As a leader in residential solar energy installations, Vinyasun, is in the final stages of launching its most powerful panel yet – Nuclear Operated Wireless Solar(NOWSolar) -- a "wireless" nuclear powered "solar panel". A single “panel” can power an entire average house and it will cost roughly 10X that of existing technology but support from the utility industry has been largely positive. Despite the massive price increase, Vinyasun, will still offer the systems for zero down. The “panels” will be owned and operated by large monopoly utilities once installed, primarily because even a single failure could be catastrophic to the environment plus it ensures that people will have absolutely no control over their energy bills in the future from going "solar".
Inventors of the product claim that people want more power, not just solar power. “Why use the power of just a single sun that is millions of light years away when you can use the power of 100 suns directly on your rooftop.” Each day people are plugging more things into their homes. Just yesterday, Tesla received over 180,000 reservations for a plug in electric car. That car is going to need to be charged. “It takes eight minutes for the sun’s energy to get to earth, people aren’t willing to wait that long to get their energy. Our NOWSolar system delivers energy now.”
The grid needs more distributed energy but if people continue to use traditional solar it will force utilities and regulators to adopt policies and regulations that are forward thinking and that are beneficial to the overall economy. This is a stark comparison to current the policies that protect existing utility profits and their business model. Change is clearly just too hard. NOWSolar keeps things basically the same -- which utilities believe is better for everyone -- and it's easier for everyone to just believe what they believe.
The interesting thing about this system, despite the images represented in this article, it looks nothing like traditional solar panels. The system has large metal and concrete components, cooling systems and emissions stacks all like a regular nuclear power plant – it’s just on the roof -- probably. But, because the system uses "solar" in the name it still gets all of the tax incentives that the utility can use to boost profits as it evades all of the traditional regulation siting a nuclear plant faces. Plus, Florida laws strictly prohibit traditional nuclear power plants in neighborhoods, whereas solar panels are always allowed. Using solar in the name has significant advantages.
Vinyasun thinks that eventually this will be a huge win for the solar industry, even though eliminating the industry all together is likely the result. Despite making a system that is inherently dangerous and expensive that the utilities can control, using a technology they support and naming it solar can really help to bolster the utilities image in the court of public opinion. Solar is positive energy, while nuclear tends to be less positive. Eventually, the nuclear industry will just be renamed the solar industry, which is obviously beneficial to the solar industry, well, the new solar industry.
Vinyasun is just simply jumping on the bandwagon. When utilities backed an amendment called “Smart Solar” to add excessive regulations to Florida’s solar industry and take away consumer choices, it went largely unnoticed and fooled even the majority of the Florida Supreme Court justices. When utility public relations specialists simply hijacked the term “Community Solar”, a term reserved for large solar installations owned by actual communities of people to rebrand the term Utility Solar, a term reserved for utility owned solar projects that benefit utility shareholders, polling numbers and stock prices went up. Vinyasun is just moving the issue forward for both solar and nuclear industries.
The system isn’t even Wireless – NoSolar – was far too accurate and didn’t sound as good – so simply adding “Wireless” to the name really rounded out the acronyms approval rating during focus groups.
Florida’s laws allow utilities to collect fees on all of the engineering, permitting and design work that goes into building a nuclear power plant. The NOWSolar system will be no different. As utility customers reserve their NOWSolar installations, utilities will be able to begin collecting millions of dollars of fees through all of their existing customers bills. Plus, even if it turns out that small rooftop nuclear generators that are simply called solar panels are inherently impossible to install -- the fees are non-refundable. This extra inflow of capital can be great for utility job creation or even possibly boost Super PAC campaign contributions, without the burden of performance, that could trickle down to the overall economy and policy makers.
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This is clearly an April Fools day charade. Vinyasun has no plans or desire to develop small nuclear reactors to be placed on the rooftops of homes and businesses while allowing your local or monopoly utility to siphon money out of your pockets. However, be aware, this post is comprised of satire based on real events included in many of the links that you should seriously be paying attention to before your rights as a consumer are quietly stripped away from you.