Slashdot Mirror
Switching To Solar Power — Six Months Later
ThinSkin writes "Slashdot readers may remember an article regarding ExtremeTech's Loyd Case's experiences with solar power for the home after one month of usage. During that time six months ago, it sure seemed like a great deal, but the tables have turned significantly once winter approached. While it's no surprise solar power generation is expected to dwindle during the winter, Loyd compares solar power data of the last six months to determine if solar power is still worth the time and money."
df -h
The dishes are allowed because federal law says that they have to be:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html
Given time and lower installation costs, I would imagine that similar legislation will be applied to solar cells.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Restrictions on the installation of DirectTV and other satellite dishes are explicitly preempted by FCC regulation in the US.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
The house I currently live in was powered with solar panels here in Southern Ontario before I bought it. The guy who sold it to me took the panels with him. They did just fine at consolidating his hydro to the point where he was paying almost NOTHING to the power company. They're not worthless at all. A large investment that might take longer out here to recoup costs, but definitely not worthless.
He is a PG&E customer in Northern California. That's how he spends $400 a month on electricity.
PG&E = Pricks Grabbing Everything
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Because this is a follow up article. The first article includes the Roi figures along with the fact that California Rebated half the cost of the system ($36,000.00 dollars), which explains his up front costs of $36,000.00. Not bad for the size system he had installed and yes I've read the first article and understood the reasoning for the selected installation method, which was to reduce peak Energy Usage during Peak Summer Cost. That's right, his goal was to cut the summer cost of energy during the most expensive part of the year from PG&E (his uutility company).
Note that PG&E has a variable Rate cycle that has the greatest impact during the summer cooling period. This is why he wanted to reduce his summer electric costs, which the system did quite successfully.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
MAKE:blog has some descriptions of some DIY sun-trackers to move the panel with the sun during the day.
He spends so much because he pays a premium to buy electricity from renewable resources.
And the house is his home office, so he doesn't have an employer paying for energy used during the day.
Al Gore?
He spends 20 times the national average for one of his houses.
From your own link: "factors (such as the climate in the area where the home is located and its size) make the Gore home's energy usage comparable to that of other homes in the same area. "
And he makes an effort to get power from "green" sources.
But a good right wing libertarian think tank can make him sound like a hypocrite, that'll discredit him!
You can't take the sky from me...
Firstly, he's not bitching about it. To quote TFA:
Secondly, if you look at the article he wrote when the system was installed, you'll see that he looked into a variety of options and chose the one that he felt fitted his situation best. It is estimated to pay for itself within 10 years, which seems perfectly sensible to me - as he points out, he's pumping money into an asset that increases the value of his house rather than simply giving it away to the electrical company.
I don't see how it's half-assed, it's working perfectly well, it appears cost-effective so far and he says he's happy with it. You don't seem to be trolling, I don't think, but your post just fails to make sense.
Don't tell anyone, but there's a tab on the first page that's labeled "print". I don't get to wait for ads and pictures to load, but it has the text.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
That article has a lot of consumption and billing numbers for each of utility and homegrown power, but it's hard to get exact performance comparisons because the numbers don't exactly measure the same things. There is no exact start and end date, just month names, and approximate mentions of offsets into them, not lining up generation and billing dates in either the solar generation half-year or the time before drawing from only the utility. And practically no data on income from overgenerating, selling back to utility or grid.
But there is enough data to make rough comparisons. They say their January/utility bill was $446, but their December bills are the highest (all of which extra usage was billed in the highest rate, 300% of the base rate). So let's say their average bill used to be $450:mo, or $5600 annually. However, they said up front that their annual bill is about $4400. We'll take the average of $5400. Now their July-December/solar bill is $389.39. Even if we call that $400, and so their annual/solar bill is $800, they're saving $4600 a year. They paid about $55,000 before rebates, about $37,000 after all rebates. Their utility bill savings pays off their installation investment in $37,000 / $4600 = 8.04 years. Pessimistically, they should be paid off in 9 years.
These systems have a minimum lifetime of 30 years (if you don't invest in an upgrade during that time). Even if energy rates stay the same in those 30 years (probably not, probably higher), that $4600 for 21 more years is $96,600, or 2.6x the installation cost. Total return is $133,600 on $37,000 investment, so 3600% Return on Investment over 30 years. If you invested that money in a compound interest account (either savings or some investment with an average annual return reinvested), you'd have to get 15.43% annual compound interest to turn $37K into $136K in 30 years. Conversely, if you took out a 30 year mortgage on your home at today's average rate of 5.63%, you'd net 9.8% benefit. Which means that it's worth mortgaging (part of) your home to invest in these, with a fraction of your old utility bills paid as mortgage interest, and getting $78K more ("profit", really utilities savings) after 30 years, with no out of pocket.
That could be even better than they say. Their reasons for failing to maximize their roof generating area don't seem compelling: "it would get a little crowded up there". Other than access to the panels for cleaning, who cares how crowded it is? It looks like they could double their area. Which would give them closer to zero Winter bills, but overkill in Summer that exceeds what's left (if any) during Winter, which exceeds their "zero annual bill" maximum for reselling overgeneration to the utility at retail rates. So probably about 1.5x the area would give them Summer overgeneration that would equal their Winter utility draw, netting zero bills. It's got to cost less than 1.5x to install just more area, because labor and shared components (especially the inverter that sells power back to the utility) are a substantial cost that doesn't increase at all at that rate. Say it costs 1.2x, or $44,400, but they save the full $5400 annually. That's still about the same time in payback (about 2% longer), but 3.7x the return. And the "green feeling" is complete.
--
make install -not war