Journalists, as a rule, are terrible at dealing with measurements. Case
in point,
"Indiana Farmer Turns to Sun to Run Operation"
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Associated Press
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,547042,00.html
The story describes a solar photovoltaic installation on a farm in Indiana.
Comments:
"The 66- by 28-foot roof supports 60 photovoltaic solar panels, each
producing 224 watts of electricity. The panels are aligned in four rows,
or two sub-arrays, with each sub-array producing 6.7 kilowatts, making
the entire system produce 13.4 kilowatts of electricity..."
The journalist should have said whether that claimed power output was
the ideal, peak value (the most likely case) or the average over the
length of a typical day. There is a huge difference, especially since
power output must be zero at night!
"The farm in southern Vigo County has at least 200 acres of electric
fencing to contain a herd of beefalo..."
Fencing is sold by length, not by area. Let's call 200 acres 80 ha
(close enough), or 800 000 m2. If the field is 1 m by 800 000 m, then
the fence around it would be 1600 km long. If the field is square, then
3.6 km of fencing would suffice.
"The fencing itself uses 600 volts of power...
Power is measured in watts, not in volts.
"The Lovealls' system will avoid the release of 48,240 pounds of carbon
dioxide into the atmosphere..."
Is that per day, per week, per year, over the life of the system? There
is a huge difference between 24 t of CO2 per day and 24 t of CO2 per
score of years!
Also, climatologists measure CO2 outputs in metric tons (symbol t), not
in pounds. And it's not terribly leading edge to still be using feet,
square feet, and acres. Since the electrical units which were misused in
this article are SI units they should have stuck to the SI -- and should
have used it properly.
Not as a matter of measurement ignorance, but a lack of common sense:
"The solar panels are part of a "phase one" project, Roberts said. A
second phase for the Loveall farm will add more solar panels, plus move
an existing 66-foot wind turbine next to the barn to produce wind power
to allow the farm to be 100 percent energy independent. The farm would
remain connected to Win Energy's power grid as a backup."
You betcha they need that backup! What happens at night when the wind
is not blowing hard enough to generate all their needs? The fallacy
ignored by the green crowd is that systems such as this use the grid and
its mainline nuclear and fossil fuel plants to serve as their energy
surge reservoirs!
Can journalists be cured of this affliction they have that prevents them
from understanding how to measure things? And the news media wonders why
we don't trust their reports!
Jim
--
James R. Frysinger
632 Stony Point Mountain Road
Doyle, TN 38559-3030
(C) 931.212.0267
(H) 931.657.3107
(F) 931.657.3108
