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Solar Power Eliminates Utility Bills in U.S. Home
skyhawker writes "Yahoo! News is running an article about a New Jersey home that uses solar power to provide 100% of its energy needs, including fuel for the owner's hydrogen fuel cell-powered automobile. From the article: 'Strizki runs the 3,000-square-foot house with electricity generated by a 1,000-square-foot roof full of photovoltaic cells on a nearby building, an electrolyzer that uses the solar power to generate hydrogen from water, and a number of hydrogen tanks that store the gas until it is needed by the fuel cell. In the summer, the solar panels generate 60 percent more electricity than the super-insulated house needs. The excess is stored in the form of hydrogen which is used in the winter -- when the solar panels can't meet all the domestic demand -- to make electricity in the fuel cell.'"
Hmm?
And this is the reason so few people (including me) are "green".
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People are whining about how it costs a half-million dollars. It is so expensive because of low volume. We need early adopters like this guy to start the ball rolling. Once more people buy into this form of energy production, the cheaper it will become.
Why bother.
Of course it will be expensive for the early adopters. But as solar panels mature, and more energy independence options become available, it will be much more economically feasible. The first people to do this don't do it for the monetary savings (or if they do, they're wrong), they do it to make a statement that it can be done.
Yeah, at $0.5M US, it's a steep price to pay just to be free of utility bills, or just to be "green". But please don't forget that it still has value.
;-)
This early adopter is proving that you *can* be self-sufficient using solar energy. That's a big deal. And, if a people -- and more importantly, organizations -- start seeing solar energy as having potential, more people will fund research into improving the technology and making it cheaper. At least, that's the hope.
Early adopters help drive the price of technology down, so don't be so quick to judge this guy's choice -- he's helping to make solar power more available to the masses, in his own small way.
Besides, in being the first, he'll probably make back his $500K in promotional considerations and/or the lecture circuit.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Sure it's not cost effective. Prototypes and one-offs rarely are.
As a proof-of-concept, though, it's highly successful. This guy is demonstrating, not just hand-waving, that one can be entirely energy self-sufficient through solar power, even with the crappy efficiency of current mass produced photovoltaic panels.
Find a way to increase the efficiency and/or drop the price of the panels (and H2 storage system, fuel cells, etc) and it starts to look really attractive. More so if you want to build somewhere way off-grid. And without some of the attendant problems of a windmill.
The next time somebody argues that you can't live off-grid just on solar power, you can point to this guy. Then the argument comes down to cost-effectiveness, which depends on a lot of other factors.
-- Alastair
From TFA: the cost of the installation was about $500,000, including about $50,000 of lead acid batteries.
I would suggest that the environmental impact of building this house, and recycling the consumables far outweighs the lowered energy consumption.
Just recycling an estimated 1 ton of toxic, heavy metal, lead a year (assuming 10 ton installation with life expectancy of 10 years), has a big environmental impact.
Solar panel manufacturing also consumes a lot of resources, and end up not beeing so clean overall.
A $500,000 investment would probably give a thousand times better ROI if it was spent on pollution reduction in india or china, or to save rainforest.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
If your going to include production for solar panels you need to remember that fossil fuels don't exactly jump out of the ground and into your furnace. Strip mines, refineries, natural gas production all have a significant environmental cost.
Over what timespan?
Assuming a lifespan of 40 years, I'd guess that it is less polluting to use solar cells than to use fossil fuels. Furthermore, if solar cells were leased instead of sold (providing a long term revenue stream for solar energy companies), old cells could be remanufactured by the suppliers at a fraction of the original environmental and energy costs.
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Last I checked pretty much all parents want to keep kids out of any situation they could be killed in. I don't know a single parent that wants their child fighting in any war. How does this make the guy blinded by hatred for Bush? He just wants his kid to grow old and instead of getting shot. I seriously doubt that anyone saw the last draft coming 10 years in advance which is when his 8 year old would be eligible. If the "war on terror" continues for 10 years a draft would be more likely than today. Especially since the armies numbers for registration are still dropping below what they need. He didn't say there was a draft or there was going to be one. You could argue it was implied but that would be making an assumption and we all know what assuming does. He didn't mention Bush or even the government so how do you know that he hates Busch? You could assume but again not a good choice. I am not opposed to bashing someone but if you do it at least make some sense. It seems to me the only one blinded here is you. I won't make any ASSumptions why though. I'll leave that to people like you.
Back on topic. This is great I hope this gets other people in projects like this. Imagine a whole city powered by the sun and hydrogen! We could leave pretty green in a short amount of time if the government would support projects like this. Not necessarily with dollars but tax breaks on the people that use it and tax breaks on the equipment to make it happen. Say no sales tax on solar panels and other stuff needed for things like this. I for one can't wait for the day I can install a setup like this and tell the local power company to bug off. I currently leave in an apartment so it is not possible right now.
WTF?
The "war" we are in now is a generational struggle between cultures, like the Cold War. Three is no end in sight.
Nobody in his right mind thinks the troops have signed on for a struggle that is going to last for decades.
If you want to be legalistic, then the only declared war was over Sadaam's WMD. That's long over. We're dicking around in a conflict now. If it were warfare, we'd be winning. It's not and we're not. What it is is nation building. Our guys mostly aren't fighting battles, they're trying to police a country full of hostile inhabitants, a task they're not trained or equipped to do.
Technically, I'm not arguing that the President can't use stop loss. What I'm arguing is that it is morally wrong to use a clause that's there for dealing with a state of war to turn the military into a police force.
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