This gem comes courtesy my favorite local news outlet, the Press & Sun-Bulletin, from an article titled “Federal grant to pay for solar panels for Binghamton’s Carlisle Apartments“:

The Binghamton Housing Authority has won a $302,400 competitive federal grant to make one of its housing units more energy-efficient.

The grant, which was announced Tuesday, will pay for solar panels to be installed at the Carlisle Apartments on the city’s North Side, said David Tanenhaus, executive director of the housing authority. The panels will generate some electricity for the complex, he said.

The federal dollars coming to Binghamton are part of $500 million awarded nationwide by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, to renovate public housing units, or make them more energy-efficient. Of the $500 million, nearly $20 million went to 11 public housing authorities in New York. The money is coming from the federal stimulus program, approved earlier this year.

This is so outrageously funny, and tragic, I can’t begin to count the ways. Anyone who has ever lived in Greater Binghamton (or has even visited) will tell you we get about three days of sunshine per year. Well maybe a few more…but not many more! Paying money for solar panels in Binghamton is like planting a field of corn in the Sahara Desert with no water or irrigation. Completely nuts.

Don’t take my word for it. The National Weather Service has records going back decades. They keep track of cloudy days (see Cloudiness – Mean Number of Days). If you check it out, you’ll find Binghamton has more cloudy days on average than Seattle, Washington! The average number of cloudy days in Greater Binghamton is 212 days of the year. Another 102 days are classifed as partly cloudy. And only 52 days are clear. Seattle, WA on the other hand, has 201 cloudy days, 93 partly cloudy days, and 71 clear days.

Where I used to live, inside the city limits of Binghamton, I had a neighbor who installed a large solar panel on the roof of his house to heat his pool. That was it…just heat the pool water to a comfortable level. Didn’t work. Not enough sunshine. I know that solar technology is gradually getting better–but come on! I thought stimulus money was supposed to go for “shovel ready” construction jobs. Practical projects ready to be built now, like bridges and roads. Doinking around with solar panels in one of the cloudiest cities in the U.S. is an utter waste of taxpayer money.

So the question is: If stiumulus money is being this poorly spent right here in Binghamton, what about other places? Multiply our piddly $302K by a multitude of other cities across the country and you get depressed really quick, and not just from the lack of sunshine.

Technorati Tags: stimulus money, Broome County, Binghamton, solar energy