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Vatican To Build 100 Megawatt Solar Power Plant
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Apr 20, 2009 06:04 PM
from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
from the go-big-or-go-home dept.
Karim Y. writes "The Vatican is going solar in a big way. The tiny state recently announced that it intends to spend 660 million dollars to create what will effectively be Europe's largest solar power plant. This massive 100 megawatt photovoltaic installation will provide enough energy to make the Vatican the first solar powered nation state in the world! 'The 100 megawatts unleashed by the station will supply about 40,000 households. That will far outstrip demand by Pope Benedict XVI and the 900 inhabitants of the 0.2 square-mile country nestled across Rome's Tiber River. The plant will cover nine times the needs of Vatican Radio, whose transmission tower is strong enough to reach 35 countries including Asia.'"
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Insert joke.... (Score:5, Funny)
...about the Father, the Sun, and the Holy Ghost here.
Re:Insert joke.... (Score:5, Funny)
ISIAH 60:19 The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, .......(adlib) yet it shall power your many plasma screens and electric back scratcher..(/adlib)
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HOT AIR (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:HOT AIR (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no... this is the Vatican we're talking about here. You're thinking of D.C.
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Hotter'N'Hell (Score:4, Funny)
God got tired of Satan bragging about his "all naturally-environmentally-powered controlled climate system" so he upped the ante a bit.
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Re:Hotter'N'Hell (Score:4, Interesting)
Just remember, Lucifer means "light-bringer".
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Don't think jupiter would do much. (Score:4, Interesting)
For some reason I think I've read that were Jupiter a star at its present size, if such a thing were even possible, at the distance to the earth it wouldn't be too horrible. The closest approach between Jupiter and Earth places is nearly twice as far as the Sun is from Mars. It might jack up the temperature by a degree and melt all the icecaps on earth, but other than that, it wouldn't be too big of a deal...
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Re:Don't think jupiter would do much. (Score:5, Insightful)
It might jack up the temperature by a degree and melt all the icecaps on earth, but other than that, it wouldn't be too big of a deal...
You don't live near the coast, do you?
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Re:Don't think jupiter would do much. (Score:5, Funny)
Not yet... :)
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Re:Don't think jupiter would do much. (Score:5, Informative)
For some reason I think I've read that were Jupiter a star at its present size, if such a thing were even possible, at the distance to the earth it wouldn't be too horrible. The closest approach between Jupiter and Earth places is nearly twice as far as the Sun is from Mars. It might jack up the temperature by a degree and melt all the icecaps on earth, but other than that, it wouldn't be too big of a deal...
For a Brown Dwarf star, you aren't that far off. Here is how it would work:
Lets say you increase the mass of Jupiter 18-20x. It wouldn't just expand, it would actually contract. The increased gravity (and small starting volume) would cause the object to collapse inward to something near Jupiter's size. Eventually the contraction would heat up the core enough to start fusing the hydrogen. This would result in a sudden outburst of energy, and likely cause the object to expand to a volume where the force of gravity was equal to the forces pushing outward.
But here is the neat part, sure, it is technically a star, but it isn't fusing all that much material to heat up all that mass. The surface of the star could actually be below 1000C. In fact, these stars wouldn't be visible to the naked eye, the light they would emit would mostly be in the infrared spectrum.
At the distance that Jupiter is from Earth, I would be surprised if it had a measurable effect on Earth.
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Re:Insert joke.... (Score:5, Funny)
No, no, no. The correct joke is:
This gives new meaning to the phrase "For thine is the kingdom and the power...."
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Re:Insert joke.... (Score:5, Informative)
Relevant extract from the 1973 ICEL edition of The Roman Missal:
C: Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Saviour gave us:
All: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trepasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
C: Deliver us, Lord, from every evil, and grant us peace in our day. In your mercy keep us free from sin and protect us from all anxiety as we wait in joyful hope for the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
All: For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and forever.
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Re:Insert joke.... (Score:5, Funny)
Larry Ellison is God?
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Wow (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
Read the article. Plant is being constructed a days walk from Rome.
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Re:Wow (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Wow (Score:5, Informative)
The project is on the same 740 acre (~1.15 sq. mi.) extraterritorial holding on which the Vatican Radio's transmitters are located. Its in the secord paragraph of TFA.
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Asia isn't a country. (Score:5, Funny)
Now that we've dealt with that...
Re:Asia isn't a country. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Asia isn't a country. (Score:5, Funny)
The Sun doesn't go around the Earth either, but hey it took them 400 years to correct that one.
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Re:Asia isn't a country. (Score:5, Insightful)
It does, actually. One of the fantastic perks of relativity is that you can pick any single point as the origin, and the math still works. So the notion that the Sun goes around the Earth is as correct as that of the Earth going around the Sun, or that of considering me as the center of the Universe ;)
That's a common misconception. Only frames of reference that aren't accelerating are equivalent.
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Re:Asia isn't a country. (Score:5, Funny)
It's only an awesome band if you're a 40 year old virgin...
I really don't see how that's relevant to discussions of the vatican's... wait... I see it now.
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Allright, Illuminati... (Score:5, Funny)
Clever idea. (Score:5, Funny)
If they need extra power on certain days, they could just have the sun stop in the sky [biblegateway.com] for a while.
Doing for solar what they did for radio? (Score:5, Interesting)
As I recall (and Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] backs it up, FWIW), Vatican Radio may not be such a good example of a successful, well-received project. It takes a lot of juice to pump a radio signal from Italy to Asia, and from what I've heard, the folks who live nearby aren't too happy about it. Take the debate over cell phone (non-ionizing) radiation, and multiply it by a few megawatts.
OTOH, maybe it's a final solution to the problem: buy out everyone living near the tower, and replace the whole swath of land with solar concentrators. It's, um, brilliant!
Re:Doing for solar what they did for radio? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if they could build an antenna to capture some of the energy - Tesla style. But I'm no radio geek.
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What a dreadful mistake! (Score:5, Funny)
Regards,
Sarah P.
Sell juice (Score:5, Insightful)
A waste of good money for green (Score:5, Informative)
Solar PV is one of the least efficient ways to take money and make the world greener. As a charitable organization, the Vatican could get 50x the MWH offsets per buck by giving away efficient lighting, or if that is too abstract it could get 3x the MWH offset per dollar by buying new fridges for the poor who have old fridges from 1990 and earlier. Those fridges from the past use 2-3 times the energy per year that a modern one does, and so it is much greener if the Vatican buys them for the poor and uses grid power itself rather than putting up wasteful solar panels.
Re:A waste of good money for green (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that they can't recoup costs by giving away efficient appliances and bulbs, because they aren't a utility, nor are they a government with enough electricity users and a regulated utility to play those kinds of financial games.
So, unless there's untapped oil reserves sitting under Rome, this is just about the only way for them to get into the energy game, once they've replace all their own light bulbs.
Also, catching the tech wave is all about timing and positioning too. There's always going to be some folks who try too early, and others that think the ones catching the wave are too early. Somebody's got to try early, because the technology won't really be practical until there have been a few failures.
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E pur si muove? (Score:4, Funny)
Death Star (Score:5, Funny)
Of course, with the pope's uncanny resemblance to Emperor Palpatine, I can't resist the thought of hearing, upon completion of the 100 MegaWatt facility, the words: "NOW YOU WILL WITNESS THE POWER OF THIS FULLY OPERATIONAL BATTLE STATION!"...
666 million dollars (Score:5, Funny)
> The Vatican is going solar in a big way. The tiny state recently announced that it intends to spend 660 million dollars to create what will effectively be Europe's largest solar power plant.
For only 6 million dollars more they can add an option to generate power from the conversion of pure evil.
How do they store the energy? (Score:4, Interesting)
I know there are batteries but what size of batteries or what storage setup would be employed in banking the power captured during the day for use during night time?
Vatican to build power plant running on guilt (Score:5, Funny)
BOLGIAS 8 AND 9, Rome, Monday — The Vatican intends to build the biggest renewable energy plant in Europe, running solely on guilt [today.com].
"Now is the time to strike," said Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, governor of Vatican City. "The financial crisis has unleashed huge and renewable sources of guilt, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards for the Church."
Italy has a binding target for renewable energy consumption of 17 percent. The Vatican will export energy to Italy, powered by raw guilt from the largely Catholic populace. "So far it's proven indefinitely renewable."
Pope Benedict XVI has been outspoken on environmental issues. "The destruction of the environment, its improper or selfish use and the violent hoarding of the Earth's resources cause grievances, conflicts and wars, precisely because they are the consequences of an inhumane concept of development. You should FEEL BAD about that. And give us money."
The plant will be topped up at night by Dante-esque treadmills walked by priests sent back for kiddy-fiddling. "We feel terrible, terrible," said Fr O'Pederast. "I mean, we got caught."
Private hotline (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Funny)
Putting Jesus through college?
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I'm happy to see them put it to work a bit, especially after seeing the Cuzco Church of Santo Domingo literally COVERED in gold and silver and the royal grandeur that is Saint Peter's Square. Add together the rest of the real estate, hard assets, art, donations, low cost of labor, etc, etc and you have a truly mighty organization that can do a lot more than it is. I swear, I saw both Cuzco and the Vatican years ago, and the wealth still boggles my mind.
Personally, I'm happy to see that money actually doing something other than contributing to opulence. I think they should be doing much more of this investment.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure it's fun having huge chunks of gold around the place, but when their religious text contains categorical denunciation of wealth it strikes me as odd.
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Re:Catholic Church is pretty poor. (Score:5, Informative)
The only way the Catholic Church is worth a hundred billion of anything is when you calculate its worth in Lira.
Sorry, but nope. Catholic church is very wealthy... here's a pic of the solid gold [ggpht.com] alter in Cuzco... the picture does it absolutely no justice ... and there's probably 5 times more gold than in this pic and an equal amount of silver (this pic is not mine; I don't know who this pic belongs to; they don't let you take pics inside the church, so this person committed a bit of sacrilege by taking this)
And I'd say the items contained in this photo [wikipedia.org] are worth a few bucks.
In terms of net worth, they are very clearly rich.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Informative)
There will be a lot more people dying prematurely from starvation and other avoidable causes if global warming isn't checked. That aside, its hardly as if the Roman Catholic Church is uninvolved in feeding or providing medical care to the needy. On the more general "platform" issue, one could RTFA:
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Insightful)
Proof?
There's an Oasis in Egypt that's drying up. (Siwa? Can't remember exactly) Once it's gone, all the people living there will either have to move or die.
There's plenty of proof out there. Global warming may not be globally bad, but it sure is shitty for quite a few countries. If you can't see that, you're a buffoon.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Funny)
This is the Vatican we're talking about. What the hell are you doing telling them 'there's no proof of this'? It's never stopped them before.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Interesting)
You and the GP are both looking at it wrong. It costs $660 million dollars now, but it cuts the Vatican's power bill to zero, and the spare power can be sold to Italy at the market rate, resulting in a significant financial win for the Vatican. The money saved is money that can then be spent on humanitarian projects around the world. Over the expected life of the panels, the money the Church could spend should be far greater and can do far more good than spending the $660 on humanitarian causes up front.
It's like the people who suggested that the Church should sell all its properties (which some have estimated at on the order of $1-2 trillion dollars) and spend the money on the poor. The problem is that there are an estimated 963 million people in the world who are hungry, so even if you could feed them all for a net cost of only a dollar a day, the assets would last only about 3-6 years. Given the scale involved, a more realistic cost estimate would put that closer to 6 months. And, of course, when the money runs out, those hungry people would still be dirt poor, but there wouldn't be any more money coming in without congregants putting money in the collection basket every week. Thus, beyond a very short term view, that would be a foolish thing to do.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:4, Insightful)
but it cuts the Vatican's power bill to zero, and the spare power can be sold to Italy at the market rate, resulting in a significant financial win for the Vatican.
This would only be a "significant financial win" if the money gained by selling electricity in a reasonable time frame (say, 15 years) not only covered the cost of the panels and their maintenance, but paid more than a safe investment.
If this were the case, there would be capitalists all over the world assembling massive solar arrays for electricity production.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:4, Informative)
This is why, for example, the Catholic church prohibits contraception; it makes the church grow more quickly.
Hardly. Here is the argument:
1) God created nature, and nature was good. Thus, the law of nature, or "natural law", is good and God-created, and must not be broken. Therefore, things that are "unnatural", or break the law of nature, are evil.
2) In natural law, the purpose of sex is procreation. Thus, anything that interferes with that is evil, such as masturbation or birth control.
The first is pretty commonly accepted, but by no means universal, even by those who disagree on the Catholic church's position. To see one case where this plays out, most people's response to homosexuals is, "Ew, gross. That's just wrong. It's not natural." A large number of peoples aversions fall into this category.
Also realize that the Christian church grew out of the Jewish religion, where "spilling one's seed" or other non-procreative sexual acts were condemned, since that was not Yahweh's purpose for sex.
Suffice it to say, the argument is usually one about what is "natural" or not. If, however, you can argue against natural law being God's law, then that works too.
It was not until recently that sex for non-procreative purposes was determined "natural" by the Anglican church, and then once one had taken the plunge, almost every other denomination followed. The Catholic church has a hierarchy that creates immense inertia, which is why their official stance has not changed, even though many of their members do not agree with it.
Of course, at various times, there were other things that supported the church's opinion. For example, at one point in time, it was believed that a sperm contained a fully formed human being, which was just housed by the woman until birth, and so prevention of conception was tantamount to killing an unborn person, which is murder.
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Just remember when you give money to the church (Score:4, Informative)
When God tells you to do something, don't do it by half measure. Seems that people are reading more into that passage than was intended.
Which really isn't surprising.
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Re:40,000 households for 900 people (Score:5, Informative)
Or, we could RTFA, and find:
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