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The Solar Spectrum And Why “UV Solar Panels” Are A Con Job
HomepageSolar Panels

We are getting reports of people paying through the nose for 5kW of “UV Solar Panels” from fast talking salespeople. Paying more for “UV Panels” is about as sensible as buying rainbow powered panels from a leprechaun.

The sun is a very large, naturally occurring, fusion reactor in the sky.

It constantly releases a vast amount of energy. Even by the standards of sky fusion reactors it’s pretty powerful and outshines at least 90% of the stars out there.

How powerful is it?

Well, if you took:

all the energy humanity produces in from burning coal, oil, and natural gas
and all the energy from the fission of uranium and other elements in nuclear reactors
and all the energy spun out of wind
and then took the total for an entire year, it would come to less than the amount of sunlight energy hitting the earth every seven seconds1.

Sunlight energy arrives in the form of photons, which is a word that means ‘the smallest amount of light possible’. These photons have different wavelengths2 with longer wavelengths having less energy and shorter wavelengths having more.

If a photon doesn’t have enough energy our eyes can’t see it. The same goes if it has too much energy. But if photons are just Goldilocks, then our eyes can see them and we call them visible light.

Photons that don’t have enough energy to be seen are called infrared and those with too much are called ultraviolet.

Sunlight energy that reaches the ground is around 4% ultraviolet, 43% visible light, and 53% infrared. Solar panels mostly convert visible light into electrical energy, and they also can make use of almost half the infrared energy. But solar panels only use a small portion of ultraviolet.

Why UV Panels are a con job
Because ultraviolet is such a small percentage of sunlight energy, if anyone ever tries to sell you a panel they claim uses ultraviolet light, then if ultraviolet is all it uses it is really, truly, crap compared to a normal panel. Or if it somehow functions like a normal panel as well as making uses of ultraviolet, then it wouldn’t be that much of an improvement over an ordinary panel. It would just be maybe 5% more efficient. That’s enough to make a 20% efficient panel 21% efficient.

As solar panels that can make good use of ultraviolet don’t really exist, even that modest improvement is not realistic. While you can get solar cells that make better use of ultraviolet for use in space, those cells aren’t used in panels you can put on your roof.

Sunlight In Space
Because the sun is a giant, uncontrolled, nuclear reactor, you might think that it would create a great deal of dangerous radiation. And you’d bloody well be right. But because the nuclear reactions happen deep within the sun’s core and the sun is what we scientists call very, very, big the deadly radiation can’t get out.

Light itself can have a hard time escaping the sun and it can take 100,000 years for a photon to get from the center of the sun to its surface. From there it only takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds to splat into someone’s solar panel.

Compared to its total energy output the sun only produces a trivial amount of high energy radiation such as x-rays and gamma rays. But if you are a fragile organic being traveling into space, that trivial amount could become rather important, so I recommend taking precautions3.

Sunlight On Earth
By the time sunlight energy reaches the top of earth’s atmosphere its intensity will be around 1,366 watts per square meter4. Passing through the atmosphere will reduce that by 18% down to 1,120 watts. Mind you, that’s 1,120 watts at noon, at the equator, on a clear day.

Because conditions are rarely perfect, Standard Test Condition (STC) for solar panels is set at the nice round number of 1,000 watts per square meter. This means if you have a 270 watt panel it will provide that many watts of electrical power when exposed to sunlight of 1,000 watts per square meter.

And don’t worry — nothing in your solar system will blow up or break if sunlight exceeds that amount. Hardware manufacturers and system designers take it into account. They also take into allow for sunlight intensity going even higher if it shines through a hole in clouds and panels are hit at the same time by direct sunlight and indirect light scattered by surrounding clouds.

Sunlight Spectrum
This diagram from Wikipedia commons (I must remember to give them some money at some point) shows how much sunlight gets through to the earth’s surface. The yellow area shows the amount of sunlight hitting the top of the atmosphere , and the red area is how much reaches the ground.

Image source: Wikipedia commons

At noon, at the equator the atmosphere reduces sunlight energy hitting the ground by 18%. However the graph above isn’t a snap shot taken under ideal conditions at noon on the equator, but is instead representative of sunlight hitting the earth as a whole. This is why it shows the atmosphere taking a lot more than an 18% bite out of sunlight. In the morning and afternoon sunlight passes through more atmosphere before it hits the ground and higher latitudes have a similar effect.

As you can see in the UV column, the atmosphere stops more than half the ultraviolet light, mostly thanks to the ozone layer, which is what the O3 at the bottom left corner stands for. Moving to the right, more than one quarter of visible light is lost and then the atmosphere takes some big bites out of infrared. The big pieces missing from the red are the result of gases in the atmosphere absorbing specific bands of sunlight energy before it hits the ground5.

The Visible Light Spectrum
Examining only the visible light section of the sunlight spectrum shows it is made of a beautiful rainbow of colors, as this image that fell off the back of a truck on its way to the US National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration displays:

As you can see, the spectrum as six colors.

Wait a minute, let me change that…

As far as I can see, the spectrum has six colors.

As far as Issac Newton could see the spectrum had seven colors.

The people who made this image decided to tack deep red on at the end, making for eight colors.

And for all I care, you can divide it into as many different shades and call them colors as you like.

The mnemonic I use to remember Zaccy Newt’s seven colors is Roy G. Biv. This stands for Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet.

Visible light starts at a wavelength of around 390 nanometers and ends with red (or deep red) at around 700 nanometers. A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.

Spectrum Of Sunlight Used By Silicon PV
Now here is a spectrum I stole from the University of NSW. It shows sunlight reaching the ground as the one I used earlier does, but this one uses a horrible greenish-grey color to show what portion of sunlight energy a silicon solar panel could convert into electrical energy:

There is a problem with this graph because it shows 49% of the energy being converted to electricity and this is much too high. The highest efficiency of any solar panel that can be bought today is around 23% which is less than half the amount shown. So I drew on the original diagram with my purple pen to show how much light gets converted by such a solar panel. Note that whilst the area is about the correct size – the shape of the enclosing line is a guess.

A doctored version of the first diagram to show how much light is used by a commercially available panel.

As you can see, silicon solar panels can manage to use some of the ultraviolet portion of sunlight on the far left. The amount increases as it becomes visible light and panels go on to produce most of their electricity from visible light.

Unlike with ultraviolet, in the infrared there is a very sharp cutoff in the sunlight energy used by the panel at 1,100 nanometers. This is because wavelengths longer than this simply ignore the silicon atoms and pass by them with little or no effect. The silicon is transparent to infrared of this wavelength or longer.

Multi-junction Solar Cells
A multi-junction solar cell is basically several solar cells crammed into one, with each part specializing in a portion of the spectrum of sunlight energy. The diagram below, that I stole from the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, shows an example:

Multi-junction cells can have efficiencies of over 35% in normal sunshine and over 46% in concentrated sunshine. But because of their great expense they are not used in panels for rooftops or solar farms and are instead used on space probes and satellites and in specialized concentrated solar applications.

Ultraviolet Panels Don’t Really Exist
Today silicon solar panels make up over 97% of world panel production. The rest is almost entirely cadmium telluride thin film panels produced by companies such as First Solar. These panels can use slightly more infrared than silicon ones, but they should also use slightly less ultraviolet.

Currently people are working to increase the amount of ultraviolet solar panels use. Despite this, all currently available panels are visible light panels first, infrared panels second, and ultraviolet panels only as a distant third. So little ultraviolet hits the earth’s surface that nothing is likely to ever change this. So if a salesperson tells you they have an ultraviolet panel, they are either not being truthful or they don’t know what they are talking about.

What Matters Is A Panel’s Watts And Efficiency
Because ultraviolet only makes up a small portion of the energy in sunlight, the amount of ultraviolet light a panel uses is not going to make much difference to its performance. All else equal, the more ultraviolet energy it uses the better, but there is no need for anyone who is looking to put panels on their roof to worry about it. An all else equal panel that uses more ultraviolet will have a slightly higher wattage and a slightly higher efficiency and those are figures you can easily use to compare it with other panels. Just how much ultraviolet light it uses shouldn’t be a concern.

Footnotes
This means that, with 17% efficient panels, we could supply all the world’s energy needs with an area that is only 41 seconds in size. ↩
If you are wondering whether light is a particle or a wave, the answer is yes. ↩
Such as removing all radiation shielding so gamma rays will hulk you up. ↩
We know this from satellites such as ACRIMSAT, which is a satellite that was banished to space because of its crimes. ↩
CO2 may not appear to be doing much absorbing of energy here. But while it has little effect on sunlight coming in, its major effect is on longer wave infrared emitted from the ground. ↩
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View Comments (15)
SHS says:August 17, 2017 at 6:04 pm
Hi Finn
Still on the same topic,
my question is: is it worthwhile to use N type solar cell rather than P type
as it is more reliable and efficient bot more price $/watts
As I know only 2 top brands ( I f I am NOt wrong ) uses N type

Thank you

Regards Mel

Ronald Brakels says:August 17, 2017 at 6:30 pm
Hello Mel

If you have room to spare on your roof then it can definitely be cheaper to use P-type solar panels. But if your goal is to get as much solar electricity as possible out of a limited amount of space, then premium N-type panels will be best because of their high efficiency.

Of course, some people just like having the best panels available, along with their usually excellent replacement warranties.

As panels with panel string optimization are now available for a relatively low premium, it is now easier to place panels on "difficult" roofs that previously might only have had a limited amount of space where it was practical to place panels, so using them instead high efficiency, but more expensive, panels is an option.

Danny Oneill says:August 17, 2017 at 10:04 pm
Ronald I need some advice please. I have 8 BBPV-175 MONOCRYSTALLINE panels on my roof with a 1.5kw SR2000TL inverter. I have just recently had a ACUMEN smart meter installed by Origin Energy. The panels and inverter are now around 7yrs old. I am thinking of expanding the system by installing a couple more panels. In plain simple English please, what would be your advice ?

Ronald Brakels says:August 17, 2017 at 11:20 pm
Hello Danny

There are a few things you can do. Which is best will depend upon your goals and how much you can spend.

(1) You could add solar panels to your existing inverter. But it will be difficult to find 175 watt panels to match your old ones. You can add larger panels, but their performance will be dragged down to that of the weakest existing panel, so a portion of their capacity will simply go to waste. Your maximum panel capacity, whether it is used or not, can be one-third more than your inverter capacity.

(2) You could have a new solar system installed and keep your old one.

(3) You could get a new solar system and have your old one removed.

Without knowing more I can’t say which would be best for you. But, with increased electricity prices and feed-in tariffs, I am tempted to recommend the third option, provided the initial cost would cause you no hardship.

Danny Oneill says:August 18, 2017 at 12:12 am
Thankyou very much for your quick response, I will weigh up what you have advised, get some quotes and go from there,. Thanks again.

NOYGDB says:March 21, 2018 at 7:28 am
We’re getting closer to the point where solar panels can utilize UV… recently researchers found they could create ‘photonic matter’ by firing UV through a cloud of ultra-cold rubidium atoms… what came out the other side was 100,000 times slower than the speed of light and had invariant mass, so it wasn’t light (or it’d be traveling at the speed of light and would have no invariant mass), it was matter. This is perhaps the first demonstration of light-to-matter conversion. We’ve seen plenty of matter-to-light conversion, but not a lot of the reverse.

This ‘photonic matter’ was comprised of three photons… they’d found a way of setting up a stable three-photon standing wave in the Higgs field in accordance with E^2 = p^2 c^2 + m^2 c^4, to put it in quantum field theory parlance.

All matter is comprised of standing waves, still traveling at c, but ‘pinging’ back and forth against the Higgs field at ~100 trillion trillion times per second. Thus, it’s stationary and thus invariant from our frame of reference. That’s the primary difference between energy and matter, after all.

So eventually we’ll get to the point where photons are combined as described above, and their combined energy will be high enough to bridge the band gap… meaning solar panels that can operate from the heat thrown off by objects. Solar panels that can even work at night.

The research detailed above also represents maybe the second or third step in the long process of creating a Star Trek-type replicator, making any invariant matter directly from energy.

We’re not there yet, but we’re well on our way.

Brooke says:July 24, 2018 at 2:52 am
Hi Ronald,

I’m an educator and I’ve been brainstorming activities to teach kids about invisible wavelengths of light. I bought a small solar panel and wired it to an aux cord. When the cord is plugged into an amp, I can transfer both visible and infrared light into sound. I was wondering if you know if there are any solar panels out there that are sensitive to UV light (I get that it is not the most efficient for generating electricity). I was really hoping to add UV light to the illustration but a UV flashlight just blocks the visible light and does not produce a sound with the panel that I have right now.

Thanks for your help!

Brooke

Ronald Brakels says:July 24, 2018 at 4:15 pm
The most UV sensitive solar cell I know of is amorphous silicon. Looking online I see they can still be bought. I suppose another option would be to use an ordinary silicon solar cell and cover it with a phosphor to convert UV light into visible light but I’m not sure how to go about that. Having kids cut open a fluorescent tube and exposing them to mercury vapor is probably frowned upon these days. Also the phosphor might decay very rapidly when exposed to air.

Martin says:November 21, 2018 at 7:04 am
So what happens in cloud cover and we get a Sun Burn through T Shirts. When the IR is being absorbed the UV flies through. So a boost of adding a high bandwidth of light in the blue and violets that are forgotten and make sure the various UV light that we have to protect our bodies from makes light.

Baode says:May 22, 2019 at 4:49 pm
"which is what the O3 at the bottom right corner stands for", [bottom right] might be typo for [bottom left].

Ronald Brakels says:May 22, 2019 at 10:47 pm
Oops, yes definitely should have been "bottom left". Thanks for pointing that out. Corrected now.

I really must learn to tell left from right one of these days.

casper van zyl says:September 3, 2019 at 1:34 am
Hi Ronald – thanx for a hughely insightful and humerous article – My congratulations to you and regards to Tonto !!!

Phil says:November 8, 2019 at 3:37 pm
Surely, if we could absorb more Infrared, we could prevent it from bouncing back up into the atmosphere – light in this wavelength is the core driver of the greenhouse effect.

Trees currently help deal with this. However, with fields ever turning concrete, panels that absorb infrared could help offset this.

We need this feature.

Rajesh says:December 6, 2019 at 5:43 am
Why can’t we use infrared part to heat up a TEG to produce electricity?

B says:November 10, 2020 at 5:16 am
Thank for the humorous and clear explanation to an utterly nascent type like myself. You answered several questions at once.

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Plandemic

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…
Plandemic refers to a pair of 2020 conspiracy theory videos produced by Mikki Willis which promote misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. They feature Judy Mikovits, a discredited former researcher who has been described as an anti-vaccine activist despite her denial. Other people are featured on the second video, Plandemic: Indoctornation.

Mikki Willis (left) next to conspiracist[1] Rashid Buttar (right), shooting for the second video.[2]
The first video went viral, becoming one of the most widespread pieces of COVID-19 misinformation. It was soon removed by multiple platforms. However, Indoctornation did not get as much attention. The videos were criticized by scientists and health professionals for its misleading claims. The Sinclair Broadcast Group interviewed Mikovits for the film but the episode did not air.

Background
First video

The logo used for the first video
Summary
The first video, titled Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind Covid-19,[13] promotes the conspiracist claim that vaccines are "a money-making enterprise that causes medical harm."[14] It takes the form of an interview between the producer, Mikki Willis, and Mikovits, in which Mikovits makes numerous unsupported or false claims around coronavirus, and her own controversial history.[13]

Fact-checker PolitiFact highlighted eight false or misleading claims made in the video, including:[13]

That Mikovits was held in jail without charge. Mikovits was briefly held on remand after an accusation of theft from her former employer, the Whittemore Peterson Institute, but charges were dropped. There is no evidence to support her claim that notebooks removed from the Institute were "planted" or that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and its director Anthony Fauci bribed investigators.[13] When asked, both Mikovits and Willis admitted that it was an error to say she had not been charged, and in fact she had meant to say that the charges were dropped, Mikovits saying that "I’ve been confused for a decade" and that in future she would try to be more clear when she talks about the criminal charge ("I’ll try to learn to say it differently.").[15]
That the virus was manipulated. An article in Nature analyses the likely origins and finds that "Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus".[16]
That the virus occurred from SARS-1 within a decade, and this is inconsistent with natural causes. This is incorrect: SARS-CoV-2 is similar but not directly descended from SARS-CoV (SARS-1), with only 79% genetic similarity.[17]
That hospitals receive $13,000 from Medicare if they "call it COVID-19" when a patient dies. This claim, which had previously been made on The American Spectator and WorldNetDaily,[18] was rated "half true" by PolitiFact[19] and Snopes:[20] payments are made, but the amount is open to dispute, and there is no evidence that this influences diagnosis, and in fact the evidence suggests that COVID-19 is, possibly, under-diagnosed.[21]
That hydroxychloroquine is "effective against these families of viruses". This claim originates with work by Didier Raoult, which has subsequently received a "statement of concern" from the editors of the journal in which it was published.[22] The first randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine for the treatment of COVID-19 found no evidence of benefit and some evidence of harm.[23] The NIH says that there is insufficient evidence to recommend for or against this use.[24] As of May 7, 2020, other bodies were running additional controlled trials to investigate hydroxychloroquine’s safety and efficacy.[13]:1
That flu vaccines increase the chance of contracting COVID-19 by 36%. This claim is false:[25] it misinterprets a disputed article that studied the 2017—2018 influenza season, predating the COVID-19 pandemic. The claim that the flu vaccine increases the chance of contracting COVID-19 does not appear in the original article at all. The author (Greg G. Wolff) wrote that coronavirus cases increased from 5.8% (non-vaccinated) to 7.8% (vaccinated) with odds ratio of 1.36, with (1.14, 1.63) 95% confidence interval, and the article highlight said: "Vaccinated personnel did not have significant odds of respiratory illnesses".[26] The article was referring to seasonal coronaviruses (common cold), but COVID-19 was added by the website disabledveterans.org.[25]
That despite the goal of preventing coronaviruses, flu vaccines themselves contain coronaviruses. In reality, there are no vaccines with coronaviruses.[27]
That "Wearing the mask literally activates your own virus. You’re getting sick from your own reactivated coronavirus expressions." This claim is unsupported by evidence. Masks prevent airborne transmission of the virus, especially during the asymptomatic period (up to 14 days), when carriers may not even be aware they have the disease;[28] a virus may be de-activated, but cannot add to one’s infection level if it leaves the body even temporarily.[29]
Science also repeats some of the points given by PolitiFact, and fact-checked some other claims too, where Mikovits and Willis claimed:[30]

That Italy’s COVID-19 epidemic has links with influenza vaccines and the presence of coronaviruses in dogs. There is no relation whatsoever between the three.
That SARS-CoV-2 was created "between the North Carolina laboratories, Fort Detrick, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, and the Wuhan laboratory." Science says that considering the relations between the US and the Wuhan lab has stopped, the claim is certainly false.
That Mikovits is not anti-vaccine. Science argued otherwise, saying that she once wore a Vaxxed II merchandise, a sequel to a film promoting the claim that vaccines cause autism, as well as that she once sent a PowerPoint presentation to them calling for an "immediate moratorium" for "all vaccines."
That the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) "colluded and destroyed" Mikovits’ reputation, and that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) did nothing but secreting it. Science responded that "Mikovits has presented no direct evidence that HHS heads colluded against her."
That Mikovits’s article on Science "revealed that the common use of animal and human fetal tissues was unleashing devastating plagues of chronic diseases", when the article does not reveal anything of the sort.
That Mikovits’s Ph.D. thesis Negative Regulation of HIV Expression in Monocytes "revolutionized the treatment of HIV/AIDS", when the thesis "had no discernible impact on the treatment of HIV/AIDS."
Mikovits also alludes to a number of conspiracy theories which claim Bill Gates is implicated in causing the pandemic in order to profit from an eventual vaccine,[14] and makes false and unsupported claims that beaches should remain open, as "healing microbes in the saltwater" and "sequences" in the sand can "protect against the coronavirus".[31] The video claims that the numbers of COVID-19 deaths are purposely being misreported in an effort to control people.[32]

Willis’ previous credits include numerous conspiracy theorist videos, as well as cinematography on Neurons to Nirvana, a film that makes therapeutic claims about psychedelics.[13] External videos were also included in the video, such as a video of a chiropractor who claimed that tonic water can treat or even prevent COVID-19, and a video of a press conference among doctors Dan Erickson and Artin Massihi in Bakersfield, California alleging that the COVID-19 pandemic was overhyped. These external videos were also disputed beforehand.[33]

Production

Logo of Elevate, the California-based production company for the first video, which is owned by Willis himself.[13]
Willis claimed via the Ojai Valley News that "Because of [Mikovits'] direct connection with [those] involved with the pandemic, […] I reached out to her for advice. We met, had a meeting, and what she revealed to me I knew the world needed to know." He also said that shooting took a day, and editing took two weeks. He claimed that he halted continuation in editing a film he made in 2019, that "Plandemic was the priority." Initially, he is also unsure whether to make a continuation or not.[2]

Release
The video was released on May 4, 2020.[34] It spreads virally on social media, garnering millions of views,[14] making it one of the most widespread pieces of COVID-19 misinformation. "Judy Mikovits" became a trending search on Google for two days.[35] Before being removed, one of the videos featuring the work reached 1 million views.[36]

A YouTube spokesperson said that the platform will be removing videos supporting the claims of Plandemic without sufficient evidence, highlighting that it is "[s]uggesting that wearing a mask can make you sick could lead to imminent harm". Vimeo’s Trust & Safety team has removed the video for violating their policies on misinformation. Twitter said that hashtags like #PlagueofCorruption and #PlandemicMovie have been blacklisted, however noted that not all of Mikovits’ Twitter attempts to spread propaganda necessarily violated their policies. It was removed from Facebook; by that time it reached 1.8 million views, 17,000 comments and "nearly" 150,000 shares.[37] On TikTok, it continued to find popularity via clips excerpted from the full video, part of which were removed by the platform.[38]

It was stated to be part of an upcoming "documentary feature film",[13] later known as Plandemic: Indoctornation (see its respective section).

Reception and criticism
Scientists, medical doctors and public health experts condemned the film for promoting misinformation and "a hodgepodge of conspiracy theories", as written by NBC News.[35] Specialist disinformation reporter Marianna Spring, writing for BBC, worries that its "Slick production means videos often look quite credible initially – before promoting totally false claims. That makes them as dangerous – if not more so – than advice with a mix of truth and misleading medical myths",[39]

Science journalist Tara Haelle described the video as propaganda and posited that the video "has been extremely successful at promoting misinformation for three reasons":[40]

It "taps into people’s uncertainty, anxiety and need for answers";
It "is packaged very professionally and uses common conventions people already associate with factual documentaries"; and
It effectively exploits various methods of persuasion, including the use of a seemingly trustworthy and sympathetic narrator, appeals to emotion, the Gish gallop, and "sciencey" images.
Zarine Kharazian, assistant editor of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, described the response to the removal of the video from Facebook and YouTube as a "censorship backfire", invoking the Streisand effect.[41]

Writing for the Deseret News, Amy Iverson expressed empathy towards Mikovits, Willis, and the many who spreads misinformation about the pandemic: "I understand many of us are confused and feel helpless and hopeless at times these days. We want someone to blame. But we cannot turn to outrageous, unchecked claims from a few loud voices to ease our concerns. And we definitely should not spread their unsubstantiated claims."[33]

Mikki Willis’ response
ProPublica health care reporter and investigative journalist Marshall Allen contacted Willis; Willis says that Plandemic "is not a piece that’s intended to be perfectly balanced." When asked whether the video would be suffice to be called a propaganda, which is "information […] of a biased or misleading nature" as defined by the Oxford Dictionary, he opines that although he thinks there’s no misinformation in the video, the definition fits. He also thinks that by the definition, "100% of news reporting [related to Plandemic] is propaganda."[15]

The Center for Inquiry’s (CFI) Benjamin Radford and Paul Offit gave WIllis eight questions concerning the accuracy of the claims made in the video, either asking for evidences, clarification, or a general question such as "considering that bacteria don’t kill viruses, how would "healing microbes" reduce or treat coronavirus infection?" While Willis agreed to answer all of the questions, they have not received some kind of reply from him. Radford reacted on the CFI’swebsite: "If the claims made […] in Plandemic are [factual], you’d think they would be eager to [prove it]. Where are their responses? Why are they suddenly so quiet? Why are they afraid to answer questions? What do they have to hide?"[42]

Plandemic: Indoctornation

Plandemic: Indoctornation’s logo
The 84-minute sequel, titled Plandemic: Indoctornation (the word "Doctor" being highlighted in the logo as an altering of the word indoctrination), was released on August 18, 2020.[43] Willis says that the film is a "response video to all the debunkers", interviewing 7,000 doctors as well as attorneys, saying that his goal is to "reform our medical systems such that they’re not under the stranglehold of Big Pharma."[2]

The argumentation presented in the video aims to demonstrate the existence of an worldwide conspiracy seeking to control the entire human population through fear and making money, the COVID-19 pandemic being a key moment in a plan that spans decades. It also claims that sand can cure COVID-19. Willis points to actors as various as Anthony Fauci and the Centers for Disease Control, Google and the fact-checking agencies it employs, climate change, John Oliver, the Chinese government, and Bill Gates who somehow coordinate with each other.[44]

The film’s thesis is supported by a number of claims that have been discredited. Fighting against the claims in Indoctornation of the virus being man-made, experts are satisfied that COVID-19 has not been engineered in a laboratory and that Event 201, a 2019 disaster response exercise, could not have been a plan to release an actual virus into the population. Despite on what it alleged, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation still funds projects in India and cooperates with the Indian government on several initiatives with no harm done; it does not have technology allowing it to covertly implant an invisible proof of vaccination.[43]

Release
The film was released by an online distributor called London Real on the website Digital Freedom Platform, who promotes several discredited theories about the COVID-19 pandemic. Because it was promoted in advance, social media platforms were able to prepare ahead of the release, whereas they usually scramble to react to misinformation already circulating on their networks.[43] As part of their policy to counter disinformation about the pandemic, Facebook, Twitter and others took steps to limit the spread of the film as soon as it was posted, affixing warnings to links users shared. YouTube removed from its service multiple copies of the film, as well as sixteen clips presenting specific sections.[44] Facebook warned users when clicking the original film’s link, although no steps of blocking were taken. TikTok and Instagram blacklisted the link.[45]

London Real claimed it was seen 1.2 million times by the end of the first day, but the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab calls it "a total flop", with much lower levels of social media engagement than the shorter version.[44] Because social media were forewarned during the viral season of the first video, the distribution of Plandemic: Indoctornation was more limited.[43] The Daily Dot says that the only platform where it succeeded was Facebook with 4,000 views, linking to the film’s link on BitChute, with 40,000 views.[45]

Reception
Jane Lytvynenko at BuzzFeed News gave it "0 stars", saying that while the first video presents a protagonist (Mikovits) and a fairly clear narrative, Plandemic: Indoctornation lacks that focus. The video jumps from one topic to the next without establishing clearly how the various pieces of information presented relate to each other, the result being "bloated, confused, and filled with nonsense". Mikovits appears only to respond to criticism about elements of the first video, according to Lytvynenko. She also analogized that "As a piece of journalism, it is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. As a piece of entertainment, it is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom", and "Just like the Emperor returning in The Rise of Skywalker, Plandemic: Indoctornation leans on old, familiar characters instead of inventing new ones." Lytvynenko said that the producers’ initial claim of the first film being a trailer for a feature film was seemingly false: while the second one picks up on some of the same themes and also features Mikovits, it is noted the most of the "trailer" isn’t actually used in the feature-length film.[44] Mike Rothschild of The Daily Dot opined it is "not as good" as the first video.[45]

Sinclair Broadcasting Group
See also
Explanatory notes
References
Last edited 3 days ago by Gerald Waldo Luis
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Judy Mikovits
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False or misleading information about the pandemic

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Guam Solar

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KEPCO Raises US$200 Mil. for Guam Solar Project Through Project Financing
US$340 Mil. Revenue Expected
2020-05-14 Jung Min-hee

Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) has completed a financing contract for a photovoltaic power generation project in Guam, the United States, which will cost US$200 million.

KEPCO announced on May 13 that it has minimized financial burdens for the Guam Solar Project by securing funding through project financing (PF). Mizuho Bank of Japan and Korea Development Bank (KDB) participated in the project as creditors. KEPCO does not need to provide a separate repayment guarantee.

The Guam Solar Project is designed to build and operate a 60 MW solar power plant and a 32 MW energy storage (ESS) power plant in Mangilao, Guam. They will be completed and go into commercial operation in 2021.

KEPCO won this project through an international tender and signed a long-term power sales contract with the Guam Power Authority (GPA). KEPCO expects about US$340 million in revenue in the future.

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