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Getting the Most Out of Your Green Buck?
batobin asks: "My dad is thinking of installing a solar photovoltaic system on the roof. After tax credits, it'll cost $12,000. In Santa Barbara, where we live, our power company grants credits when the meter runs backwards and saves the credits for 12 months, reducing our monthly power bills year round. If the contractor's math is correct, the amortization period (when our power bill savings equals the installation cost) is about 12 years. With environmental and geo-political concerns in mind, is this the best use of our money? Will reduced consumption translate into cleaner air / less dependence on fossil fuels? What other environmentally proactive investments could be made with 12 grand?"
From a strictly hedonistic point of view, no, there are much better things to do with the money. But some people think the pro-environmental solution is worth it, as well. So it really depends on how you weight your values. I would not go this route, although I've often thought of wind generation for a property I own. In your situation, I would try to save energy use in other areas.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
So ya wanna spend 12 grand to help the environment eh?
Off hand a few other ideas:
1) How about a hybrid gas/electric vehicle (or if you can find one, an all electric one)? They do better in mileage than all gas vehicles and do near zero emissions. Consider this one carefully though. Also 12 grand alone probably won't cover it, you're going to have finance approx. 8 grand or so.
2) Looked at your air conditioning and/or heating systems lately? Cheaper investments, though the returns on your electric/gas bills won't be as much as the solar option
Other than that, just little things come to mind...
...in bed
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I looked into this about 4 years ago and things might have changed since then...
Doesn't it take more power to manufacture a solar panel than that solar panel will produce in it's lifetime? That was the primary factor in the expense of manufacturing of solar panels. So, by going solar you will save money over the years, especially when you take into account inflating energy prices. But better for the environment, not really. Possibly worse if you add in the industrial waste of the manufacturing process of the panels itself.
I'm not putting you down either. If I didn't live in perpetually cloudy western Washington, I'd have a roof of solar panels myself.
You didn't factor in ongoing costs for maintenance and repair. I'd be surprised if you could operate the system for twelve years with no upkeep.
Will this system change your dad's homeowner insurance premium?
On the upside, you'll have some daytime electricity during power failures.
If the contractor's math is correct, the amortization period (when our power bill savings equals the installation cost) is about 12 years.
/me r not a solar guy - just genuinely want to know
What's the lifetime on solar panels? I would imagine there's some sort of capacitance/battery involved - in which case won't you have to replace those on a regular basis?
To illustrate, here's a thought experiment: if every other source of energy quit working, and we had to restart the world economy off of solar PV power, we could round up every PV panel in the world and put them around a big factory in Arizona or the Sahara and start making more PV panels as fast as possible. However, the ring of panels around the factory would slowly and inevitably shrink away -- for each 10 panels that wore out, the factory would have only made 5 or six panels to replace them.
Somewhere a factory is burning even more natural gas or coal because you chose to buy energy-expensive PV instead of having a smaller amount of coal or natural gas burnt closer to your home.
Now, in the US at least some of the silicon and PV production is in the northwest where there is cheap hydroelectric power. So that offsets it a bit.
If you live miles from the city, it's possible that PV makes more sense because of the power lost in transmission.
However, the vast majority of those California tax breaks are being spent to burn more fossil fuel. (Figuring out why the same scientists who claim to believe that human action is causing global warming don't lobby against pointless installation of PV in residential homes is left as an exercise to the reader.)
If you care about saving energy, the best solutions are boring: carefully seal your house, and put an extra 6 inches of insulation in. Don't buy more car than you need.
If you really insist on being on the cutting edge of alternative energy with your own hands, I suggest you build a windmill.
Replace your car with a diesel VW, and run BioDiesel. Producers of BioD get a tax credit for producing it, so it's competitively priced with regular dinosaur-diesel, and the slight decrease in BTUs of the fuel is mitigated by the more complete and more efficient combustion of said fuel, due to the higher cetane rating. Figure 45 mpg, and you get a real car, with a real stereo and trunk, no banks of potentially hazardous batteries to recycle in X years, and you're not sitting in the middle of a giant magnetic field while driving.
BioDiesel solves the chicken and egg problem, and its a fuel with similar energy density to petroleum fuels, unlike ethanol, or god forbid, hydrogen.
BioDiesel also comes close to closing the carbon cycle, since the carbon in the fuel came from the air to begin with. Because it doesn't come from the ground, there's no sulphur or metals in it.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
You could buy $12K worth of pollution credits from these guys. This would likely result in a greater net reduction in pollution, but of course you don't get any financial return on investment.
"The dinosaurs died because they didn't have a space program." - Niven
There was just recently a "breakthrough" in solar photovoltaic techonology. You may want to wait a year or two and see if that technology pans out. If so, it would be a much cheaper solution.
And, your Dad won't be pissed when your neighbor buys a similar solar panel rig for 20% of what he paid.
Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
I just got through reading a Wired story about new Rooftop Mirror Arrays available in the fall. Unfortunately, the story isn't avail on-line until July 11: http://www.wired.com/wired/ The Rooftop Solar Revolution Dotcom king Bill Gross wants to sell you a high-energy, low-cost solar concentrator that will fit on your roof. And overthrow the powers that be. I have no idea if this is applicable to you, but I thought you might enjoy the info.
No hybrid vehicle on the market gets better gas mileable than the Honda Airwave, or my $600 1982 VW Rabbit diesel.
Photovoltaic still isn't economical and really is not all that green either. There are better ways to be environmentally proactive.
Don't bother with photovolatic. Not yet. The manufacturing process is polluting and the ROI is not worth it.
1=((1+X)^12)-1
X=6%
Given that inflation is running at 2.4%, this is a pretty crappy return. Energy upgrades that I've done to my house have averaged ~80% annualized returns. I think you're better off taking the capital markets appreciation from $12,000 in perpetuity and investing it in:
1) Energy saver lighting
2) Better insulation
3) A swamp cooler replacing air conditioning
4) Water heater insulation
5) Recycling services if your city doesn't provide them
6) LCD monitors vs. CRT
7) Efficient refrigerator, furnace
8) Green power from your utility (this costs me less than $100 a year extra)
9) Warmer clothes for winter
10) Probably a hundred other things I can't think of that have a better real ROI than 3.6%
Every few years I do the calculations on installing PV, and it's still not even close to other Kaizen improvements I can make to saving both money and natural resources elsewhere.
You should donate that money to my "Pave The Earth" project. You see, once the entire earth has been paved, people will be able to drive in straight lines to their destinations. The fuel savings will be astronomical, pollution will drop dramatically, and everyone will be happier.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
What are you using so much power for?
Temperature control (heating and cooling) can be better done through passive means, ie: insulation, shading, ventilation, low-e windows.
Use the kiss principle, don't buy electronic gismos for every little thing. Do more manually, the human body is designed to manipulate manual tools. Don't throw away the gifts that all those generations of evolution have given you.
Move to a tiny apartment within walking distance of jobs, schools, restaurants, bars, theaters. Lose the car. Shop less, live more.
PV is great for off-grid systems, it doesn't disrupt the local hydrology like a hydroelectric system, and it doesn't make any noise like a wind turbine. The energy per dollar is pretty poor, however.
You'd make a bigger dent in energy usage by putting solar water heaters on your own home and the homes of several friends. They have a much more direct energy cycle and a much shorter payback period, and they're just as silent and unobtrusive as photovoltaic.
Personally I hate fluorescent lights; they give me eyestrain and headaches, so I won't put them in all the fixtures in a room. If there's already daylight or incandescent light in a room, a CFL fixture works well as "fill-in" lighting, but never as the only source. YMMV.
Other important steps would be to consolidate servers (VMware can help) and put as much as possible onto low-power PCs. I can't find a good CPU comparison table of FLOPs per watt, but such data should be easy to compile.
I wonder about the embodied energy in LCD monitors, are they as expensive to produce, energy-wise, as photovoltaics? Large semiconductor devices of any sort are pretty tricky to manufacture. If anyone has this data, please link it.
No one seems to have mentioned the bill that is currently wending its way though California legislature. If it passes, there will be substantial incentives to putting solar power on your roof.
You might want to put yout 12K into an eco-friendly mutual fund for a year or so to see if that pans out, then invest it into solar panels.
Let's hear it for Arnie trying to appear a little green before the next election.
1. 2.
As far as we know, photo-voltaic systems are not "self-sustaining". That is, every kilowatt hour of energy your system produces in it's entire lifetime will not be more than the kilowatt hours that were used up to purify and crystallize the silicon, and make the PV system.
This is a myth. After two to four years, there is a net gain. (It also fails the sniff test: if the myth were true, they would have to sell them for less than it costs to make them.)
--MarkusQ
Alternative energy "pay back" formulae are a guess at best. Unless you have an equivalent contract with your grid electric supplier for approximately the same projected time span, with a locked in price guarantee for KWHs, you have *no idea* whatsoever what your electric bill will be years or decades down the road. Therefore, any long term alleged "payback" estimates are almost pure guesses. AFAIK this is only available (joe-residential long term price contracts, ten years) at one place in the US, in Austin I believe.
With that said, my *only* regret with my solar purchases has been not doing it years sooner. It is very similar in my way of thinking to getting a computer. I bet most everyone here knows someone who doesn't have a computer ho said something like "I'll just wait for it to become cheaper/better/faster" Uh huh, yep. You will never get one then and miss out on one of the coolest things going. Being an early or "earlier" adopter has a lot of benefits, some of them not immediately translatable into pure dollar figures.
Having solar is a good deal. IMO, it is better to have an additional storage battery bank backup along with the net metering, as it provides a very nifty whole house ( or dedicated circuits, etc) UPS system,something any geek could appreciate I am sure. Backups are a good thing. No area of the nation is immune to vagueries in either the environment or in politics. Stuff happens, people lose power (or the cash to rent some power) for a varity of reasons. Earthquakes, hurricanes, ice storms, forest fires, outsourcing and lose your job, or goofy weird crap like Enron scams. And who wants to bet that Enron is the last time anything...strange...happens to the energy market? Stuff just happens, planetary wild cards that can't be exactly predicted in advance, no matter how good the armchair energy pundit quarterback appears.
From personal experience, I can state that it is way cool to still have decent power when your neighborhood loses grid power. quiet, functional, clean power that requires no fuel other than the ssun shining. It's just *way, way cool*. Having at least some guaranteed electric=good. Depending on someone else, some faceless corporate provider all the time for it=iffy at best and quite frankly, sort of annoying. It's nice to be a producer and not just a consumer all the time, yes? It's also nice to know that at some time in the future it will be paid off and you own it outright, not vendor locked-in renting (with no set price)in perpetuity for a modern lifestyle critical component.
No, this is not the most worthwhile use of your money. That will be $11,995.00 for my consultation fees.
If the contractor's math is correct, the amortization period (when our power bill savings equals the installation cost) is about 12 years.
Of course, if you had invested the money it would have doubled over those 12 years.
With environmental and geo-political concerns in mind, is this the best use of our money?
Probably not. I'd say you're better off investing in a company which is developing new technologies. They don't even have to be directly related to environmental issues, any company producing a more efficient product is going to have a big impact on the environment.
Will reduced consumption translate into cleaner air / less dependence on fossil fuels?
Slightly cleaner air, but $12,000 is enough money that if put into research and development it'll probably do a lot more good than reducing energy consumption by one house. As for less dependence on fossil fuels, I don't see how this will do a thing about that. Of course I think the whole "dependence on fossil fuels" problem is overrated.
What other environmentally proactive investments could be made with 12 grand?
Invest in Halliburton and vote your shares in environmentally friendly ways.
If our government laid out a program to develop a photovoltic shingle for houses and business rooftops and began mass installations of them around the country the prices will come down due to the mass production of them.
While not impacting the bill of a single house very much the larger impact with a large system across the country would impact our energy usage as a whole.
Phase 1 could just be 2x2" embedded cells in shingles that go back to the recovery system until they could develop cells that could withstand the abuse of a hailstorm or someone walking on the roof.
Either way it would seem a smart move to have these on every usable surface across the country.
Not to mention the fact that those cells would also probably reflect some percentage of the light back to space.
Okay, with the used VW TDI car, you get very good mileage (40mpg or better), which is not as good as hybrids (when hybrids are at their best), BUT, you can run them on biodiesel, which you can't do with hybrids currently available in the U.S.
What you need to do is get two low-guage power cords, electric tape, a wire cutter, a spade, and a flashlight. PVC tube optional.
First, measure the distance from your nearest neighbor's outdoor power outlet. Splice the two power cords so that combined they are long enough to reach from your neighbor's outlet to your connection to the grid. Be sure to splice so that both ends are male, so you can plug it in at both ends.
Next, on the next new moon, go out with your spade and slice a trench from your grid point to the neighbor's outlet. Run the newly-spliced cord through the trench. Now, if you anticipate problems, you might consider running a wide PVC tube through the trench so you can run the cord through after you have your buried tunnel. Be sure to replace any sod that you disturbed in your trenching operations.
Finally, plug the cord into the neighbor's outlet into the gridpoint. This way, you will recoup your investment much faster than 12 years.
I've noticed that it's better to put some kind of camoflaguing tape on both ends to keep either from being noticed. It also helps if the neighbor has allowed vegitation to conceal the outlet.
Best of luck.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
no power bill, no more PG&E rate hikes... and yeah, i guess i'm just one of those people who thinks that there are some things more important that money. think about it: above and beyond the price of a corolla (or other, basic, gets-you-from-here-to-there-reliably-and-cheaply car) what was the ROI on *your* car? or the one you're drooling over? nothing, that's what. you flushed that money right down the toilet and you chalk it up to the "fun" or "toy" budget.
:)
i love how something that eliminates your electric bill and takes this country one tiny step further away from oil wars has to "earn its keep" and your fucking Acura doesn't. ugh.
anyway--> if you wanna install one, i put a bunch of info about ours up here:
http://www.kellyandbrian.com/html/solar.html
and fyi, i *sold* my biodiesel TDI golf to pay for the solar panels, no foolin...
= consume more childish electronic toys
I've started asking myself why car manufacturers don't do something similar. I mean, hybrid cars have a great potential, but what if we had PV panels on top surfaces of cars? Here's the plan:
1- Drive to your job/shopping mall
2- Park
3- ???
4- Profit!
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
One question, true or false: no hybrid vehicle gets better gas mileage than the best all-gas or all-diesel cars, such as the 1980's VW Rabbit Deisel or the Honda Airwave.
The truth is, hybrids are currently used as a way to drive a fairly sporty car at decent gas mileage and also appear cool to a certain segment of the population, not as a way to burn the least amount of carbon.
Get a $12,000 home equity loan at 6% amortized over 30 years and you're paying $71.95/mo for your solar panels (it's $101.26/mo amortized over 15 years if you want to pay off faster).
What's your electric bill? The electric bill on my house is about $100-130/mo, so I'd be saving money every month with $0 out of pocket. I could invest that $12k wherever I wanted and deduct my interest payments on my taxes. Of course, I don't live in cali, so none of this really matters to me personally. I just wanted to point out how dumb your comment was.
That's the Time Value of Money, smart guy. I Am An Economist."Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
And to top it off, you aren't even using a high-rate money market account.
But at least you feel smart, and I suppose that is what is most important.
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent
I understand where you are coming from, so here's an answer. It's not the *only* answer but it's an answer. You're one dude, so am I. I can do what one dude can do. I can't change the entire world, tra la la make it better. I *can* change my personal immediate environment for the better, the much better. Ya, I got candles and oil lamps, but a nice 12 volt light or radio or tv is just so much better when the mains are borked, and it's cheaper than drycell batts. I can't just say POOF SHAZZAM and get everyone to eat less crappy food with no poisons on it, but I can grow extra nice organic stuff like that in our gardens and get it to friends and the local supermarket and we get to eat on it year round. cool beans.
And stuff like that there. One dude, one dudes actions. Can't change the whirrled but you can change your little piece of the whirrled. Immediate "pay back". Multiply by every "one dude" out there now you are talking, and with more than words "talking". Actions are where it's at.
As to prius, got no use for a tiny sedan really, although girlfriend has one (high MPG auto), I am a truck or tractor kinda dude, stuff to work with. Could really care less if I go to town once a week or three times a year or something. I only go when I absolutely *have* to go. The thing with the hybrids or electrics is, there's a really nasty hidden cost with constant burning ICE engine style vehicles and that's inside huge cities, the pollution gets trapped there, it "islands", and it makes hoo-manns sick, really sick. Kids n astham is outta site in the big cities for instance. They need to drop it considerably, so there's a start. As to batts, they are pretty recyclable now, even the acid solution, I don't see that as a major problem. And my deep storage cells with battery desulphators are 8 years old now, still going strong. Those semi new gadgets really do work, greatly extend the life of flooded lead acid batts. And there's several new batt techs out there now coming on strong, just needs more interest, and if it's geeks modding priuses, so be it, that's how we get real practical innovation, one dude changing his local-to-him whatever for the better. That's what we as geeks *do*.