Slashdot Mirror
Switching To Solar Power – One Month Later
ThinSkin writes "After an interesting article on solar panel installation for the home, Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has written a follow-up after about a month of normal use. Posting an $11.34 electric bill (roughly 3% of previous months), Loyd shares his experiences using solar power and how it can be fun for the geek, with computer monitoring services and power generation data. Of course, solar power isn't all fun and games, given the amount of required maintenance — even unpredictable maintenance, like wiping off accumulated ash from fires in Northern California."
From TFA:
It was arranged so that PG&E will never have to pay you money.
There is also a $5 "connection fee" each month, so your smallest possible annual bill will be about $50. I used to hit that with a 4kW array (minute-by-minute stats are available).
So he saved about $330/month. It cost him $36K (which really cost $50K, but let's say). So it'll take 109 months to get back the money, or 9 years, not adjusting for inflation and investment opportunity cost. Let's say that brings it up to 12 years. Not including maintenance and repairs. It might even need complete replacement at that point. At 50K, which is the real cost, we're talking more like 16-18 years.
That's still a bit too long an investment for this to be really practical. Prices need to come down to about a four year payoff before I'd be really interested.
On another subject, I'm kind of glad to see someone who actually uses more electricity than I do. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Depends on how fast those assets depreciate, and the long-term maintenance costs.
There are indeed losses, but much less than you propose. Most solar DC to AC inverters are 90-93% efficient in their conversions - so only a 7-10% loss. http://www.beaconpower.com/products/SolarInverterSystems/docs/M4_M5_plus_datasheet_web.pdf The same goes for the conversion back to DC on the equipment side.
Residential solar installations typically have no batteries, so there is no maintenance cost for batteries, nor replacement costs. This type of installation uses the grid as a kind of giant battery, feeding power to the grid during the day and drawing from the grid at night.
Working against that, you need to amortize your capital costs and pay for maintenance. Still, in some parts of the country, solar can indeed give you a reasonable mortgage length and IRR
Why must all aquatic villains play the organ?
Try Europe where you can get 35 hour work weeks and 35% unemployment.
I guess that the statistics would disagree, but why let facts get in your way!
Ahhh, what an awful dream. Ones and zeroes everywhere... and I thought I saw a two.
He says he put in $36,000 and will save $3,300 per year in payments to the power company. Now the historical annual rate of return of an S&P 500 index fund is 11.3% over the last century, so $36K put there would return over $4,000 -- enough to pay the $3,300 to the grid, have $700 left over and of course, still keeping the principal.
You're comparing apples and oranges here. If people always invested solely based on maximizing the expected average rate of return, then bank CDs wouldn't exist, bonds wouldn't exist, real estate and REITs wouldn't exist, etc. In reality, people are balancing the expected rate of return against variability. The reason bank CDs are paying something pathetic like 4% right now is that the banks have to guarantee that they'll pay you 4% on your money. The bank is essentially charging you for insurance against negative variability. Although there are a lot of unknowns involved in buying PV (what will electric rates do in the future? how much will the technology improve), they're a lot less than the unknowns involved in stocks. My S&P 500 index fund is down 19% from its peak value last year. There's a reason that most people build a balanced investment portfolio that includes both stocks and bonds; it's because mixing volatile and nonvolatile investments is a way of maximizes your expected rate of return for a given amount of risk that you're willing to accept.
And grid power might go up, but only so far. Because eventually the grid power hits the solar price, and the grid itself starts putting in solar sources at that price -- because it's cheaper.
Your logic doesn't work. When you own a PV system, you're part of "the grid itself." When I'm at work during the day, my PV panels are pumping energy into the grid, which is selling it to other customers. In my area, grid power has hit the solar price, for a south-facing roof with no shade; that's why I, a homeowner with a south-facing roof and no shade, have put in a PV system. You seem to be assuming that if rates go above a certain threshold, the entire state of California will suddenly magically cover itself with PV panels, because that will be the right thing to do according to the laws of supply and demand. That doesn't make sense, for a couple of reasons. First, there are huge variations in the price of land, the local cost of electricity, the amount of sunlight, which way people's roofs face, and how much shade they get. Second, there's a barrier to covering every house with PV panels, which is that most homeowners are short on capital. Your idea that the whole grid would suddenly go solar at some threshold is like imagining that everybody will suddenly drive a hydrogen-powered car if gas goes over $6 a gallon. We're talking about a massive infrastructure that doesn't change overnight.
Find free books.
in terms of measuring live solar data, there's an open source project at: http://www.solarnetwork.net/ that is collecting and charting live data from Outback, MorningStar and Xantrex devices. let me know if anyone has an interest in participating, or leave a note on the site. thanks!
Yes, because we all know the government always does everything in the most economical and efficient way, right?
You may want to take a look at this paper about health care in France. It comes from a very trustworthy source, the OECD, and presents some surprising data. Although public health care in France is "universal" in the sense that almost everybody is covered by the public health care system, 92% of the French people have additional private health insurance.
Let me quote from the summary: "The public system is facing chronic deficits and recent cost-containment policies have not proved very successful. The government has signalled an interest in reforms that would redefine the role of public and private insurance, shifting some responsibilities from the former to the latter."
I just quoted this paper about health care because I had it on hand, and you mentioned health care, but I admit that electric power is more of a "natural monopoly" than health care in some ways. I think emergency health care should be guaranteed by the government, because when you suffer an accident you are in no position to negotiate, but health care does not need to run wires all the way from the power plant to your home.
So, yes, I think there is need for some regulation in electric power, but from all I have read, California is hardly an example of a well-conceived deregulation. I think there are many ways of creating a better system for private utilities. You cannot say that all deregulation is bad based on just the California example.
Grid tie equipment is required to have automatic disconnection systems. Also, the linemen can pretty much wave a wand at the lines to see if they are live or not...
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Well done on assuming that Europe is one big member state with exactly the same health care, unemployment and whatever other statistics you want to quote.
No, France, Germany and the UK have completely different medical services, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. And that's just 3 countries, out of 27 in the EU alone.
They also have quite different levels of unemployment, but none of them are even close to the 35% you're quoting, they're more akin to about 6% or 7%. In fact, Slovakia is the highest at around 10%, still nowhere near what you're quoting. I'd like to see some sources for that bullshit.
What's more, you speak of the medical care in these countries as if it's vastly inferior to your own just because it doesn't always work out for the best for some people - yet you don't seem to realise that in the USA (I'm assuming that's where you're from based on your lack of knowledge about the EU) if you don't have health insurance, you're basically fucked if you get hit with anything worse than a bacterial infection or a broken bone. Sure, you might live, but you'll spend the rest of your life trying to pay that ridiculously bloated medical bill.
I'm not saying things are better in the EU, I've yet to see a "perfect" medical system, but to talk about it as if it flat out doesn't work is ludicrous. Quite frankly the British National Health Service is one of the best things to ever happen to the country, despite is flaws and failures - the fact that it's still around after more than half a century proves this and the first politician to suggest scrapping it is going to be performing political suicide.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
This is not necessarily the case...
Say for example your in the market for a new home. You plan on spending $250K to $350k. You find a great house for $300K. --> 30 yr mortgage @ 5% is ~ $1610 per month. (bankrate.com/mortgage calc...) Now say you find decide to have a full solar array installed as part of the cost of your new home. Let's say your a real geek and decide to get the mother of all solar arrays for $50k. Your home now costs $350K --> 30 yr mortgage @ 5% is ~ $1880 per month. The difference is $270 per month. Loyd Case's March bill is $348.26 and his June bill is $11.34; that's a difference of ~$337. Your solarage may vary :-) Now you begin to see the real cost-as-a-percentage -of-your-home. Which is probably closer to zero even before consideration any grants/rebates/etc. from the government. (which is composed of oil zealots, by the way)
Since you have the MOASA you'll probably pay 0. You may decide to sell it the excess to your neighbors if possible. That's probably too much trouble. You being the uber geek that you are will probably decide to use those excess Kwh's to power you garage electrolyzer whereby producing your own hydrogen gas which powers you fuel cell car. And since you have finally achieved the uber uber geekdom that you have always aspired to you can live happily ever after.
enufsaid.
Government regulation and funding can be a hit or miss proposition, depending largely on what level of government is running the institution.
With roads, for example, the funding and management can be federal, as in the case of Interstate Highways, state, as in state routes, county, city, etc, or can be public-private parterships, as with some toll roads.
Libraries are almost always managed at the county or city level, and quality varies widely. In Arlington County, VA, for example, the library system is top notch -- libraries carry not just books but a huge collection of CDs and a pretty good collection of DVDs with a searchable online catalog and reservation system. You can reserve anything in the system online and have it sent to the branch of your choice for pickup. You can also extend the borrowing term online (except for DVDs) without worrying about late fees (which are trivial anyway).
The Chicago Public Library system, on the other hand, has only recently put its catalog online, and I don't think there is an automated reservation system yet. After moving from Arlington, where I was a very active library patron, to Chicago in 2006 I found the library here practically useless. I hope things have improved and someone can tell me I'm wrong.
State universities and colleges are of course state-funded and -managed, but they get massive financial resources from their endowments and philanthropic fundraising activities. The University of California system in particular has one of the most efficient and sophisticated fundraising operations in the country.
As an aside, it's easy to assume that the richest and most famous schools -- your Harvards and Yales -- have the most effective fundraising, but that's not really true. When you're at Harvard and can raise a couple hundred grand in a week just by opening the mail there's not much pressure to increase your efficiency or sophistication. If you want to see the state of the art in higher-ed fundraising, have a look at Stanford.
It's not that government run enterprises don't work, it's just that they tend to work better when there's a public-private partnership going on. Most projects in general live or die on the strength of the management. It's much easier for a completely public project to suffer complete managerial incompetence. There are a lot more agonizingly inefficient DMVs than smoothly functioning ones (hats off to IL in this case, at least in my experience). Have a look some time, for example, at the University of the District of Columbia.
There's no question in my mind that the government has to step into healthcare at least to control the spiraling costs. But neither is there a question that the private medical sector will and needs to continue to exist. Universal state medical systems elsewhere, e.g. Cuba and Canada, do a great job of achieving quality relative to the cost, but they also benefit greatly from advancements made in the US. And those advancements are purely down to the private medical sector.
All the same, I'm a college educated professional, I have a good job with insurance, and I know that I simply can't afford to get sick. I know I'm not alone. And that is a problem that will likely need government regulation and/or ownership to solve.
Inverters designed for feeding excess power back into the grid not only must maintain phase lock but usually have provisions to continuously detect if the line has lost external power. If the utility power drops for any reason then the inverter disconnects and stops feeding power back into the line.
Not that it makes a difference in the overall argument (that none of the EU nations are anywhere close to 35% unemployment). But due to differing definitions of "unemployed" in different countries, perhaps a better measure of overall employment is per capita work force (basically, number of employed workers divided by total population). France and especially Italy do markedly worse by this measure than their unemployment figures would indicate (approx 8% and 11% lower than the U.S.). But it's still nowhere near supporting the initial 35% claim.
currently power generation is more valuable during the day, because thats when it is most used (especially in A/C dominated CA.)
That is the likely reason for a retail price compensation OK for solar generated by day. The solar is likely displacing more pricey natural gas, for cheaper coal/nuclear. Also possibly reducing net line load from the factory during peak draw...
Australia has a typical 37.5-38 hour work week (excluding lunch, so 40 hours including a 30ish minute lunch) and record low unemployment.
And public health care.
And a pension system for those who cannot work.
And an economy kicking the US's...
We have a motorised wooded shutter over our glass skylight. They work similiar to a roll up garage door, they are slated of wood which when "open" are rolled up into a cylinder (below the roof so it's not visible) then when "closed" they form a solid wooden surface which absorbs hail stone & fallen debris blows better than a run of the mill blockout steel roller shutter which would typically deform and/or buckle under similiar loads.
They come in the poor man's windy handle version in addition to the lazy man's motorised version.
My insurer covers panels automatically in it's storm damage cover. Might be worth shopping around depending on your countries offerings.
Two Parts Swash, One Part Buckle
Disinformation and selective quotation at work. Do you work for the USA private health insurers?
Let's check:
To really inform slashdot readers you might add that more than 80% of private health insurance is done by ... not for profit, and that the share of not for profit vs for profit has increased by 10% over the past years. It might help USA citizens understand a few things about how private "for profit" is really working.
"private" health insurance covers less than 25% of costs, 75% comes from the mandatory public system.
And in the special case of France, the private not for profit insurance has nothing to do with government efficiency as always there's some ideology and creative accounting at work ("chronic deficits" is a political choice). Administrative costs of health insurance are 6% in France vs 15% in the USA, if you want to increase waste you know what to do.
For reference I cannot choose my private complementary health insurance provider which is the one of my employer by law (private market ? eh eh), I pay around 30 euros per month for it.
It may not be perfect, but I feel it's a heck of a lot better than the mess that's the USA healthcare system.
You don't say where you are but I live in the USA and have had quite an experience with healthcare here. As a college student without insurance I was hit while riding my bike one day after my classes. I was medevacted by helicopter to the hospital where I got treatment while in a coma. I spent about a month in the hospital before I was moved to a rehabilitation house where I lived about 1 1/2 months while getting therapy. When I left the house I moved into my mother's house. I went to the hospital 2 days a week for more therapy for a couple of months. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet all that was spent despite no one, doctors, hospital, or rehab house knowing if they would see a dime from me. Actually while I was in the coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived and as a student I wouldn't have been able to pay. Even today more than 10 years later I'd argue with them about my being alive is a miracle, my life has been more like a living hell.
Even without my experience, I have an idea how medical practice is in the USA, my mother is a lab tech in the hospital I was taken to, actually that's how she found out, a coworker asked her if she knew me. I also have a sister who's a nurse. As it is now, by law a hospital has to provide medical care in an emergency in the US even if the patient has no insurance.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe the USA has the best health care system in the world for everyone but I do believe a free market, which the US does not have in health care, can lower costs and make medical care affordable for more people. Some people say France has the best system but the Organization For Economic Co-operation a Development, OECD, disagrees. In the report "Private Health Insurance in France" it says "While France has a universal public health insurance system, the coverage it provides is incomplete and the vast majority the French population has private complementary health insurance."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's required by law. An inverter which does not disconnect when the grid goes down is illegal. There are also access laws... there must be an outside disconnect switch in clear view or near the house's outside panel. There are also laws (in CA) governing panel grounding, fusing, breakers, and other safeties.
-Matt
Social Security? IRS? Medicare? Please... there is nothing transparent about government waste. If it weren't for market based funding there would be no improvements in the health care system. Who do you think is going to do drug research for free?
Try Europe where you can get 35 hour work weeks and 35% unemployment. There everyone has the same mediocre health care and they STILL have to have insurance if they want any care beyond antibiotics or the setting of a broken bone.
Just a few minor corrections:
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
Hear, hear.
I too am a member of an electric co-op, Bluebonnet Electric Co-op in Central Texas. As a Libertarian, I personally find their business model the best of both worlds. Being for profit, so that they seek to minimize inefficiencies, and being controlled by the members.
They're even cool enough to have information on their website on what it takes to have personally owned renewable power sources tied into the grid.