Solar Power On the White House

CartaNova writes "The Obama administration has announced plans to install solar panels and a solar hot water heater on the White House. The Carter administration had previously installed a 32-panel solar system at the White House — which was quietly removed during Reagan's tenure in office. Solar hot water and Photovoltaic firms had been campaigning on this issue for some time."

Comments

solar & wind power

[Max_W]

The most effective solar and wind power device is drying clothing outside. It not only saves electricity, but actually cooling down an environment.

The problem is that it may look unaesthetic, unless a nice looking dryer is invented. Meanwhile drying clothing in the air is forbidden in many districts and even entire cities.

The effectiveness of drying is 100%. No energy is being lost. And the volume is enormous, - billions of people wash and dry clothing everyday.

Production of dryers does not involve any toxic material and is not expensive. But if clothing is dried in electrical driers then a lot, a lot of electrical energy is being used.

I would argue that the problem of global warming would be solved, if drying outdoors would be not forbidden, but promoted. Of course, after an invention of a aesthetic outdoor drier.

Re:lol

[je ne sais quoi]

Reagan didn't just take the solar panels off the white house, that's symbolic. Reagan also slashed the budget of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory by 90%. This facility currently holds, and regularly held in the past decade or so, the records for the highest efficiency photovoltaics and other types of devices. So if you ask me why solar panels sucked in the past, it was because there was not very much research in solar power going on for the entire decade of the 80s.

I'm guessing Reagan rationalized these actions as reducing the federal budget. The only problem with that logic is that the guy ran up a bigger deficit in defense projects than Carter (or just about any other president besides Bush, Jr.). But that's typical, when conservative politicians speak about reducing the deficit, that is usually code for cutting programs that they just don't like and has nothing to do with the actual deficit.