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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.'"
How MY neighbors would feel if I loaded up their roof with solar cells...
He eliminated his electric bill, but couldn't eliminate the fact that he is in New Jersey.
Solar power is nice since it does not pollute when in use and generating power. However, mass production of solar cells is very taxing for the environment. So I can't help but wondering which is worse: 1000 sq. ft. (which is, accounting for chip packaging and other overhead, still a HUGE silicon area) or heating the old fashioned way (e.g. with gas, which is less polluting than say coal, and using decent insulation) and using a car that is not a fuel-hungry SUV...
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.
For those who don't want to bother with the expense of buying and installing your own PV system, there's Renu. With a $500 deposit, they'll design and install an grid-tied PV system for you and charge you only for what it produces at the current rate, which you can lock in for 5 or 25 years. And if you've got a 25 year contract they'll move the system when you move.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Read the whole article, please people. . . .
FTA: "While the cost may deter all but wealthy environmentalists from converting their homes, Strizki and his associates stress the project is designed to be replicated and that the price tag on the prototype is a lot higher than imitators would pay. Now that first-time costs of research and design have been met, the price would be about $100,000, Strizki said."
But then again it is more sensational for you to use the R&D cost of $500,000 right?
Self proclaimed wannabe geek. You know how it is. Most of us who read this stuff probably fit in that category.
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
Move to a neighborhood without a draconian HOA.
And use a secure version of Windows, an honest attorney, or a Hooters franchise that doesn't debase women.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Yes, I'm a green and I act like an entrepeneur, not a terroist. From the article:
"You need to make the financing within reach of real people," Wentworth said.
That part is done as you'll see at my home page: http://www.jointhesolution.com/mdsolar
You can get solar for no more than you're paying now for electricity, no installation fee, no permit hassles, and no rate increases for up to 25 years.
I love what Mr. Strizki has done but I wish he'd heard of this opportunity first.
Most solar panels are covered under warranty for 80% of their maximum rated power output for 25 years, and the panels themselves are generally expected to last around 40 years, though efficency does decline over time.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
>>the reason so few people are green
>I should really improve my insulation, but don't. Why? Because there's no payback in natural gas savings.
>...so I do the things I can afford: Recycle, fix dripping taps, take the bus when I can. I realize there are often higher-purpose reasons than cost savings, but many people simply can't *afford* to be green.
I spent less than $700 and one full day of labor for me and my wife on a weekend on insulation on my house Fall of '05. The savings on the utility bill paid for the cost of the insulation (including the price of renting the blower to blow it in and buying a decent ladder) in less than a year.
I also replaced all the windows in my home with triple pane Low-E argon filled windows earlier this year. Yeah that ran me just shy of $5000 installed. I financed it through the same company I bought the windows from 1 year same as cash. I expect the energy savings to pay for the windows in roughly 7 years. The new windows also look a lot better and came with a lifetime warranty against breakage that is transferable if I sell my house. The added value to my home will almost pay for the windows by itself if I sell the house.
I agree that solar panels, hybrid cars, even projects like the windows I did can have a high up front cost. A lot of people cannot afford that cost up front, but simple projects like insulation, sealing around doors better, etc. are cheap and really will start having benefits that add up pretty quickly.
The interior is heated with a single wood-stove. It also uses deep-well windows fixed to aim at the Sun during the Winter months, using glass treated with a one-way filter for IR light. Even in the depths of Winter, you find yourself stripping down to tank-tops and tee shirts at almost no fuel expenditure. This is the most impressive use of insulation I've ever heard of. I don't know any of the R-values or other engineering quantities of the various materials.
Insulation. It isn't sexy, but when applied properly, it's the single cheapest and most effective way to keep a home warm in the winter.
By contrast, I was renting a 100 year-old house with terrible insulation; even with a new roof and lots of high-tech fiberglass pink, we were paying stupid heating bills which were basically a quarter of our monthly rent. Sounds like your situation.
As an experiment, I lined one of the exterior walls, (on the inside), with tin foil which I covered over with cloth, leaving about an inch of space between the cloth and the foil. The idea is that the foil reflects the IR back into the room. (Like an empty chip bag; when you hold your hand inside and do not touch the plastic/foil then your hand quickly starts to heat up.) This in combination with the facts that heat rises, and that the room was on the top floor, the results were that it was the coziest room in the whole building; always at least 5 to 10 degrees warmer than anywhere else in the house under normal heating conditions.
When I finally get around to building my own place, I'll be investing heavily the smart use of lots of insulation. Buying lots of heating fuel or electricity to heat should be totally unnecessary given the technology we currently possess.
-FL