“Hey, let’s put them on every school.”
By Jim Hoft
When Webster Groves High School purchased solar panels to put on the roof of the school, no one told them they could catch on fire!
The fire department was called on Saturday to put out the flames. At least one classroom was severely damaged.
There will be school on Monday.
(KMOV)
In other news, furnaces and electrical wiring have NEVER caused once single fire in all of modern history.
I hate to say it, but I think RNH has a point. Though I think this is a case where the panels were probably installed incorrectly. Which is usually the case as well when there are fires from furnaces or electrical wiring. I think the moral of this story is if you are having anything installed, make certain that the people doing the installation are properly trained, and educated.
“When Webster Groves High School purchased solar panels to put on the roof of the school, no one told them they could catch on fire!”
I don’t know for certain, but I would bet that the installation instructions for those panels probably have several warnings saying something to the effect of “!!FAILURE TO FOLLOW THESE STEPS MAY RESULT IN PROPERTY DAMAGE, INJURY, OR DEATH!!” I do know for a fact that furnace installation manuals contain many such warnings because I used to install furnaces.
I just thought it was ironic that the panels were installed above the science lab. I’m actually somewhat interested in acquiring a couple solar panels – if only they weren’t so expensive (and didn’t catch fire).
It has to be really hard to screw up the wiring on a solar panel. I would like to know more about the fire. What was the actual cause of the fire? Was it faulty wiring? Or did it have something to do with the panels themselves? Was it a manufacturer defect, improper maintenance, or installation error? This story didn’t have any details. In my line of work those are very important distinctions.
Speaking of green, and jobs, and American success, beyond a cherry-picked story about one fire that is supposed to put fear in the hearts of parents everywhere:
Tesla, which employs more than 3,000 American workers, manufactures and sells electric cars.
Based in California, the company was one of many clean energy tech companies that was given a federal grant by the Department of Energy and the Obama Administration.
And you might recall during the campaign of 2012, Mitt Romney said in a debate that, like Solyndra, another clean tech company that was granted federal funds and went bankrupt, Tesla was a “loser.”
But fast forward just a few months, and the facts say otherwise.
Yesterday, Tesla announced that it had paid back in full its $465 million government loan, a whopping nine years early.
This is thanks in large part to the recent boom in Tesla sales and popularity.
In 2012, the Tesla Model S won the prestigious “Car of the Year” award from Motor Trend magazine
And, in the first quarter of this year, Tesla Model S sales were higher than sales of comparable models from Mercedes, BMW and Audi.
How nice. But the list of companies that have not paid back, nor will ever pay back their loans, is a lot longer than the list Tesla is on. Good for Tesla! I hope they make oodles of money. But the fact remains that companies like Solyndra have sucked billions of dollars out of our pockets. The irrelevance of Romney, and the fact that he was wrong about Tesla does not negate the overall issue.
The news today featured a video of a Tesla car burning to the ground on a city street. Pretty toxic mistake in there somewhere.
The subsidies and tax loop holes for fossil fuels and nuclear energy are far far far larger than anything done for alternatives as a whole. Don’t even compare. Funny you should also (correctly) connect Romney to “irrelevance”- awesome- keep up the “good” work!