land. A natural gas facility could easily deliver at least 1,500 megawatts on that same land.

The project, designed and overseen by Chapel Hill-based Strata Solar, will be constructed on an unused tract that had been previously zoned for a trailer park. The mobile homes were never developed and the unused land became grown over with trees.

Building the White Cross solar farm required clear-cutting 35 acres of woodland, which also provided the project with mounds of mulch to use for erosion control.

I thought Warmists like trees? I guess not. The spin is amazing

“We truly try to minimize it, but there are a lot of trees in North Carolina and sometimes it happens,” said Strata Solar spokesman Blair Schoof of the mass mulching. “We’d rather not cut them, but what we are doing, in terms of green energy generation and CO2 offsetting, is a reasonable justification for cutting trees on occasion.”

Hey, no biggie, there are lots of trees or something.

Orange County officials say the White Cross solar farm will displace 4,224 tons of carbon dioxide annually. That’s more than twice the carbon dioxide that would be stored by 35 acres of trees, based on a U.S. Forest Service formula.

Oh, hey, then let’s cut down all the trees and replace them with solar panels.

Fortunately, quite a bit of your tax dollars are going into the state and federal tax credits. Fortunately, they’re just going to sell the expensive power from the clear-cut land to Duke Energy, which will still have to keep their plant running, mostly the Shearon Harris nuclear plant, to deal with the times when it’s not sunny.

Did I mention the clear-cutting of land?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove[2]. Follow me on Twitter @WilliamTeach[3].

Endnotes:
  1. Raleigh N&O: http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/07/16/3034131/orange-county-solar-farm-arising.html
  2. Pirate’s Cove: http://www.thepiratescove.us/
  3. @WilliamTeach: http://twitter.com/WilliamTeach

Source URL: https://rightwingnews.com/climate-change/orange-county-getting-new-5-megawatt-solar-plant/