Well now, Mayor Bieter must think the winter inversions are going to go away and the sun going down won’t be a problem.

I have been by this solar plant at the intersection of Hwys 58 and 395 in California. Not very big by any standard of electrical generation. The production is not worth the investment. It was and is a demonstration project.

When you trade green for green at a million to one, you got no green left… So just raise taxes!! And that my friends is how Dave and company think about you. Because he can, because more than half of the people think green grows on a tree.

So why can’t Egg Bieter and his team use the electric power from the new solar project to power their new trolley.

So Bieter wants to take a piece of property that was a former landfill at the end of the airport runway that’s generating zero dollars and lease it to someone who would pay the city for using it. That’s stupid? And, of course, the company that wants to invest in new technology and make this its first project gets criticism from erico49 for doing so. (Undoubtedly Joe Albertson would have been run out of town for deciding to put his first store in Boise if the same mind thought process had existed then). Solar, by the way, still generates electricity on cloudy and even foggy days — just not to the degree it does when the sky is clear. Luckily, we have Idaho Power available to build additional dams and/or fossil fuel facilities to respond to future power needs should this proposal fail — and likely IPC will do so without asking rate payers to cover those costs. You betcha.

I guess some of us haven’t connected the dots here. An admirable effort entered into between a city government that lies to the citizens daily, with a company (Petra) that has bankrupted untold subcontractors, and left vast parcels of development land vacant throughout the valley! At some point, someone better start the “if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck” mantra! I refuse to believe we are really that stupid to let this happen.C’mon folks!!!

The last sentence of the Guardian’s post: “Since Idaho Power is required to provide “peak demand capacity” it is not always in their best interests to buy outside power.”

My comment: Idaho Power is a public utility and should be operated in the best interest of the public (consumers), and not in the best interest of Idaho Power.

If the city owns land it is not going to use, very soon, for city-owned facilities, like libraries or parks, that land should be sold. The city should not be in the land speculation business or any other business.

And why do some of the commenters think that oil will last forever? Don’t they pay any attention to the news? Of course they don’t, they get their opinions from fact-deprived knuckleheads like Sarah “drill, baby, drill” Palin.

The fact is – we ARE going to run out of oil and we need to be developing solar power, or our grandchildren will either starve or freeze.

EDITOR NOTE–Our point with regard to costs/profits is that solar is apparently expensive to produce at this time and rate payers could be on the hook. There are incentives for Idaho Power from the Feds to use solar however.

Sis… I can’t help but think of that disease that sounds just like your handle… other than the personal attack on me, can you tell me where I’m factually wrong in my overly simplified description of the stupid and/or dishonest who’d like to think their pooh don’t stink? I’m bettn’ you live off one or more government checks and still watch CBS.

I’d like to see a transition too, but we already know a solar farm this small and with this old technology is a gimmick… an expensive one too. Cali is tapped so they see what Dave will give em 1) we don’t need the power. 2) If we did, NG is very clean and come right down a pipe from Canada… no goofy people with towel on head, no dead sea-life involved at all.

Please don’t tell me that anyone actually believes that this project will really happen! This is purely political posturing on the city’s part. If anyone believes that the state legislature will give a local option for taxation, they are in Wonderland! If, by the slimmest chance known to man, the legislature does give the authority, does anyone really belive the majority of the citizens will vote for it? Did ya’ll miss the fact that Bieter is hinging his costs on Ada AND Canyon counties authorizing this? These guys can’t even have lunch together without an argument. Now Bieter expects us to believe they will join in a common taxation effort? What a crock! It is really too bad because the need to explore all alternative sources of energy is needed. The guy espousing this would screw up a two car funeral! And that is the primary reason it won’t fly!

I knew that you would be digging into this, that the Statesman’s “news” was just an arrow pointing to the real reporting of The Guardian.

Sisyphus, you should know well that what one says publicly during a campaign is as much cheerleading as prediction. I belive that you would find that what I said was that this mayor should be run out of town due to complete incompetence on his part. Internally, two days before the election, I stated we would lose in a squeaker, or we would get our butts handed to us. Unfortunately, it was the latter. I take as much responsibility for that as anyone.
To this day, I firmly believe that a different outcome of that race would have made this city a better place today.