A solar community?

[Durangobob]

STAND, or Students Towards A New Democracy, has just be recently organized at TXState in order to empower the student body to become more active in local/national politics.

They have set up a forum at www.standts.org

One proposition they posed was this....

Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2003 8:22 pm Post subject: Some ideas...

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Right now, I've got two ideas for community action we could try to push forward: one ecological/economical, and the other social.

My first proposition is to try to make San Marcos, and then surrounding cities, as energy independent as possible. The way to do that is to use public funding to install solar power throughout the city, in places public and private. Solar technology is now a somewhat advanced thing. It can be installed for use at and by private homes, and can produce a surplus of energy for that home. A number of private residences throughout the country have such systems in place already, but there is a problem that precludes other people from installing it themselves. What's the problem you ask? Initial costs. For most people, the problem with installing such systems is that there is no guarantee that the initial costs will be returned through savings while the owner still owns the home, so generally only the most environmentally conscious people actually have it done. This problem is fixed, though, if we have it done by the city of San Marcos, and other towns and cities in this area. Making homes and businesses more energy efficient and energy independent is a win-win situation for everyone in San Marcos and for everyone who would follow the model we would create. This proposition opens up the City and People of San Marcos with the benefit of very low, if existent, utilities costs and with more revenue for the city, because power surpluses can be sold on the power grid. For STAND and our future allies (if we carry this propostion through) our benefit will be much greater recognition, possibly national , that would provide us with the momentum to bring great, and greatly beneficial, change to the our local area, as well as the greater world. That's proposition 1.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[MonkeyAnvil]

I definately agree with city goverments assisting their communities with installing clean energy devices such as solar panels. And yes, technology has brought the cost of these technologies closer to realistic magins, and the rising cost of unregulated electricity continues to make it a more attractive alternative with the added benifit of your very own power security.

I'd love to see rebates and programs where you could have solar panels, windgenerators, etc... installed in your home.

Think about this: If one out of every 10 homes in America has some sort of independant energy generation system that would allow them to stand alone comfortably without reliance on any gridwork, then the threat of national power outages via power plant terrorist strikes suddenly vanishes.

And if all of those homes were tied into a grid, it would mean someone would have to take out the whole of the nation in order to knock out out power grid.

- MA