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Letter: Problems with solar

Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Power outages in California clearly demonstrate the unsuitability of solar and wind alternatives to traditional sources of power.

A bigger problem than unreliability is the damage to our environment caused by solar panels. The big misconception regarding solar panels is that they convert sunlight into electricity giving us an unlimited supply of power from the sun. This is false. Electricity as we use it in our homes is a flow of electrons through a wire. Light is a wave of particles called photons. A flow of photons through a wire produces no usable power. Atoms in the materials that make up our solar panels being fairly large and complex relative to the periodic table have loosely connected electrons in their outer shell that are knocked loose by collisions with photons coming from the sun (a phenomenon predicted by Einstein). These loose electrons are then collected by the wiring in the panel and become usable electricity.

This is fine until the pa...

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