Rant: My local park's new solar panels are just for show

I walked through Riverside Park in Denver last week and noticed they installed these big solar panels on the community center roof. Looks nice from a distance. But I got close and saw the inverter box is completely dead, with a big crack in the glass and birds nesting inside. Then I checked the meter on the side of the building - it's been spinning backwards for zero kilowatts since January according to the date sticker. I asked a city worker trimming trees nearby about it. He just shrugged and said 'they've been like that since they put them up, budget ran out'. So the city spent around $80,000 on a system that's never produced a single watt. Has anyone else seen this kind of thing in your town where they install green tech but don't actually maintain it?

2 comments

2 Comments

robinson.holly1mo ago

Oh man, that sounds just like my neighborhood... we got a fancy new electric car charging station at the library a couple years back, and the screen's been blank since month two. I actually tried to use it once and just stood there like an idiot with my dead phone feeling like the world's biggest fool. It's like we're all just participating in some elaborate green theater where nobody checks if the props actually work...

-1

oliver_ward141mo ago

Our public transit station put in four "smart" benches with built-in phone charging last spring, and by August only one of them even had a working plug left. I tried to charge my phone on that one last week and it just flickered at me for ten minutes before giving up entirely. You're exactly right @robinson.holly, it feels like someone just needed the grant money and nobody ever came back to see if any of it actually works.