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Solar Panels Increase Home Value
blair1q writes "Venture Beat reports that a study (PDF) by Berkeley National Labs has found that homes sold in California earned a premium for solar panels. The benefit ranged from $3900 to $6400 per kW of capacity. An earlier study found that proximity to solar or wind power may also raise home values. These results contradict the arguments based on degrading home values used by putative NIMBY (Not In My Back-Yard) opponents to installing or living near such energy-generating equipment."
It sure beats living by nukes, coal plants, tire burning plants, etc., eh? Even a natural gas power generation plant isn't nice to live by. Plus, you don't have to worry about the neighbors being noisy.
A few years ago I got a deal from Nevada Power where they paid for half the cost of a 5kwh array. It was working great until work forced me to relocate to another state. I had a hell of a time selling the place because the general public is just not technical enough to appreciate it. One potential buyer got a static shock from the carpet as is common in the dry vegas air. She actuually thought the solar power array caused it! How am I supposed to reason with that kind of stupidity?
I was thinking precisely the same thing. It doesn't explain the older study's conclusions, though: "...an additional study conducted by the government in 2009, found that home prices were either unaffected or rose based on proximity to renewable energy sources like wind power turbines and solar panels." - unless I'm misunderstanding, that's talking about solar/wind facilities nearby, not installed on the house in question as in the Berkeley study. I can't work out why that would raise property prices; it's not like you have to take your Prius to the nearest power plant to pick up a jug of fresh-squeezed eco-energy, after all. All I can think is that maybe there's a common cause. Good conditions for power generation could coincide with desirable features for a property location, I guess.
>>Members of home associations that ban solar panels aren't really arguing that panels lower property prices, they're arguing "I don't want to see it"
Fortunately, here in California, it's explicitly illegal for HOAs to ban solar panel installations. They can hem and haw all they want (my HOA demanded to see the plans before "approving" installation), but they cannot stop you from putting it in, no matter what the CCNRs actually say.
To be fair, there's issues with some solar panels (highly reflective chrome surfaces can shine brilliant light into other people's houses, creating a nuisance), but most installations these days are a nice black matte,
This is not surprising, but not that encouraging either. If you pay for a bit of fancy landscaping and planting around your house before you sell it, you can often improve your house resale value by much more than the cost of the work. Solar also offers a warm glow of righteousness far out of proportion with energy generated.
Where I live (50km south of Canberra, Australia), we're paying ~20 of your Earth cents for a kWh during the day around here, so if you assume 7kWh per day from a 1kW solar installation (not that hard here, as we get a lot of sun), it takes 14 years to earn back $3900. Electricity will certainly go up in cost during that time, but I wonder whether you wouldn't be better putting $4000 into some safe-ish investment and concentrating on reducing your energy usage instead.
For years, I was holding out for Nanosolar or First Solar to get domestic panels out at somewhere nearer to $2/kW and without so much embodied energy in the panels, but they don't look to be interested in domestic sales. Until then, the only reason that panels are cheap in Australia is because of very high government regulated feed-in tariffs and purchase subsidies, which are just middle-class welfare masquerading as a renewable energy policy.
Until the government killed the program, there were businesses here doing energy efficiency assessments to see if houses qualified for interest free government loans to improve energy efficiency or install solar systems. An interview I heard with one assessor gave the impression that most houses had considerable inefficiency to rectify before it made any sense installing generating capacity. New Australian houses are still much less insulated than new houses in northern Europe or North America, rely too much on resistive electrical heating for the house and for the hot water supply, and the current fashion for building faux-Mediterranean rendered boxes with no roof overhang guarantees high cooling costs in summer. Old Australian houses often had no (as in, ZERO) insulation in them. Visitors from northern Europe are amazed at how uncomfortable and slapdash many of our houses are.
-Snorbert, somewhere in the antipodes
There's three main schools of thought for enviromentalism - the nutty Gaia-worshiping dirty hippies (who believe many crazy things against science), the Greenwashing Corporation Movement (pretending to be environmental to save money on dyes, water, etc., while diverting attention from the crazy Gaia-worshipers), and the enlightened self-interest people.
I fall into the latter camp. I think global warming is a real problem. I also won't give up driving a car, and biking to work (which is a 5.5 hour drive in my car, twice a month), or taking public transportation, or any of the other nonsensical things that hippies suggest we should do for Earth day. (Dirty hippies start with the indoctrination of the young: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSfYawbcBGQ&feature=player_embedded) But I don't, you know, hate the environment. I go backpacking a lot, never litter, and so forth. But I put solar on my home solely for economic reasons (the CO2 reduction is just gravy) - if I can generate power myself at half the rate PG&E charges me, why shouldn't I do it?
The right wing rejects the science behind global warming because they don't want to give up their cars.
The left wing thinks that global warming means we have to give up our cars, or suggest other similarly impractical or nonsensical things (like driving hybrids).
Both sides are wrong.
The Shaka Energy Plan: It is possible to reduce America's CO2 levels by 50%, which would meet every CO2 target imaginable (and do much better than just stabilization, which a lot of accords shoot for), simply by targeting our power generation. Replace coal and gas with nuclear (and wind and solar when economical), which won't raise energy rates. Use our gas to power public transportation, and coal to power our cars. No more foreign energy imports, and we can even pat ourselves on the heads for being good little dirty hippies for our massive CO2 reduction.
Yes, climate scientists are saying we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by about 85% to stabilize the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we emit much more than that, we will emit more carbon dioxide per year than the carbon cycle can absorb, and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to rise and the temperature will continue to rise. So we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80-90% at some point.
There is some disagreement about how much time we have to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80-90% to avoid catastrophic warming (and by catastrophic, I don't mean "ZOFMG we're all gonna die!"). How long it takes us to reduce emissions will determine the concentration at which we stabilize, which will in turn determine how much the temperature rises. For example, if we stabilize at 550 ppm, we will have doubled the concentration of carbon dioxide. There is uncertainty about whether this will lead to a mere 1.5 degree Celsius increase (which isn't too bad) or a 4 degree Celsius increase (which would be pretty bad). The most reasonable course of action would be to play it safe, just in case the actual warming is on the high side of our estimates. If we start reducing carbon dioxide emissions and realize we don't need to cut them so quickly, we can always cut them more slowly. If we wait until we realize that we need to cut them dramatically or that we're already too late, then we're SOL.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
The petrofuels compete only on the $BILLIONS a year in subsidies they get. Which you are paying.
Hybrids don't cost double what straight fuel burners cost.
You're not forced to drive a smaller slower car. The rest of us who pay for your privilege to do so are being forced to pay for it.
Greenhouse emissions are causing climate change. Climate scientists say that if we cut them by 80% over the next 10-20 years we will sufficiently slow or stop climate change.
Upping the ante with "geoengineering" is failing to learn from our arrogant mistakes building up global industry that's causing climate change.
Somehow you have solar becoming the cheapest energy source in 5-10 years, but also impeding research while poor people starve the world over. No more are starving than during the generations when coal and gas were still cheap.
If you break a CFL you have to open the window and wash the area without vacuuming, not "evacuate". If you like heating with electricity from incandescents rather than burning fuel you can do so much more effectively with a $25 heater/blower on the floor than with a light bulb at the ceiling.
You really don't know what you're talking about. But we should trust your dreams of "geoengineering" to compensate for your loud, big "sexy" cars. Electric cars are faster and sexier, too.
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make install -not war
Costco is now selling solar PV systems including a 5060WDC for $18K, or $3.55:W. $5.50:W increased home value sounds like a good way to nearly double your investment in solar, even before the subsidies cut the cost to $2:W or less, tripling it or better.
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make install -not war