Hawaii has had great sucess with solar thermal and electric.
So good in fact that the local utility decided to scuttle the solar industry by
stopping all solar work in 2012 under the lie of "safety" and "grid stability".
"stock" attended a HECO meeting in Feb 2015, with 200 stake holders, and gave them some truth, speaking truth to power. I got them to admit in front of 200 people that Solar has NEVER caused a single problem with the grid.
I spoke directly to Senator Gabbard, mentioned in the article below.
Then some politicians jumped on their case for
killing 4200 solar jobs just to increase their own profits. The utitlity did start trickling out "approvals" to let PV interconnect with the grid. Some people had been waiting 2 years after spending all the money on the system! Thousands more still wait and the solar market has been badly damaged with 16 of the biggest players either going legally bankrupt or just shutting down solar operations.
Now this month, a broad base of politics voted for a 100% renewable portfolio.
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stock here: I did my first Solar Thermal in 1995 in Guam, and my first Solar Electric PV in Honolulu in 1999. So I am going to take a bit of a victory lap here, indulge me.
I am proud to be on the front edge of the new energy (one of my 'stage names' is Fresh Energy) that will lead the world into the next 50 years.
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http://www.power-eng.com/articles/2015/05/hawaii-lawmakers-mandate-100-percent-renewable-energy-by-2045.html?cmpid=enl-poe-weekly-may-08-2015
VICTORY LAP
Hawaii lawmakers
voted 74-2 this week to pass the nation's first state-wide requirement
for 100 percent renewable energy generation. House Bill (HB) 623
mandates that the entirety of the state’s energy portfolios must be
generated using renewable energy resources no later than 2045.
As reported by eSolarEnergyNews, Jeff Mikulina, Executive Director of
the Blue Planet Foundation said, "Hawaii lawmakers made history passing
this legislation--not only for the islands, but for the planet. Passage
of this measure is a historic step towards a fossil fuel-free Hawaii.
This visionary policy is a promise to future generations that their
lives will be powered not by climate-changing fossil fuel, but by clean,
local, and sustainable sources of energy."
"Local renewable projects are already cheaper than liquid natural gas
and oil,” said Chris Lee, Chairman of the House Energy and Environmental
Protection Committee and introducer of HB 623. “Our progress toward
meeting our renewable energy standards has already saved local residents
hundreds of millions on their electric bills. Moving to 100 percent
renewable energy will do more to reduce energy prices for local
residents in the long term than almost anything else we could do."
Senator Gabbard, Chair of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee,
said, "With this bill, we'll now be the most populated set of islands in
the world with an independent grid to establish a 100 percent renewable
electricity goal. Through this process of transformation, Hawaii can be
the model that other states, and even nations, follow. And we'll
achieve the biggest energy turnaround in the country, going from 90
percent dependence on fossil fuels to 100 percent clean energy."
House Bill 623 also increases interim requirements for renewable energy
to 30 percent by 2020.
Last year, Hawaii generated about 22 percent of
its electricity from renewable resources.
I'll toss a few more rocks out at the 'scientific community'. The direct threat to most larger sea creatures directly from radiation in the water is small. The real threat is bio-amplification throughout the food chain. Seems like a good place to go is right off the Japanese coast and start grabbing phytoplankton and zooplankton and see what those little bastards are sucking up. Then check the things that eat them: krill. Shouldn't be too hard to find any - in fact the coast off of Fukushima was one of the richest Pacific Krill fishing areas in the entire Pacific the last couple of decades.
Are the krill accumulating anything?
Is is getting better or worse? Well, we don't know except the food chain has also crashed off of Fukushima, just like it's crashing off of the West Coast. Try to Google a study, article or even a conspiracy nutjob blog where ANYONE has done a serious radiation study of plankton and krill off of U.S. coasts, much less off of Fukushima. Nothing. Almost like they wouldn't think it matters. And no studies for the last few years means we have nothing to compare it with even if someone did a huge study today. There have been plenty of studies on raw seawater, but the amounts are barely detectable.
I don't really give a crap because I don't drink much seawater.
About the only reports I did see is how there isn't even as much cesium as 'naturally-occurring Polonium-210' in fish. Well, there was always microscopic amounts of Polonium-210 from radon decay, but it's like 20,000 times more toxic than cyanide. The Po-210 alpha decay causes about a thousand times more damage to chromosomes than the beta decay of our old banana friend: Potassium-40. So if a fish had 1/10th the amount of Po-210 vs. P-40 (radiation-wise), the Polonium would still be causing 100 times more chromosome damage than a the decay of potassium. Gosh, they never mention that in banana-dose calculus.
No harm in a little 'natural' Polonium-210 in fish, right? I guess unless you're an ex-Russian spy in exile in London like Litvenenko. He got a massive 10 microgram dose, but you really only need 50 nanograms on average to kill you. And, yes, it kills entirely throught acute radiation poisoning - not chemical toxicity. Incidentally, as a liquid-borne alpha emitter, it would be impossible to measure its presence with a Geiger counter or even a sensitive gamma detector for that matter. Litvenenko's hospital had him there for weeks and tested him for radiation several times and found nothing - because they were using gamma detectors like they always did and they wouldn't detect polonium-210's lethal alpha, especially in bodily fluids. You need alpha spectrometers and a completely different way of preparing a sample.
So no big deal in fish because polonium is 'natural' right? Well, since they haven't bothered to measure it except in samples AFTER Fukushima, we really don't have much to compare it with. Common sense says that there is a crapload of highly-toxic polonium-210 in fish that probably wasn't there before Fukushima. Polonium-210 is part of the uranium decay chain. Uranium - I believe several hundred tons of uranium were either launched into the air or are being continually washed into the sea right now from Fukushima. But the fuel rods also had plenty of uranium decay products before they melted. How many 50 nanogram lethal doses of polonium were in the hundreds of tons of fuel rods that melted down? Maybe some scientist should ask themselves if we 1) suddenly have like 10x or 100x the amount of 'natural radon' in the atmosphere turning into polonium, or 2) the three uranium-lava cores of the reactors are somehow responsible for the increase.
I have no idea if polonium-210 is the biggest or even a major danger from Pacific seafood OR if it has anything to do with Fukushima. That's just one thing I can think of that is remarkable by it's (apparently) complete absence of study in the scientific community. It might be nothing. Maybe the whole West Coast thing CAN be explained by sea lion overpopulation and warmer water temperatures.
Call me a nutter but - personally - I'm trying to cut back on my imaginary polonium intake. A nanogram here and a nanogram there, and pretty soon you're bleeding out every orifice of your body. You know how funny people get about THAT nowadays.