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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."
Wait to winter time when there is less sun to see how much you save at that time.
trix are for kids mutherfucker!
That's right and responsible energy use is for adults. I like to see things like this, and as some might decry the amount of involvement one must provide to effectively commit to a project along similar lines. Though I personally think people (especially in the U.S.) could really benefit from having to be more involved in the production and usage of the energy they consume.
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
money going towards assets rather than a simple debt. Would you rather own or rent?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Sounds like someone who threw money at a problem better handled by conservation.
Believe me, i LOVE solar, but solar works better when it isn't the only solution.
Simple fix, trade kwh for kwh until net zero is reached and then sell excess for wholesale. Of course you would do this on an estimated annual usage basis just like the 'budget' billing most power consumers have to prevent huge spikes in their bills during certain hot or cold months.
As for putting the power company out of business, I'm all for it. Whoever had the bright idea of privatizing a utility should be shot. Fundemental public services should not be privatized they should be public and operating in a fully transparent manner. Roads, Schools, Libraries, Utilities, and Health Care.
Today it's hard to make solar actually pay for itself. At California's high-tier rates, it is possible, but still takes a lot of work.
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. Compared to that, the panels are losing money each year and will never pay for themselves -- unless grid power goes up a lot.
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.
Most solar installations lose money hand over fist outside of California's high priced tiers. Today, solar comes in about 20 cents/kwh (at more like a 6% interest rate, not the 11.3% rate of the stock market.)
Try this spreadsheet:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pWKShknjJFBt7sOTCJre_SQ&hl=en
To work out the real cost.
It's worse if you consider that at the true cost of the system before rebates -- $48K if I read right, it really loses money.
Now, I'm not saying it's not good to put in solar to be greener, or that the government shouldn't be providing subsidies to make this happen.
I just don't want people to use the wrong math to think they are saving money, when in fact they are spending more (for a purpose.)
Has it been over a year since you last donated to the Electronic Frontier Foundation
My power company, like my phone company, is a coop. I'd like them to remain in business, thank you very much.
Then again, depending on your definition, a coop could be considered a 'public' company.
I don't read AC A human right
I think this is a long ways off, and I'd imagine that if this starts happening, they'd start installing more/bigger transmission infrastructure, rather than a voluntary-shutoff communications infrastructure. They may even increase their connection fees to do so. The power company wouldn't want all that power to go to waste.
Err, 240*200 = 48kW.
First off, if the solar constant changes by a factor of 4, this guy's wiring is going to be the least of your trouble. Second, NEC ampacity standards are for tolerable voltage drop, not wire overheating. A 200A-rated line will actually carry a lot more than 200A. Third, many of the newer electrical panels have a main breaker that everything goes through. They are thermal, so they don't care which direction the electricity is going through them. If not, the inverter will usually have an output breaker of its own. Fourth, the house itself is consuming a good fraction of the power it's generating.
Geez, what are you, some sort of communist?!
Who wants a working healthcare system when you can privatise it make a big budget surplus to spend on winning votes and create a huge mess that you can blame on your opposition once they're in office.
It's not like heathcare, power & water are vital services or anything...
Two Parts Swash, One Part Buckle
People in third world nations spend a MUCH higher proportion of their total work/income on securing food and energy than we do in the western world. If all you cared about was providing for your basic needs, you could work 10 hours a week, or just sit at home and collect welfare. There are many reasons why people work as much as they do, but the cost of energy has little to do with it. Most of us work because we either find enjoyment in the work itself, or because we want to splurge on luxuries, AND be able to make a statement about our earning ability. Why do you think guys buy expensive cars, and women like wearing flashy jewelry? Because the cost of electricity is so high that it's forcing everyone to buy shiny objects? Don't be a friggin' idiot.
Your ignorance of economic principles is truly mind-numbing.
The word "thinking" doesn't really belong in that sentence ....
By coincidence, today is the day I got my first yearly bill for my new photovoltaic system. Where I live (Orange County, CA, with Southern California Edison as my utility), people who have residential PV systems get billed yearly rather than monthly. A year is also pretty much the minimum amount of time for which you need data in order to find out how your system is performing, since both your energy production and your energy use fluctuate seasonally.
My bill for this year was $353.63. The system is nominally 4.4 kW, and cost $28k after rebate. It's covering about 90% of our use, which was almost exactly what we shot for -- if we produce more than we use over 12 months, they don't pay us for the excess.
People always want to know the number of years until the system pays for itself. Basically that's utterly impossible to predict. There's a reason that they exclude energy from the consumer price index -- it's because energy prices are extremely volatile. If the increased price of fossil fuels starts to be reflected in the cost of electricity, then I'm going to look like a financial genius. The other thing that's completely unknowable is how fast the technology will progress. If there's a breakthrough in technology five years from now, and the price of panels per kilowatt comes down by a factor of two, then I'll wish I'd waited. It's also kind of funny hearing the quick-buck psychological attitude a lot of Americans have toward investing money in something like this; from the way people talk, you'd think they were going to take that money that could have gone into photovoltaics and invest it in some kind of magical pixie dust that was guaranteed to pay a steady 20% annually until the end of time. And finally, beware of anyone making blanket statements about whether PV is ready for prime time or not. It completely depends on factors like the price of electricity in your area, which way your roof faces, your latitude, the amount of cloudy weather, and the amount of shade. PV is like Linux: it's ready for prime time for some people, and it's not ready for prime time for other people.
Find free books.
Prices need to come down to about a four year payoff before I'd be really interested.
Or prices can come up. Because let's face it, coal-generated electricity (the main alternative) is way too cheap. You're basically just paying for the cost of digging up the coal, plus the amortization of the infrastructure needed to convert it to electricity and transmit it to the user. The coal itself is basically free.
And why should it be? It's a finite resource. If we had to bid against our descendants for it, it wouldn't be free, it wouldn't even be cheap. Nor is the environmental cost of dumping all that carbon into the atmosphere a minor one.
Oops, here come the dittohead with their "there's no proof that" and their "you eat meat". Not in the mood. Going home now.
isn't civilization, and the fact that you think it is indicates a deeply flawed view of the world.
It still doesn't make sense to pay you the same rate that you pay them.
Consider the situation where you produce as much as you consume, but not at the same time. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that you produce lots of power during the day, and then use lots of power during the night, such that the two are equal. Your net power use is therefore 0, but you're pushing lots of electricity to the grid during the day and pulling a lot at night.
Should your bill be zero?
I would argue that it should not. The power company is still maintaining the transmission lines, is still running the generation plants that you rely on at night, and the electricity you're giving them is not going to completely make up for that. The power company in this case is acting as a middleman, in the good sense, in that they ensure that stuff gets to where it needs to be. Middlemen can only make money, and thus provide their service, if the producers charge less money than the consumers pay.
Now, it may very well make sense in a broader political sense to make the rates be the same in order to encourage exactly this sort of independent generating capacity, but from the limited point of view of the economics of electrical generation and distribution, the rates should not be equal.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
hahahahaha, oh man you can't be serious. We all know how effective the government has been at all of those things....
Well, hasn't it? The Roads, Libraries, and Utilities seem to be working just fine under government regulation, at least here in California. Schools are uneven -- some are very good (e.g. most public colleges and universities, and some elementary schools and high schools). Health Care is lousy, but it's the privatized portion that's lousy. The public portion (Medicare, etc) works as advertised.
I think some people are so deep into their cynicism about governmental incompetence that they rarely stop to check if their cynicism is borne out by the facts...
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
.. people [/] could really benefit from having to be more involved in the production and usage of the energy they consume.
Every time I read that it becomes more profound.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
I have to agree. Though I don't live in Alaska, I've found recently that there are other ways to pull less power from the grid than simply jumping to solar. My wife and I recently moved into a house from our apartment and even though we jumped up in space a number of things have helped keep the power down. The A/C unit is only a few years old, the windows are in great shape, we run ceiling fans if we're warm, the outside walls are all brick and well insulated, etc... Our nominal monthly bill (including "service fees") stays around $50. Over the last year it's topped out at $80, but also been as low as $30 a few months. I run a web server here as well. It's not especially high traffic, but it does quite well considering it's a 500Mhz Geode LX with mirrored 250GB drives pulling 30 watts total max. All that's left now is to move the lights over to LED's and get a solar powered attic fan to help out on hot days (which here in VA tend to have tons of sun)
Before the move, our apartment was on the second floor, with a A/C unit/Heat Pump from the 80's and our power bill was never less than $90 with most months during the winter and summer hitting $145.
Basically, just make sure you don't go over the top with everything and make informed power decisions. A few thousand dollar new A/C unit and some insulation may go a lot farther than a $50k solar array to help you save money.
-=JML=-
Personally, I prefer to be a well-rounded individual, with a broad and ever-expanding skillset. Too much specialization can be deadly, from a business standpoint. Just ask your local Haberdasher.
You seem to believe the marketers who are telling you that driving a $60,000 vehicle or drinking a $5 cup of coffee is improving your life.
It isn't.
The things you consider civilization are the most worthless parts of it. Clean water is going to be worth much more in one hundred years than your rusted SUV. Clean air will be worth more than your house that was built out of cheap wood and sheetrock, which will likely be demolished sixty years after it was built. The ability to grow food will be worth more than the electronics that will end up in the rubbish pile.
Because of our lifestyle decisions, we are now unable to meet the needs of our own infrastructure. Maybe you like living at the end of the leash held by the world's oil companies and nationalized dictatorships, but I think it's incredibly short sighted.
You see, there was a time in this country when sacrifice and conservatism were noble. When we pulled together to get out of the Great Depression, and pulled together to retool our economy for WWII, and pulled together to provide right for all of our citizens in the 60s and 70s. The "gloom-and-doomers" are the people who see problems and deal with them rather than sticking their heads in the sand.
Yes, I own a car, which gets only 30mpg. But I live four miles from where I work, and I bike there four out of five days every week. I recycle what I can even though it costs me money. I try to spend my money with companies that are good stewards of the environment, so if I have children, I can look them in the eye and tell them that I have saved some real wealth for them: the right to clean water, clear air, and a food supply that doesn't give them cancer.
Maybe you live far away from your job and mass transit isn't an option. Perhaps you do need to use an eight cylinder engine everywhere you go. But if you're going to ignore the very real problems our society is facing, you need to realize that you are that shithead who shows up to party but never buys any booze and never helps clean up. You are a douche bag, and everyone knows it and hates you. If you can live with that, then good for you.
Schools are not uneven, they're horrific.
I'll agree on that one. A kid taking twelve years of science classes, and yet not being able to read or critique an experiment in science journals is terrible. But when they graduate not even knowing what a journal is, or how to create an experiment, that's just broken beyond imagining.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I almost want to agree with you but for the whole expression of, "Jack of all trades and master of none." I would rather have a broad educational background that supports a variety of trades but be considered an expert in my specific field of study, business, or employment. I see what you're saying, I think, but I really *do* want to have a specialty even if that specialty is a generic field of knowledge.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You know, that's why libertarians remind me of religious fanatics. If something good happens, it's always because the free market has managed to score a success. If something bad happens, why, sure, it's because of government interference. It doesn't matter what, where, and when, or what the real numbers are - as soon as someone says that, in practice, in known privatized industries certain inefficiencies are observed, a libertarian will immediately counter by, "Well they are still regulated to some extent, so what did you expect? It's all because of that pesky regulation!".
Well, those who want good healthcare I guess.
We have a "socialised" healthcare system here.
I can have extensive spinal surgery for $0 outlay.
My wife has had our two children in her very own private room for $0 outlay.
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.
Two Parts Swash, One Part Buckle
IBM makes me work 60 hours a week. You see, my employment is contingent on something called utilization. My target and tenure is such that I can't meet my target unless I work 60 hours a week.
IBM Makes you Work? MAKES you work? You make it sound like slavery. This is employment at will. You don't like their policies, pay, or heck, their cafeteria, then quit.
If you're still there and you are so displeased then you either are a fool for not finding a new job, or you can't find a new job because you are a fool.
I don't even need a paragraph to counter your post, just six words.
Enron. Even non-governments can be corrupt.
It's been a long time.
Having socalised healthcare costs a lot of money.
Not having socialised healthcare costs a lot of humanity.
Your call.
It's been a long time.
[quote]You get all those libertarian fools thinking "Oh if the current big bad government is smaller, things would be wonderful".[/quote]
Actually, you shouldn't speak for Libertarians, because I think most libertarians would agree with your good/bad delineation. However let me ask you a simple question .....
Which is easier to control ... Big Bad Government or Small Bad Government?
The point of smaller being better isn't because of "good vs bad" it is because Smaller = less government = more freedom to change how it works.
The current monstrosity that is Governance today is wholly out of control, with little or no ability to make any sort of meaningful change. We are a gnat on the elephant's back, we may annoy it, but it isn't going to change because of us.
As for private vs public control, you are 100% right. I wish we had a governance that took issuing of corporate licences more seriously and would lock more of the short sighted, bad management class and toss them into pound me in the ass prison for their malfeasance, more often.
Stealing from a bank with a gun isn't nearly as violent as stealing from the same bank with dubious business practices. I think there should be a whole bunch of people thrown in jail over the current banking Mortgage scandal.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.