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The latest hobgoblins, we learned this week, are in Bushkill Township, where nasty old zoning rules require $500 in fees to construct a solar panel tower in Veronica Burley's yard.
Burley, it was reported, expects to save 30 percent on her monthly electric bills if she augments her PPL juice with the solar panels, which last around 20 years.
The story was accompanied by a list of facts that said home solar panel systems run from $7,000 to $50,000 -- although there are government grants and other incentives to encourage people to shovel money into the hucksters' pockets.
Such grants always seem to be portrayed as manna from heaven, but this is tax money taken from you by force, with most skimmed by bureaucracies before any of it trickles down to you.
That form of flimflam, however, is not the most offensive part of the Bushkill Township situation.
Say you get a cheap solar panel tower for $10,000 and thusly save 30 percent on future electric bills. PPL flack Ryan Hill told me the average residential electric bill in 2008 was $104.63, but by 2010 it will be $145.
Let's go with the $145, which means a $10,000 solar panel system might save you $43.50 a month. If you invest that savings in certificates of deposit at, say, 3 percent interest, you'll wind up, after the 20 years, with a big $14,195.28, give or take a buck or two.
That's nice, except that such systems have inverters expected to last half as long as panels. Inverters convert solar DC current to household AC, and typically run 10 percent of the cost. That brings the full outlay to $11,000, assuming prices do not rise, which is not a safe bet, but never mind.
So you spend $11,000 and get savings that grow to $14,195.28. Yippie!
However, let's say you invest in a $10,000 CD instead of solar panels, and in 10 years you get another $1,000 CD instead of a new inverter. That will yield $19,405.03, give or take a buck or two, over 20 years.
That means you sacrifice $5,209.75, give or take, for the noble cause of making billionaires out of solar panel industry hucksters.
This week's story indicated officials in Bushkill and neighboring Moore Township are pondering zoning changes to accommodate the hucksters. Also, it said the state Association of Township Supervisors is working along similar lines.
Someday, I hope to understand why tree-huggers rejoice over such scams.
It seems to me that forests of solar panel towers (I find the rooftop panels less hideous) would be just as environmentally ugly as a power plant cooling tower.
That brings us to the windmill scam, which, from an environmental viewpoint, is even worse.
This past summer, it was reported that Lower Towamensing Township might allow wind turbines atop the Kittatinny Ridge (Blue Mountain), one of the most environmentally precious places in the nation. Apart from its beauty, the ridge is a world-famous route for migratory birds, to say nothing of the Appalachian Trail and other treasures.
As I reported in August, it would take a stupefying number of wind turbines to match the generating output of one nuclear power plant on a site the size of a small Amish farm. How many horizon-corrupting and raptor-killing windmills? Enough to fill a mile-wide swath along the top of that ridge for its entire 250 miles in Pennsylvania. Can you imagine what that would look like?
You can get a good idea, I noted in August, at what once was one of the most beautiful spots in America -- the San Gorgonio Pass near Palm Springs, Calif.
That area was defiled by windmills that produce a trickle of electricity compared to a nuke plant. Before tree huggers cheer for wind turbines, they really need to visit San Gorgonio.
The folks who built California's windmill atrocities, of course, made billions.
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