The new "Sunshine State"

Today's WSJ has an article HERE[$] on New Jersey's solar electricity initiative. Some excerpts...

"New Jersey's biggest utility is outfitting 200,000 utility poles with solar panels, part of the state's embrace of a try-anything strategy that has made it the nation's second-biggest producer of solar energy behind California...

FedEx Corp., for example, said Thursday it will begin installing solar panels atop its distribution hub in Woodbridge, N.J., next month. Covering about three acres and capable of generating 2.42 megawatts of electricity, it is expected to be the largest rooftop solar facility in the U.S. when completed in November. The solar array will satisfy about 30% of the facility's electricity needs...

California also is on a solar tear. It wants "a million solar roofs" a decade from now, and is spending $3.3 billion on subsidies, hoping to get 3,000 megawatts installed. More than 158 megawatts of grid-tied solar power were installed in California last year, double the amount installed in 2007. Since the 1980s, California has installed nearly 500 megawatts of grid-tied solar power, equivalent to one large power plant, but still a tiny fraction of the 40,000 megawatts the state needs on a summer day..."

Petra Solar has the contract to provide the solar panels for the utility pole project.

Pathetic

One of MSNBC's lead stories today...

Geithner travels globe, pitching U.S. debt
Treasury secretary must convince foreign governments investment is safe

...Publicly traded U.S. debt — which excludes deficits the government owes to itself in Social Security and other trust funds — stood at 41 percent of the total economy in 2008. It is projected to climb to 82 percent of the entire economy by 2019...

"If these trends are not reversed, the world will stop buying our debt and the economy will break," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Full article HERE.