Hawai'i to generate 30% of its power from solar

Pacific Magazine has an article about a planned 10-acre solar farm on Hawai'i that will generate 30% of the island's electricity. That seems huge to me, and it has enormous implications for smaller island such as those in the Federated States of Micronesia. Yap, for example, generates its electricity using diesel, and diesel is extremely expensive out there because of shipping costs. Apparently the costs of solar haven't penciled out in the past, but with the price of diesel rising, that might change. Of course, a problem for these small islands is that they might not have the space for a farm of solar panels.

Update: voidampersand points out that this is 30% of the power needed on the island of Lanai (pop. 3000), not the whole of Hawai'i (or even of the island of Hawai'i). Not quite as impressive as I first thought.

The destruction of London

On the morning of the 21st of August, in the memorable year of the calamity, I happened to be at Cookham, a pleasant and pretty village which then occupied the western bank of the Thames just below the spot where the Look-out Tower of the Earthquake and Eruption Department now dominates the whole wide plain of the Glassy Rock Desert. In place of the black lake of basalt which young people see nowadays winding its solid bays in and out among the grassy downs, most men still living can well remember a gracious and smiling valley, threaded in the midst of a beautiful river.

-- Grant Allen, "The Thames Valley Catastrophe" (The Strand Magazine, December 1897)