92 Replies to “We Don’t Need No Stinking Giant Mirrors”

  1. Yup 13 million that they will admit to, wasted.
    Fear not the very next council will believe “They will get it right,this time” and working with the Feds flush 50 million or more repeating this failure.
    This is our reward for electing fools and bandits.

    1. Typically, it seems that little thought goes into building these installations. Simply plunking down photovoltaic modules and wind turbine generators just like that won’t save energy. Accurately modelling them is no trivial task.

      1. The key term is accurately. They don’t even try. Not many outside of the numerate and the Right recognize that all models are wrong, but some can be useful.

      2. Back in about 2008 I went to a wind energy seminar sponsored by PEO – the Ontario Engineering regulatory body. The guest speaker was an engineering prof from U of Guelph, specialist and advocate for wind energy. He showed a map of the province with the location of all the wind projects already in operation. Even back in 2008, even he, as an advocate for wind, stated clearly that 100% of all viable locations for land based turbines were already “saturated”. No further economical or technically feasible projects could be done. Yet we have continued to install new turbines with less and less possible output, although I think Ford put a halt to it.

      3. Modeling or no modeling…if Cali cant get it right in the middle of a SUN DRENCHED desert, why would we even deem to think it would up here…??

        Alberta with varying shades of 6-8 months winter 4 months bad skidooing.
        STOOPID is as STOOPID does.

        Solar is fine on an RV 200-400 W and a cpl or 2 sets of 6Volt Deep cycles…? good to go. Industrial supposedly designed to produce Base load..?? STOOPID

        1. What’s wrong with rolling blackouts? Isn’t that proof of our virtue signalling need to bow to Mother Gaia?

      4. It’s Medicine Hat, one of the Cities with the most sunny days in Canada, if it can’t work there, well…

        1. But…but…but…
          ” ‘…the project provided some valuable data.’ said Josh Gale (Medicine Hat City Operations Manager) ”
          LOL.

      1. Who’s the fool? I don’t live in the Hat. I bet you don’t either. It was called “the gas city” once upon a time. I’ve drilled lots of gas wells there, overlooking the South Saskatchewan that flows right through town. If the dumb arsed clowns that do live there can’t figure it out by now, too bad for them.
        If these clowns were serious about energy/water use, they’d live under ground with 12 volt circuitry and UV light and use the surface to grow food, but it’s semi desert and they have to irrigate downstream from Calgary. Guess what part they get to use.

        1. I’ve drilled so many horizontal wells (oil and natural gas) there that the elevation of the northern half of Medicine Hat is 156 millimeters lower than before.

    2. “This is our reward for electing fools and bandits.”

      Yup. But what else could we expect? After all, that’s what comprises a majority of the electorate

    3. But think of all the ‘good paying’ “Green” jobs that were created … both to install and demolish the doomed-to-FAILure “thermal” contraptions.

      However … no wealth was created. Little to no energy generated. An economic cul de sac.

    4. So why isn’t Thuper Duper Juthtin stumbling to the rescue with his Thuper Millions? Isn’t this the type of project that’s going to save us knuckleddraggers from ourselves?

  2. So crate it up and sell it to the next community to elect someone on the promise to install solar power. They buy it, leave it in the crates, and 3-4 years afterwards announce that the project was a failure and is being scrapped.

    Heck, even if they buy a high voltage connection to the crates it would be far cheaper than buying and erecting new solar panels, and less long-term pollution.

  3. Well duh.

    Did not one stop and think “this is Medicine Hat, is this really a feasible idea?” Of course not as they were playing with other peoples money.

    Here in the desert, I had solar in my last home. Paid cash for it. With our climate it worked great – in the months before heat made the a/c crank up and in the fall before heat was needed, we got checks in the mail from the power company playing us as we generated more than we used. If we had not gotten rebates for the install or had to finance the cost…no way…did not add up as feasible.

    1. Basic economics Paul, now if only the manufacturing process was not so fossil fuel intensive and the end result was actually cheaper and could produce reliable electricity.

      1. Yup. I used to live in MH. I’ve got a few stories to tell about that place, some of which might not be suitable for polite society.

    1. Monorail! Sing along!

      “But what about us drunken slobs?”
      “Don’t worry, you’ll all get cushy jobs!”

  4. I took a course in college called “solar power”, me being a young naïve environmentalist at the time. The year was 1988. I remember thinking that yes, this stuff is great, but clearly too expensive at the time to be adopted universally. I figured it would only be a matter of time before they figured it all out, the price would come down, we’d all have clean energy and live happily ever after. Here it is a third of a century later, and it’s still wildly expensive and totally impractical. Not to mention all the damage it does to the environment. Enough with his craziness.

    1. How DARE you contradict Her SaveTheEarthedness, Saint Greta!

      Sorry Dude, but Gerry insists his BFF Sir Littlepotato waggle a finger and pout in your general direction.

    2. In 1988 I was introduced to AGW at an environment 101 course.
      I accepted as a possibility….I’m still waiting.

      1. In college in 1989 an economics environmentalist speaker (there to make the case that capitalism would lead to mass extinctions because… reasons) warned those at his presentation at College of New Caledonia (Prince George, BC) about the coming warming, and listed some of the voices warning us that immediate action was needed. During the question period at the end, I listed a few names back to him and noted that they had been warning about the coming ice age a few years before, so shouldn’t we study things a bit better so we could base things on a more solid foundation. Straight faced, he said that either the ice age or the heatwave was coming, and that it would be man’s fault if we didn’t take immediate action.

        There isn’t much one can say to a zealot like that.

    3. The current advocates, to a person, make the specious claim that “solar is now economical, it’s time to adopt and implement it!”.
      Said advocates NEVER mention the massive government subsidies that prop up the solar option. Take away the subsidies, and it makes zero sense in Canaderp. Here on the rainy wet coast, where it can be grey for weeks mid-winter, with only 6-7 hours of weak daylight at best, just when you need peak power load, it’s not available.
      Like everything the left says and does, it’s a propped up house of cards, glued together with lots and lots of feelings

      1. The price per watt for photovoltaic modules is definitely much cheaper now than when I started looking at renewable energy while I was a graduate student some 25 years ago. However, the overall cost of such a system, when installed, can be quite expensive, particularly during those times when those modules won’t be illuminated and back-up power is required.

        Without the subsidies, few people could afford them.

    4. I took a course at UC Berkeley in 1976! called “Solar Principles” or something like that. All this renewable “Green” crap has been long ago tried, tested, and binned. But the 1960’s burnouts are still breathing and mumbling via foggy dementia synapses … and continue to push their utopian eco dreams to their dying days. Every new Democrap Admin. has been pushing their idealized rainbow and unicorn futuristic nonsense.

      All it will take to … finally do it right … is more money. Lots more money. Taxpayer debt. Lots more public debt. Oh! And rules, codes, and laws. Like forcing every new home built in CA to include Photovoltaic Solar panels. By Force of LAW!

      The utopian dream takes massive debt and coercion of all the commoners. Then … utopia. When the last of human freedom and liberty is expunged … then … utopia. This is what the simpleton leftists BELIEVE.

      1. Back in 1976 folks were predicting an Ice Age, with the climate they had at the time. A 440 Cutlass was getting hammered at the gas pump ’cause we imported fuel from the Saudis et al. I was drilling Uranium prospects in northern Saskatchewan a few years later, that got shipped overseas ’cause nuk’lar was skeery here. We burned coal instead. The Slow Poke reactor would fit in your basement where the furnace was and power your place with hardly a worry, unless the concrete “tub” that housed it sprung a leak. All that coal mined in The Hat was usually radioactive, never mind all the sulfur it produced. You could see it on the Schlumberger logs. Those Coleman gas lanterns with the white hot mantles you used camping would set a radiation counter howling from the Cesium they contained. Hell, they even catch the methane gas at the Hat’s city dump to make electricity, now. What’s the prolific, gas charged Milk River Formation famous for…gas, low pressure you just send it down plastic PVC pipe to process it for domestic commercial use. Like greenhouses in the Hat, Taber, Milk River, the river and town that the gas formation gets it’s name from.
        Here, read this: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/10/29/the-futility-of-renewable-energy-in-two-easy-charts/

        I’m outta gas.

  5. Can we have the personnel net worth statements of all those associated with these projects, before and after, someone is always getting fabulously wealthy off the taxpayer.
    And….because these ventures are so important, “our future depends on them”, shouldn’t there be a profit cap of say 0.01 % or less to scare off the hucksters?
    When will we learn?

    1. Buddy…

      BAMN big time….the ONLY power source that Can produce baseload & (potentially) be capable of re-charging 1/2 million EV’s….and of course that is NEVER gonna happen…EVAH.!

      9 captchas..seriously..??

      1. did you also get the “one of those fuzzy blobs in the distance was a bus? That sign post was a fire hydrant? That shadow of a bicycle counts as a bicycle?” too? It has become much much worse in the last 3 weeks or so. I’m on a PC, so the images are big enough to see, just too fuzzy to interpret sometimes.

        Not something Kate has control over, and she’s expressed her frustrations at it, too. If there’s anything we can do to help or anyone we can contact to help provide quality control or feedback, please advise.

        1 minute 50 seconds to get through the captcha for this post, including 3 “new image” reloads after fuzziness in “which of these 9 images include…” meant that up to 3 others COULD match the criteria, but that I couldn’t tell.

        1. 9 out of 10 for me are 1 round. Once in a while its 2 and once in a while its none and checks automatically.
          My little $300.00 ASUS is nothing special. Solid state low end but less than 18 months old.
          I use MS Edge as my search engine.
          That’s all I got except maybe its the age of your computer that lacks some later coding?

        2. C, I’m on a MacBook Pro..and for past 2-3 weeks it’s like someones been feeding it bennies…

          Bonkers

  6. Dont worry, Pinky O’Toole is gonna stop all this crap.

    You know … he’s the guy who is committed to the Paris climate Accord…

  7. To think that Canadian Conservatives used to look to Alberta for relief from the usual Liberal Quebec bullshit.
    Nice to see that Albertans are just as frikkin stupid as your normal Canadian Media informed Canadian moron.
    One can actually see the stupid in this country.
    What an absolutely pathetic, beaten people.
    How can Canadians with children be such disgraceful cowards?

      1. Well, the fact that you proclaim that most anyone living in Alberta went there stupid to begin with certainly explains a lot, not the least your commentary.

        And possibly why your po’d. Your obvious inadequacies notwithstanding.

  8. The Purple Princess is building one outside of Calgary. I also heard one is also being built close to Brooks.
    Despite these being abysmal failures, the race to see who can be the stupidest continues with reckless abandon.

    I try to point out that these severely waste otherwise useable land. They also destroy wildlife habitat. But since it is for the Green God, they think the sacrifice is more important.

    1. I’m sort of okay with it provided it’s private investment and there are no government subsidies. Let the marketplace sort out what works.

      1. Sorta yeah but the government controls the grid. If it were all private (and debt-free) maybe the market reality could show us the light?

  9. SSSSSSSHHHHHHH! She’d kill me if she knew I blabbed.. My champagne communist daughter spent something like $30 grand putting solar panels on her roof to save the world. Recently, less than 10 years later, she reshingled her house. She had to pay $3,500 extra to remove the solar panels. They now likely live in the Calgary landfill.

    1. I wonder what her shingles were made of?
      There is a nut-job up the street from me who’s roof shingles are curled like pubic hair, under his solar panels.

      1. Buddy, “I wonder what her shingles were made with”, I often wonder what any lefty’s shingles are made of, cuz most of the time they make zero sense to me.

        (referring to “intelligence shingles” here)

  10. Currently east of Claresholm Alberta they have most of a quarter section tore up and looks like a hundred thousand screw piles to hold up these future landfill inhabitants, drilled straight into hell I’m sure, they have every smokey swinging dick in the area operating trackhoes to “get er done”. I have called the blind squirrel’s office and that of our energy minister to see where the cash for all this idiocy is coming from, nobody will even talk, you know in these times of “covid” it seems people are afraid of the truth more than ever. Meanwhile underneath this dopey project is likely millions of dollars of natural gas and oil but Canadas femme fidel would rather import oil from every shithole country on the planet. Gosh the stupid runs deep in our country anymore. When it doesn’t work in Medicine Hat or the Mohave desert, it won’t work east of Claresholm!

    1. Shhh, bartinsky, don’t tell everyone the secret. They have drilled down to the oil and gas to use it’s power to actually run the windmills, it’s all pretend you see, and…. oh dammit, why do we even bother.

  11. Why do engineers who recommend these projects still have licenses? I think I will email the Professional Engineers tomorrow and ask them.

    1. Here is the original analysis for the project – you might want to reference this document in your inquiry – as it tells you who did the analysis. I’m going to assume that it left out TCO considerations.
      https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610214006444
      For what it’s worth – the current mayor and council in Medicine Hat pulled the plug on this project after inheriting it from a previous “administration”. This is the same council that recently refused to attend a Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference because it was in Quebec and they didn’t want to spend Alberta tax dollars in Quebec, where Alberta oil and gas is being blocked. So maybe Medicine Hat is more of a “fool me once” place, than a “ship of fools”.
      https://everythinggp.com/2019/05/07/medicine-hat-council-will-not-attend-fcm-conference-in-quebec/

  12. Ahh, government “investment”. Wonder what the ROI was on that project. Is there any data on the $/kW of any energy produced?

    1. Shawn, would that be ROI or ROC (return on cost) Sorry, it seemed amusing when I first thought of it.

  13. Politicians generally do not pay for the consequences for their bad judgment. They can take office, make some horrific decisions based on miguided ideology, and then retire to enjoy their guaranteed pension, leaving others to deal with the mess.

  14. Also here in MH, there were two ‘prototype’ wind mills constructed at the college that sat there for well over a year, and never spun once to make a single watt. I heard, but can’t verify, that the reason they sat there motionless was due to a design flaw; they would destruct if the winds became too strong. No braking or some such issue.

    And we get some serious winds here. Need proof?

    They were both blown over earlier this year, and now are removed, with only a chain link fence and two cement bases there to remind us of their futile existence.

    P.S. I have friends that work for the City. They are being offered buy-outs. This City is broke; another top heavy and over managed mess. All the while, full wages for all the folks working from home…. cooking and cleaning on the tax payers dime.

  15. Medicine Hat is in the sunniest area of Canada, and it couldn’t work there even with the gov’t subsidy?

    I’m not “anti alternative energy” … this seems to work on small scales for outposts not connected to the regular electrical grid. But as soon as gov’t money comes a knocking and those projects become large … Perhaps it’s the gov’t subsidy that’s the poison.

    https://www.currentresults.com/Weather-Extremes/Canada/sunniest-places.php

    1. Solar panels are uneconomical in Arizona. They are perfect for remote locations in combination with batteries and diesel backup but asinine for towns or cities.

    2. Marc, didn’t you know that government projects and subsidies are because without continued funding, (cash prop up) these things would fail, so nothing the kindly government does is a failure. Stupid yes, Expensive yes, but not allowed to fail.

  16. If you asked most Canadians if they were interested in making some extra money, they would say yes. But if you then told them you had a sure-fire way to do it, but it involved overtly screwing their neighbours, their children, and grandchildren, they’d tell you PDQ that they weren’t interested.

    Yet a hell of a lot of Canadians can’t seem to make that connection when it comes to the prospect of profit from windmills and solar panels, or government grants, subsidies and handouts.

    Our national character is becoming increasingly defined and corrupted by an ethical deficit: lack of concern for others.

  17. These problems can be solved at the early stages by giving the proponents a copy of the demand curve of the grid and stating that they are responsible for matching it with their own baseload / backup / batteries / whatever – all at competitive pricing. It’s the only way to silence all these “experts” claiming that solar is now so cheap. Unreliables are grid parasites.

  18. Jaime McC ……
    Re your last paragraph…..Canadians have become stupid because we have been invaded by Ethnic groups that really dont give two hoots about Canada, they are Canadians of convenience, and DARE WE speak out against them, oh No! We could be charged with “hate” speech. Everyone afraid to speak the truth.

    And by the way ,…i dont like Trump – I Love Him. Praying he wins in a landslide – if Biden gets in by hook and crook – we are all screwed.

    1. ” … Canadians have become stupid because we have been invaded by Ethnic groups that really dont give two hoots about Canada … ”

      Naw. Canadians were stupid a long time before Canada started pulling in immigrants from the shitholes. They voted for turdo la first way back in 68, and they kept re-electing the yellow tit.

      He realized how stupid they were and started buying them with their own money. And now arrogant tit Ia doo is buying them with their grandchildren’s money.

    2. Am right there with ya Hosed.

      We are at a precipice….and if he loses…?? I fear for our Western Hemisphere Civilization…..big time.

    1. But don’t worry. Solar thermal did not seem to work, so lets move on to geothermal instead.
      Only $50M

      Alberta’s first geothermal power plant coming to M.D. of Greenview

      The plan is to have the facility up and running within the next three years, but Smith says there are still many hoops to jump through before everything can be completed.

      “Because it’s a first of its kind, I’m told that you have to develop it slowly, and work at it,” said Smith.

      No estimates on the amount of jobs the project would create were given.

      The project is estimated to cost around $50 million.

      Not holding my breath to see if it works this time.

      1. foobert, maybe they plan on using the geothermal to power the windmills when the wind is light, and they can even sneak in a power feed to make it appear that the solar thermal stuff is working too. Government genius right!

        1. Didn’t the Germans put diesel engines in some wind turbines for the 90 % of the time wind is unreliable?

      2. Probably work better than any solar array. Wells drilled to the Precambrian under all that gasey, oily polluting crap above it will produce a lot of heavy metals, like Uranium in solution, Cu, Ni, Pb, et al. never mind waters you boil chickens in. They’re “natural” too. Depends on how deep you have to drill and the cost of all that stainless pipe you throw down the hole to bring that heated stuff to surface. When I worked at Getty Oil in the late ’70s, we looked at the feasibility south of the Shield, using info from wells that had gone to the Precambrian in southern Saskatchewan. Grades for Uranium stick in my mind….at least 500 gms/tonne H2O pumped. That was hot stuff, at $54 a pound back then.

          1. You have to be more specific because not all renewables are futile. Earth-based renewables are. Space-based solar, meanwhile, produces 7x its Earth-based counterparts. There is a very big future there as launch costs come down. Especially if near-Earth industry moves off the drawing board. Heck, solar might even drive that.

  19. Solar farm in Canada, LOL. Right, lots of electricity in the winter just when you need it.

Navigation