DISQUS

Facebook User · 8 months ago

This looks like it'll be an exciting project and green too! Notice how many jobs were discussed! YAY!

Peter Antypas · 8 months ago

We absolutely need an innovation hub like this. In the mean time, the freaking Emirates is beating us to it with Masdar while we fight over saving this dinosaur called the F22 Raptor ...

Vaughn · 8 months ago

I love how the developers/fund managers/scoundrels are using solar and other green initiatives to get investors to fund the construction of more homes (and local council members to approve this project) in Florida when there is a foreclosure every 20 seconds in the state. Plus there are tens of thousands of vacant speculation homes that developers/builders have in their inventories that they can’t sell. Florida and the entire county does not need more inventory of homes. The United States housing bubble has created a depression throughout the world; foreign countries were the primary funding source for the great expansion from 2002 through 2008. If the developers/fund managers/scoundrels want to reduce the carbon foot print, they should buy 17,500 bank owned homes in Florida out of foreclosure, gut them, apply all the great green ideas and resell them. This would be cheaper, would allow the ranch to say a ranch and temporarily take 17,500 off the market. I would be willing to bet (if I could short the energy company’s solar project proposed for this ranch) that in 3 years this is a total flop. Why isn’t anyone else questioning this ridiculous project?

Peter Antypas · 8 months ago

I can answer your question very easily: "Master planned communities" that contain these homes you're referring to, have NEVER been designed with energy efficiency and carbon footprint in mind. Gutting and re-fitting the homes isn't going to solve the problem. We need to completely rethink and re-invent urban planning in this country and for that we have to start with a clean slate. We need communities that minimize the need for driving. We need to abolish the idea of the commute. We need to do away with stupid zoning laws and covenants designed for an era of oil glut.

Who knows if this project will succeed, of course, but at least I support the initiative.

Vaughn · 8 months ago

If we can get the masses to buy into this type of project maybe the government should offer a tax rebate for those who abandon their current homes using electricity from coal and nuclear plants and purchase in carbon neutral communities energized by the sun, wind and earth. I say that in jest because until supply and demand of housing in south Florida gets back on track it will be extremely hard for developers of new and “green” homes to complete with bank owned and homes developers own that they must sell below replacement value. Ideas are great, but this one is impractical.
In my opinion, being a solar panel and solar hot water heater owner, the means to the end of the energy crisis is solar and other energy producing products on the manufactured good for which the energy is used. Creating these farms full of wind turbines and solar is great but we should be individually responsible for our own power requirements. Study’s done on a proposed wind farm off the coast of Delaware (where I live) show that 50-65% of the power generated from the turbines is lost in transmission. That’s a lot when you consider the cost of each kW produced.

Ed Gunther · 8 months ago

Please check your facts about the world's largest utility scale Photovoltaic plants at PV Resources (http://www.pvresources.com/en/top50pv.php).

Right now it is 60 MW in Olmedilla (Castila La Mancha), Spain, commissioned September 2008. So yes, this will be larger but not two (2) times.

Camille Ricketts · 8 months ago

You're right, the Olmedilla plant is bigger -- the sources I used yesterday cited Waldpolenz Solar Park in Germany as the largest in the world. Thanks for catching this.