On March 29 The Day published an article authored by Matthew Daly and Jill Colvin of the Associated Press titled, “Trump, in break from other world leaders, digs in on coal.” It stated that the “plummeting cost of solar panels ... now can produce emissions-free electricity cheaper than burning coal.”

Daly and Colvin may not understand the full measure of solar’s cost in terms of real estate or the extensive electrical storage infrastructure needed to make solar a meaningful, rather than simply a measurable, commercial-industrial power source.

Each hour, the customers of the New England electrical distribution grid consume a very approximate, conversational average of about 15,000 megawatts. Using as a reference, the actual average net generation of a modern photovoltaic facility operating in the Carolinas, where the sun flies a bit higher in the sky, suggests that to allow for the necessary structural framework, maintenance access roads and electrical auxiliary equipment, one can conservatively expect to need about six acres of land for each megawatt-hour of AC generation from photovoltaics during the six hours of high sun on a cloudless day. There are 640 acres in one square mile. Thus, to replace New England’s 15,000 megawatt-hours with solar panels would require about 99,000 acres. That would be a square of land measuring about 12 miles on each side.

Megawatts are, to many, an abstract term. Setting one megawatt equal to about 1,340 horsepower shows that New England uses about 21 million horsepower per average hour (considerably more during the winter and summer peaks). Therefore, to provide lighting, ventilation, transportation, communications, to move goods and to provide services, to teach, to heal, to forge, to weld, for retail, for wholesale, to pump water, to treat sewage, to freeze and chill, to heat and serve, to run escalators and elevators, to print newspapers (fallacious articles and all) and to power those few factories that have not (yet) moved to China, we need to generate about 480 million electrical horsepower during the course of an average, 24-hour day.

Solar is limited by the awkward penchant of the sun to set each and every evening. Regardless, if one could build a gigantic system of storage batteries, capable of charging from zero to 100 percent capacity in only about six hours and then steadily deliver from these batteries nearly 375 million horsepower over the 18 hours, and do this without any thermal losses from massive AC to DC battery chargers and equally immense DC to AC inverters, a photovoltaic facility measuring about 21 miles on each of its four sides would easily suffice. For added peace of mind, a mere 34-mile square could provide reassurance for those rare times in New England when the weather might fail to cooperate for two whole days.

So it can be done, if you want to do it.

Clearly, despite The Day’s endless and quite tiresome cheerleading, existing solar technology, when compared to the staggering amount of energy needed to fuel our modern lifestyle, is what I like to call, “hobby quality,” suitable for mounting on one’s roof like some environmentalist’s hood ornament. However, for powering a 24-hour, all season, middle-class job’s building economy, this renewable resource is of exceedingly limited value.

Sadly, while Connecticut and our nation drown in debt, photovoltaic panel installations continue to be funded from the public purse through tax credits and similar schemes, as if there is no limit to how much money we can borrow. Furthermore, these programs are being presented to the voters without the practical, empirical information essential to understand the true cost-benefit of this egregiously expensive, heavily taxpayer subsidized, intermittently functional, utterly weather dependent, ideological but certainly not technological, panacea.

The last taxpayer to leave New England may not need to turn off the lights.

Lou Palone worked at Millstone nuclear power station for 17 years, retiring 15 years ago. He previously served in the Navy’s nuclear propulsion program. He lives in Waterford.