All Hail Solar Boondoggles and the Grifters Behind Them!

A hail storm recently destroyed much of the unfinished 5+ square mile solar plant in Fort Bend County, Texas and known as "Fighting Jays.” Here is the video (click image to view):

It's pretty incredible and the damage is extensive, which will further increase the cost of already heavily subsidized energy from the intermittent producer. Surely, there is insurance, but the rates will go up and the piper will be paid, by all of us, sooner or later. The supposed cost of the facility, when completed, was $350 million but now it will be vastly larger.

So, is there anyone to blame for this fiasco? Well, yes, there is, as a matter of fact. Let's start with Federal government that pushes and subsidizes all this stuff. It knows better but does it anyway because it awards benefits we pay to the grifters who then recycle a portion of it back to the politicians. But, in this case, the Feds explicitly knew ahead of time this was a foolish place to put a solar plant. Why do I say that so confidently? Consider this report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA):

Notice that FEMA rates Fort Bend County, Texas (located between Austin, Galveston and Houston) as particularly susceptible to natural hazards, rating it at or near the top of a national risk index. And, if you dig into the risk factors for hail storms you find the rating is 91.5, somewhat below the rating for all risks in Fort Bend County and still considered "relatively moderate,” but still way above adjoining Austin County at 61.8 and nearby Fayette County at 25.1. Moreover, swing up to Pennsylvania in Susquehanna County, the king of natural gas production, and it's only 25.7.

So, why would anyone put a solar plant in a Texas County where the hail risk factor is 3.65 times as great as Fayette and other natural hazards are also so high a risk? The answer is obvious: land is cheap and the Texas government has further incentivized solar. That's where the money is, in other words. Risk be damned, everyone is a grifter now and this is the place to grift.

There's also the fact that everything is big in Texas and there is land galore, so wasting 5.1 square miles of land on a lousy 350 MW intermittent energy producer with a capacity factor of maybe 25% that still has to be backed up with coal, nuclear or natural gas, is no big deal. The proponents will also argue for storage, of course, but that won't do anything for a grid that depends on a facility destroyed by hail that has to be repaired. So, the whole thing is nothing but a grifter's boondoggle that further endangers the energy security of Texans. And, it's only because everything is big in Texas that such fraud is considered acceptable.

So, like I said, let's all hail solar boondoggles and the grifters behind them! They've shown us how to kick the legs out from under a grid in a way no one else could!

#Hail #Texas #Grid #ElectricGrid #Solar #Risk #Electricity #EnergySecurity