Nobrainer’s Think Tank

This one cracks me up: LUXURY EXECUTIVE RETREAT – SERENITY AT ITS FINEST.

This house is about a mile from my office. One of the country’s biggest malls is across the street from my office. A huge interstate is between my office and this house. The neighborhood this house is in is about 60 years old. Most of the homes are 60 years old. Most of them are nearly-identical little cottages that were 884 sq feet when they were brand new. I mean, look at the first picture. Nothing about this home evokes thoughts of “luxury”, “executive”, or “retreat.”

Says the first line of the ad, “At the end of a long day, come home to the tranquil splendor of country life in this newly renovated 900-square-foot New England style cottage.”

“Tranquil splendor of country life?” WTF!

This house has been on the market for over a month in an area where rental inventory is extremely low. The house is way over priced, and the owner is clearly crazy. I can’t believe he/she is having trouble finding tenants. But I do so hope they enjoy missing out on months of rent while they wait for the one big idiot who will pay them the $300/month over market price that they are asking.

I did not know this. Apparently 25% of the US population is from Maryland.

Seems suspicious

As a new parent, I’m particularly concerned with the prevalence of childhood asthma in our community. Childhood asthma is on the rise here in Astoria and across the country—and we know that bad air pollution days can trigger asthma attacks.

We must work to improve Astoria’s air quality to protect our children.

[...]

As someone who grew up in Astoria and has lived here my entire life, I remember that our air pollution was even worse in the past…

Think about that. The air is getting cleaner and asthma is getting worse. So we’ll “protect our children” by making the air even cleaner? Sure make the air cleaner, but maybe come up with a different justification becuse maybe, just maybe, something else is causing the rise in childhood asthma.

Perhaps that California cow campaign will now be put out to pasture.

Sorry, couldn’t resist.

Yesterday I was researching a new solar power plant that is going to be connected to the grid. I started with very little information, so I had to wade through a lot of false-leads to get the information I was seeking. In the process though, I ran across info for one solar power plant, the economics of which I found to be amazing.

A school in Pennsylvania chose to build a 1MW solar PV plant on something like ~6 acres, that I guess they didn’t have anything else to do with. The total cost was $4.8 million. This is not the amazing part. To get it built, they got grants to cover 51% of the costs. Most of that was federal and state grants. But they also got about 10% from the local utility. Still, that huge subsidy is not the amazing part. What surprised me, was that they get renewable energy credits for each megawatt-hour they generate, to the tune of something like $300. That’s the equivalent of 30 cents-per-killowatt-hour. And the local utility has to buy these credits. So for every killowatt-hour they produce, they don’t have to buy power from the grid at a cost of 11 cents/kwh and they then get paid 30 cents/kwh.

If this school had to rely only the power the solar PV farm produced to pay back the investment, it would take about 30 years. But with the freebies, the payback period is 4. 4 years! After that, I reckon they’ll be revenue positive as long as the price of the renewable energy credits doesn’t tank. Good deal if you can get it.

Stupid investors need to be protected from themselves, else they might lose their shirts investing in risky startups. Presumably the job of making losing investments in risky startups is work best left to government.