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Solar Panels For Every Home?
Hugh Pickens writes "David Crane and Robert F.Kennedy Jr. write in the NY Times that with residents of New Jersey and New York living through three major storms in the past 16 months and suffering sustained blackouts, we need to ask whether it is really sensible to power the 21st century by using an antiquated and vulnerable system of copper wires and wooden poles. Some have taken matters into their own hands, purchasing portable gas-powered generators to give themselves varying degrees of grid independence. But these dirty, noisy and expensive devices have no value outside of a power failure and there is a better way to secure grid independence for our homes and businesses: electricity-producing photovoltaic panels installed on houses, warehouses and over parking lots, wired so that they deliver power when the grid fails. 'Solar panels have dropped in price by 80 percent in the past five years and can provide electricity at a cost that is at or below the current retail cost of grid power in 20 states, including many of the Northeast states,' write Crane and Kennedy. 'So why isn't there more of a push for this clean, affordable, safe and inexhaustible source of electricity?' First, the investor-owned utilities that depend on the existing system for their profits have little economic interest in promoting a technology that empowers customers to generate their own power. Second, state regulatory agencies and local governments impose burdensome permitting and siting requirements that unnecessarily raise installation costs. While it can take as little as eight days to license and install a solar system on a house in Germany, in the United States, depending on your state, the average ranges from 120 to 180 days."
For my house in NJ, we got a quote for about $30,000 (of which we would pay $10,000 out of pocket) to put solar panels on our roof. We also were being asked to cut down 4 trees in order to get optimal sunlight. After hurricane Sandy, we instead bought a $450 3270 watt generator which is portable, won't be damaged outside, and can be shared with neighbors if need be.
Note also that if you want to make your house off-the-grid (as option) with solar, that requires much more expense. Batteries, inverter switches, etc.
Sure solar panels have gone down in price. I put a 9kW solar array on my roof 2 years ago, using grid-tied microinverters. The catch is that if the grid power goes out, the microinverters shut down so they are not putting juice onto the grid and zapping linesmen. This means the solar panels are not able to do anything during a power outage. If you want the panels to run, then there will be a huge investment in a battery system with a charge controller, load shedding and rather expensive batteries, along with an auto transfer switch to cut you off from the grid... these things easily make the solar panels the cheap item in the system.
We have 35 panels on our roof. We lost nine trees during Sandy, but there was no damage to the solar panels. We also have solar canopies and things like that all over town, and I only saw minor damage in one installation. Our only real vulnerability is if a tree falls on the panels themselves.
Ours were fine, even though the wind took out nine trees.