SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the stick-it-where-the-sun-don't-shine dept.
CleanTechnica has written a series of articles about the deceptive wording on Florida's Amendment 1, which is meant to slow the Sunshine State's rooftop solar growth and even penalize it — despite language that initially makes it look like a pro-solar amendment. A new press release from the US Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) reveals that Florida voters are waking up to the deception, but that the big utilities are playing hardball now to keep it up, pumping millions of dollars more into misleading ads before election day.
Fortunately, all of the press (and Elon Musk tweeting) about Amendment 1 have made many voters aware that it is a proposal to benefit utility monopolies like Florida Power & Light, not the people of Florida. But Florida's utilities aren't willing to give up. In fact, they are showing how valuable they consider this anti-solar legislation to be, pouring $3.5 million more into misleading advertisements in the closing days before all ballots are cast. SEIA writes:
"Polls conducted this past week indicate a sharp momentum shift on the anti-solar Amendment 1 ballot initiative in Florida. As public backlash mounts, the electric utility interests funding the deceptively worded amendment have doubled down, reportedly spending another $3.5 million to continue to deceive Floridians."
Lying at such low elevation, Floridians should have particular interest in not contributing to the higher global mean temperatures that drive higher sea levels.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday November 08 2016, @04:22PM
Florida is more south than Morocco. If a piss-poor African country like Morocco, which is mostly desert, can build a solar power station [google.com] for part of its energy needs,
then I don't understand why Florida can't.
It's obvious that the Floridans (Floridaians? Florids?) need an energy storage facility for their fantastic solar power capacity; the molten salt storage in Ouarzazate [wikipedia.org] is an artifact of the type of solar plant that they have built there, and not a generic electricity battery. Maybe Florida's power companies could investigate what happened to TEPCO's Sodium-Sulfur batteries. Obviously not if the place floods a lot ...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:17PM
Floridians
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floridian [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 08 2016, @07:21PM
Florida has choices that Morocco doesn't. Florida has nuclear.
Florida has expensive land compared to Morocco.
Florida has people who object to clearing natural land.
Florida is largely swamp.
In any case, this law has nothing to do with utility-scale solar. It's about residential solar, an entirely different beast.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:20PM
You forgot: Florida has cloudy afternoons, daily rain, and occasional hurricanes.
All of which Morocco doesn't, which changes the solar equation by quite a bit.