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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?"
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.
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.
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.
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. There is no inconsistency: just a few people who know nothing about pricing a product. The amount of energy it cost to make is a vanishingly small consideration in the price it is sold for. It's sold for what the market will bear. So if it cost $50 of electricity to make, and will generate $45 in energy during its lifetime, there's no reason the company can't sell it for $5,000 if enough people will pay that so the corp. can make its income targets.
Price of a product is based on what benefit the purchaser is willing to pay for, not how much it cost the manufacturer to make.