This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Dr. Michael Sanera, John Locke Foundation research director and local government analyst.
I love This Old House (TOH). I have been an avid viewer since the 1980s, when Bob Vila showed middle-class homeowners how to renovate an old house on a budget using plenty of sweat equity. Unfortunately, the show has gone upscale with multimillion-dollar home “renovations” that usually start by demolishing the old house and starting over. The program used to discuss the homeowner’s limited budget and how changes in the plans would impact on that budget. Today, the hosts rarely discuss a budget. It seems that if you have to ask, you cannot afford it.
In addition, TOH has gone green. Now the show uses and touts the green benefits of recycled timber, low-VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint, super-insulated walls, and wood from certified sustainable forests. In some cases, this may make perfect economic sense, but the hosts rarely discuss tradeoffs or payback times. The green, rich, and famous never worry about costs; discussion of money is so tawdry.
Recently, Kevin O’Connor, the Opie Taylor-like TOH host, showed viewers the lifestyle of the green, super-rich, and famous. Kevin visited an off-the-grid house sitting on 10 acres of Esther Island, a small island off Nantucket.
The proud homeowner, Alan Worden, showed Kevin his off-the-grid power plant. First, they stopped at the 28-panel, 4,000-volt photovoltaic solar array that cost $22,000. Even Kevin, not bashful about his green advocacy, noted that since it was a cloudy day, the solar array must not be producing much power. Alan, in a slightly embarrassed tone, responded that the output was less than one-third of its potential output, but no problem, he had a wind turbine on the other side of the house. I could almost hear the viewers gasp when the camera focused on Alan’s $25,000, 5-kilowatt, vertical-axis wind turbine. By the way, the turbine was not turning. Kevin seemed to snicker when he saw it and remarked that it probably put out a lot of energy in the usually high coastal wind conditions.
No sun, no wind, no electricity, no problem. When Alan does have sun and wind, he explained, he sends the power to his battery storage facility. Off they went to the garage-size shed that housed several large columns of batteries. By this time, Alan was too embarrassed to mention the price.
What if Alan faced an exceedingly long streak of no wind and no sun? Dead batteries are not a problem; Alan had a pollution-belching, noisy gasoline generator. Kevin then visited another shed with a 15-kilowatt gasoline generator that provided failsafe backup power. The generator price remained undisclosed. Of course, the green, rich, and famous had 10 acres of land to keep the pollution and noise well away from the 2,400-square-foot main house that they constantly referred to as a “cottage.”
Perhaps Kevin picked an off day for sun and wind. I checked the maps produced by the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This map confirms that Nantucket has plenty of wind, but the map records the wind speeds at 50 meters above the ocean.
That is why 130 three-blade wind turbine monsters — each 440 feet high — are proposed for six miles off of Nantucket Sound. A small vertical-axis turbine only 15 feet off the ground is another story. Sun for photovoltaic cells is much harder to come by. This map shows that Nantucket has about the same amount of sun as rainy Portland, Oregon.
I heard a rumor that Kevin O’Connor is about to retire. Perhaps TOH can lure Robin Leach out of retirement and rename the show “Lifestyles of the Green, Rich, and Famous.”