He has a point. In this case, the lab work shows causation and not merely correlation. The correlations are between atmospheric
CO2 and temperature. People hesitate to call the relationship there causation because there is inadequate time resolution. You don't
know for sure that the increase in CO2 came before the increase in temperature or the other way around. However, we stand on the brink of a brave new world: I urge skeptics everywhere to take the experimental approch and reduce the CO2 concentration to the pre-industrial level.
This is the only sound science approach. If we're not sure about global warming, we need to check on this. Let's track temperature changes
as we remove carbon from the air just as quickly as we've put it in. It is the only way to settle the debate.
One thought for a Moon base is to place it at one of the poles. Then solar power can be available all the time so that there
is less need for backup power. So, one can figure a limit on a polar base capablility from the duration of alunar eclipse. At a minimum, it has
to have backup power to maintain safety to last the duration of an eclipse. If food is grown, it has to be thermally protected
or else harvested on the eclipse schedule. Inflated structures have to have sufficient (linked) heat capacity or backup pressure to avoid
collapse. It is only 4 or five hours of power loss but it needs to be anticipated. --
Engage Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
You have misunderstood the meaning of subrogate. The mortgage holder must acknowledge that the system is not owned by the
homeowner. That is it. It can't be attached in case of foreclosure.
I agree with Canada's consumer protection if you are representing it accurately. There is no sale until the customer approves
the design, and systems are not designed until panels are on hand. Presumably, it is not illegal in Canada to be on a wait list
for a Prius. However, Citizenre is concentrating on the US market for now.
I really do think you should consult with an attorney on the levels of ownership interest in the various transactions. I am
not one and I may have misunderstood what I've read in the law or have been told by those who practice it.
Well, you brought up attaching the house, which would require a lein and as you see there is none. I would suggest you consult an attorney
on what the contract means. I have told you and you don't accept what I say. A lease includes an ownership interest in the system, a rental
does not. The only place the word lease is mentioned in the contract is to say that the contract is not a lease or as sale. Rent is only
owed on the power produced. If the system is removed prior to the end of the contract, you lose your deposit, but their is no basis for
charging future rent because the system can't produce power. When Citizenre expands to Canada, perhaps we should discuss this further.
No, I'll try one more time. You lease a car, it is yours for the duration of the lease. Yours to drive and to fix. The only thing you don't
own is the resale value of the car after the lease is up. Neither did you pay for it. If you rent a car, you may drive it, but you will
get in trouble if you take it to a garage without the permission of the rental company because it is not yours. You need to contact the
company and they will figure out what to do. Usually, they bring you another car. But, it is up to them because they own it, not you.
Get it now? Citizenre rents you an appliance that produces power, they maintain it. You get to own the power through rent, just as you get
to own your trip from the airport to where ever you are going by rental car through rent. You do not own the equipment, just the service it
provides.
The contract spells this out. Please reread it. Penalties are decribed in 7.5. They do not include any full term provisions, only
past due amounts.
Dell used to get linux support through Linuxcare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCare and, if I recall they also had a contract
with Redhat. If these left a bad taste, they may want to try to do it in house. In that case, it would take some time to build a team.
If that is the problem, start suggesting a group that could just step and handle the workload.
No, the company is quite definite about this. If you do not approve the design, that's it: no contract. Suppose your roof is too
shaded for a roof top system. The company (franchise actually) offers a ground mounted system. You say, no, I want my yard space.
That's the end of it. The company provides the design, it is the customer who must approve it. If you look at question 6 of the FAQ
it says:
Q. What if I don't like the design? Am I still obligated to the contract?
A. No. You can back out of the contract with no penalty. As I mentioned, you don't even pay the deposit until after you approve the design.
FAQs are very useful tools found on many web sites. Please read this one before saying that something is not covered or stated. You can find the FAQ under the tab "Education."
On your other speculation, it seems to me that anyone with a mortgage is going to have a ton of laywers on their side saying seeya to
your proposed scam. There is no lein involved. This is a rental not a lease or a sale.
The article claims that this is different from ASIMO in that it is unprogrammed. Perhaps this means that the feedback from the gyro
is used more directly?
In any case, this certainly looks like my friend getting over hip replacement surgery. I wonder if one application would be in
working out better models of physical therepy. Give the robot the same change in leg length and muscle weakness, see how it
compensates, then have the patient imitate. The recovery buddy?
Thanks for looking at the contract and raising these questions; they are important ones. Let me say right off that the phone line requirement
was a big hold up for me. Back in December I received assurance that VOIP would be OK and on a recent technical call it was clear that the
engineering side prefers a router connection if available. Now, if you assume that some time in the future, you won't want any form of two
way data in your home that the solar power system can use for communication then your argument about hidden cost would be valid I thing. However, the contract is up front about the need for a communication method. It is just less flexible than the reality.
I took that out of order because this is a clause in the contract which requires additional information. Back to the first isssue: my point was that with a large market penetration, solar hot water is a bad technology if you take it to be mutually exclusive since it cannot do
as much as PV. I also pointed out that they are not mutually exclusive.
On the anticipated cost per peak watt, it is true that a decade is involved since this is the period over which the cost of contruction is
spread, but this is not the sense you mean. To me, a cost much above $1.53 would be bad sign given where production in China is heading.
On the plant construction contract, delay penelties have been mentioned by both the CEO and CTO. There are also bonuses for early completion. Presumably the timescale is based on past experience in building such plants. As is normal with a startup, there are
a number of NDA's in effect. I am not a party to any of them so I don't have any information that I would not be able to disclose
anyway. But, I would say that contracts generally do exist prior to execution, that's why they are written. I do think you've
argued yourself into a corner here though. The company can't be scamming consumers since it takes no money and now it can't be scamming investors since you say they don't exist. About the only thing left is that this is another ploy by ExxonMobil to delay adoption of renewables. I wouldn't put it past them (http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion- could-be-paid-for-by.html) but in this case, I'd expect them to face criminal penalties.
On panel degradation, no, the systems are sized to meet 100% of annual use at the beginning. Since the customer's annual use may change,
they will be resized up or down to compensate. I'd expect degradation to have a smaller variance, but if this is the main thing, panels
will be added to keep up with the degradation. This is an advantage to renting.
Telephone line: already covered.
There is no lein on the home. Mortgage holders must ackowledge that there can be no lein on the system. If you think about it this makes
a lot of sense. This is a rental contract, not a sales contract. In the case of foreclosure, the company needs to be able to recover its
property.
If you rent a car, you, or your insurance company, are on the hook if it is damaged. Same thing here. The company plans to provide a method of insurance if the homeowners policy won't cover it. We are getting different answers so far from State Farm. My agent says Fire, Explosion and Theft, while an agent in IL says everything but flood and nuclear incident. More work is needed here.
If you don't approve the system design the contract is over. That is what approval means in 7.2.
The rent is on what the system actually produces, not on what is might produce. If you don't pay your bill, you still owe it. If the
system is removed owing to default, it won't be producing power so there can't be any claim on lost revenues. 9.1 basically says you can't use your security deposit to pay your past due rent. I've never seen a rental contract that does not say that.
Citizenre will be offereing systems for sale, but this offer is for rental. I hope you will reconsider your accusation that this is
a scam since it does not appear to be based on any facts, only misunderstandings.
Well, converting 10 houses to solar hot water still does not do as much converting 10 to 100% PV and if the aim of 25% market penetration is
achieved then there are only three houses left for your plan. So, in some sense you plan would limit the transition to renewables rather than
boost it. That said, some of my customers have solar hot water and still have space on their roofs so we'll see if enough remains for both
of if we'll need to go with a ground mounted system. Since our systems convert to 120 V AC near the panels, they can be mounted up to 300
yards away from the interconnect box.
Citizenre's anticipated cost of production is $1.53 per peak watt. This makes the model profitable without considering renewable energy credits and other incentives. The contract to build the plant includes penalties for delays. So, while the systems are not available now,
they will be avialable soon enough so that preselling the plant production capacity makes sense. I doubt customers are going to put up with delays
as long as you are anticipating and since the contract only binds the company to its offered rate until the system is designed and approved
by the customer, there is no reason another company couldn't install sooner and take away the customers we've signed up. You snooze you lose.
Citizenre is privately held and has not yet revealed its financial backing. When it does, you'll have to decide for yourself if they are
the soakable sort. In terms of expressions of interest, I know that many people are waiting for this information to decide about either signing up to get a system or starting to sell the contracts. For me, enough detailed technical information had been provided so that I figure this will work, and I think this can have the greatest environmental impact in the shortest time of anything out there except perhaps wind. Efficiency can't do this as quickly at this scale. That said, all of us are trying to be sure our customers are aware of what
efficiency measures they can take, and our engineers are going to be trying to ensure that these measures are in place so that we don't
have to come back later to resize the systems just because customers have switched to CFLs. So, we are having an impact now on the efficiency side, though not a huge one yet since a lot of our customers have been working on these issues already, not all though.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is the big power outages owing to grid stress come during the day in the summer. This is when all
of the most expensive generation is on and it still does not work. People die. Money is lost. Food is spoiled. Adding in significant solar power helps with this.
I'd suggest that you look at the Solar Savings Calculator on any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html. Take the numbers at the bottom, tons of CO2 etc. and reduce
them by the portion of electricity use that hot water alone represents, and there is the main difference. You'll also save about $10K for
a typical bill. You probably save about the same doing hot water alone on the money side, but on the environmental side you miss quite a lot.
Basically, Citizenre wants to make it possible for anyone to get solar. At the moment, to get solar you've got to be pretty upscale. I don't think you've got to be subprime for $40K to look daunting. Citizenre is trying to make getting solar a nobrainer. It hasn't done it yet, that is going to take a pretty good demonstration of the business and and a lot of education. Nobrainers are made not born, but that's
the plan. All of this discussion now helps though. You poke holes in it, and I've got to scratch my head about how does that work. This is all the sort of work that makes things smooth for the future. New projects are always that way. Some succeed to eventually become graceful and others fail. My bet is on success in this case but it is a gamble, not a sure thing yet.
Well the thing is, people tend to use more energy during work. And, as it happens, people have a habit of working when the Sun is up.
The nice thing about renting solar is that you can replace what your utility provides for no more than you already pay. You could
also reduce what you pay in both cases with conservation. But in terms of dollars spent, getting all your electic use off fossil fuels
is a higher impact than just some, and it is for no more money spent whereas your plan requires scraping some new money together first. I'm a green, I'm for self-sufficient communities, local ownership, bioregionalism with some caveats, basically all the old style conservative stuff. Greens are not liberals. But, I also see the need for a very rapid adjustment to how we get energy and this model looks like about the most rapid there is. It should shift the solar market dramatically.
One of the associate I'm training is actually much more experienced in business than I am and he checked on property tax liability where he lives and found that because its a rental and not owned there is none. So, he's training me in this case. On the other hand, if a
number of homes sell for a higher price because they have these systems, property values will go up so unless tax rates are decreased to
compensate I guess everyone's taxes will go up. This is a little like your idea that prices for those still using fossil fuels will
go up though it is a little more pure since I'd expect a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system (note to Sierra Club, this is not an endorsement) will have a larger impact and sooner in the
case of fossil fuel users. But, I'm going to look further into the property tax issue as I go along. There is probably something to your
point here because the contract does put responsibility for such things on the renter.
The article is definitely projecting but retail competition comes in at $2, wholesale at $1 and they're talking
Cell conversion efficiency and economies of scale are galloping ahead so fast that the cost will be down to 70 US cents by 2010, with a target of 30 or 40 cents in a decade.
even less.
Interesting that is bankers who are tracking this, n'est pas?
My neighbor has trouble with his phone connection all the time. The phone company's solution? Ignore it. He still has to pay his bill
if it works or not. With the Citizenre model things are a little different. If the system does not produce, the company does not make money
and the customer has to pay the utility at a higher rate (on average over the life of the contract) so there is a common interest in keeping
the system in good repair. All sorts of things could happen but a lot of them are covered in the contract. You can see this following any
of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html. Click on "Reserve your System" and get the PDF
at the bottom of the page. If you see some "what ifs" that seem important but aren't covered please let me know and I'll put in a support ticket. I've already put in a number of these based on comments from slashdot. Discussion here has been quite helpful.
Well, highest demand actually happens in the summer. Winter peaks don't always happen at night, but they also don't strain the grid or
use so much high cost generation which seemed to be your original worry I think.
There are a lot of advantage to owning, but if as you say, the Citizenre system increases a home's value even though it is a rental, that
is a benefit that the two modes would share I guess.
Using electric hot water heating has its efficiency disadvantages no matter what you use, though wasting solar power is not the same as wasting
fossil power I think. Geothermal systems often include hot water heating as an extra benefit.
A nice thing about renting solar is that it eliminate a lot of the "either or" issues you are raising. Rent solar for what you pay your
utility anyway and you are no longer in the position of making all those alternative choices you mention. You can just do both.
But, I generally agree that conservation is about the cheapest form of energy right now. You might like to look at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/trimming.html where I report on a recent energy efficiency meeting in DC.
There were at least 4 posts in the firehose on this, with a number rising. Questions about the marketing method have been festering
in comments for a while now. Why not have it out?
This story has about a third as many posts so far as other stories on power generation, but 200 posts is still respectable. If Slashdot waits
for full production and market acceptance, it will be runing stories like "Utility install new poles in new development." Slashdot readers
want to know about new stuff. That means they read about a lot of vaporware but that goes with the territory. They also learn about
technology trends sooner than most as well. That's the stuff that matters.
Insulation and geotermal heat pumps pay for themselves faster than solar power and have a lower initial cost, so yes, do this first.
I'm trying to help customers with these things. Most have already gone to CFLs but some have not. That is a $40 savings per bulb.
I'd say that the efficiency measures are even more valuable to people who are planning on selling soon because they can get more for their
house if it is improved in that way and sell it sooner in a slow market which can be very important.
-- Rent solar and transfer the contract when you sell: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
As I've said, I expect other companies to compete with Citizenre. The Salt River Projet in Arizona is
already into solar and seems to have the confidence of its rate payers so it might see the possibility
of renting rate payers roofs as a good thing. So far though I think they are just filling up desert. Doing it
that way is probably easier for them. Note that because of the existing relationship between utilities
and their rate payers, it is more likely that the utility would pay a consideration to the customer
for the use of the roof: utility pays rate payers rent. For Citizenre, customers pay the company rent.
Each utility is limited to its territory. Citizenre is limited to net metering states and their caps. Citizenre's
market is larger than any one utility's market. Also, I could see utlities that are not accomodating to net metering
losing territiry to those which are. APS might lose downtown Phoenix to SRP for example.
-- Solar, its abundant: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html
Actually I think you have that backwards. Solar power produces most near times of highest demand. This helps to keep the more expensive sources
off line. We see the highest demand on hot sunny days (those being the hottest) because of the air conditioning load. Even on a cold cloudy day, solar power is still contributing during the peak of demand. It is doubtful that
reimposing a cap will have much support in NJ since it would mean that fewer people could save money.
With reduced demand over all, it may well be that energy storage that already exists will be used to greater effect since it can be run
(pumped) using cheaper sources.
That's a neat link. Maryland also caps incentives for home owners but not for commercial entities. There are many paths to solar power. I think it is worth remembering that solar power is the basic input in just about everything we do, even the fossil fuels are fossil solar power. 15% efficiency though is much much better than the fossil fuels, which lost a lot along the way, or even plants directly. This makes solar power about the best deal going no matter how it is managed.
I'm not sure I can answer all of this. I'd say that after the first year the company also holds 2 billion in assets. So it is not as though
the money is thrown away. Now a portion of these will be sold out right. A portion will be set to work earning money over time. The amount
of time is 25 years. I think you left out a factor of 5 when you estimated 360 million in five years so lets make that 1.8 billion in five
years. Now, the assets have almost payed for themselves in that time and most of the remaing 20 years is profit. I think your $300/mo
number is a little high but if we cut in in half, then there is still a pretty good margin.
In terms of hacking, I think you might have a point. One might be able to shave off a few percent of the production without getting picked
up by the system monitor. Much more than that and the weatherman would give you away. I don't think a tarp helps since if you did that
you'd have to pay the utility at a higher rate.
I can say that Styler is pretty responsive to issues that people raise. He really likes network marketing. And, he is not asking anyone
in sales for money that I know of to do sales. People are signed up to get systems, but no money has changed hands since the brick a mortar franchises don't have panels yet. He says that he objects to systems where quotas drive people to sell to themselves (the pyramid) and
was involved in the prosecution of Equinox after he left that company over his objection to that scheme. Both investors and franchises have to pony up bucks. This is pretty normal though.
I agree that suggesting that little effort is required would be misleading. I've been dogging it today and I still haven't sold you;-)
I should say that there is a clear division, for residential service, between franchises and sales. Franchises are brick and mortar with
assets to protect along with bonding and licensing requirements. Sales are independent as you point out. It is a good question though,
who pays for say faulty workmanship? The contact says it is the company. But what if the franchise was not following its franchise agreement?
This is a bit of contract law that is beyond me. I'd guess the company is responsible for taking measures to ensure the franchise is living
up to its agreement and if there has been deception on the part of the franchise then the franchise pays and if not the company pays as the
contract states.
For commercial sales, the franchises are responsible for both sales and installation, the company is a supplier of parts.
I'd tend to agree, we throw away solar power on every square meter of Earth where there is not a solar panel anyway. Not really since the
plants like it and that is a very good thing for us. But, discarded solar power is not wasted power in the same way that discarded fossil power is wasted. You didn't have to do anything to get it in the first place and it was coming anyway. You could argue that you are using more than
your share of solar panels, but that is a little like saying that a tree is using more than its share of leaves.
On the grid, you don't want to over produce because of the financial penalty unless you get a deal like the one at http://www.ncgreenpower.org/. But that will change as solar becomes cheaper than wholesale electricity.
Slashdot Mirror
He has a point. In this case, the lab work shows causation and not merely correlation. The correlations are between atmospheric CO2 and temperature. People hesitate to call the relationship there causation because there is inadequate time resolution. You don't know for sure that the increase in CO2 came before the increase in temperature or the other way around. However, we stand on the brink of a brave new world: I urge skeptics everywhere to take the experimental approch and reduce the CO2 concentration to the pre-industrial level.
This is the only sound science approach. If we're not sure about global warming, we need to check on this. Let's track temperature changes as we remove carbon from the air just as quickly as we've put it in. It is the only way to settle the debate.
He can ride with Bush. I heard there are WMD there. We don't want news of their weapons program to come in the form of a mushroom cloud.
I don't want to alarm anyone now...
Stars move up and to the left in the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:H-R_diagram.png during their main sequence lifetime which means they
get cooler but more luminous. It it the luminosity that is most important for the temperatures of planets. Watch the evolution here http://spiff.rit.edu/classes/phys230/lectures/star _age/evol_hr.swf and you'll see that a factor of 2 in a billion years is about what
the evolution looks like. That is less that a part in 100 million per year. So, main sequence evolution is not the sort of thing we can
measure right now. There are changes in solar brightness at a larger level and on shorter timescales though recent changes do not account for
the measured warming. See a rough calculation here http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/executive-summ ary.html.
s -selling-solar.html
--
Solar: It's steady. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
One thought for a Moon base is to place it at one of the poles. Then solar power can be available all the time so that there is less need for backup power. So, one can figure a limit on a polar base capablility from the duration of alunar eclipse. At a minimum, it has to have backup power to maintain safety to last the duration of an eclipse. If food is grown, it has to be thermally protected or else harvested on the eclipse schedule. Inflated structures have to have sufficient (linked) heat capacity or backup pressure to avoid collapse. It is only 4 or five hours of power loss but it needs to be anticipated.s -selling-solar.html
--
Engage Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
You have misunderstood the meaning of subrogate. The mortgage holder must acknowledge that the system is not owned by the homeowner. That is it. It can't be attached in case of foreclosure.
I agree with Canada's consumer protection if you are representing it accurately. There is no sale until the customer approves the design, and systems are not designed until panels are on hand. Presumably, it is not illegal in Canada to be on a wait list for a Prius. However, Citizenre is concentrating on the US market for now.
I really do think you should consult with an attorney on the levels of ownership interest in the various transactions. I am not one and I may have misunderstood what I've read in the law or have been told by those who practice it.
Well, you brought up attaching the house, which would require a lein and as you see there is none. I would suggest you consult an attorney on what the contract means. I have told you and you don't accept what I say. A lease includes an ownership interest in the system, a rental does not. The only place the word lease is mentioned in the contract is to say that the contract is not a lease or as sale. Rent is only owed on the power produced. If the system is removed prior to the end of the contract, you lose your deposit, but their is no basis for charging future rent because the system can't produce power. When Citizenre expands to Canada, perhaps we should discuss this further.
No, I'll try one more time. You lease a car, it is yours for the duration of the lease. Yours to drive and to fix. The only thing you don't own is the resale value of the car after the lease is up. Neither did you pay for it. If you rent a car, you may drive it, but you will get in trouble if you take it to a garage without the permission of the rental company because it is not yours. You need to contact the company and they will figure out what to do. Usually, they bring you another car. But, it is up to them because they own it, not you.
Get it now? Citizenre rents you an appliance that produces power, they maintain it. You get to own the power through rent, just as you get to own your trip from the airport to where ever you are going by rental car through rent. You do not own the equipment, just the service it provides.
The contract spells this out. Please reread it. Penalties are decribed in 7.5. They do not include any full term provisions, only past due amounts.
Amen.
Dell used to get linux support through Linuxcare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinuxCare and, if I recall they also had a contract with Redhat. If these left a bad taste, they may want to try to do it in house. In that case, it would take some time to build a team.
s -selling-solar.html
If that is the problem, start suggesting a group that could just step and handle the workload.
Sun doesn't own the Sun, no one does. http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
On your other speculation, it seems to me that anyone with a mortgage is going to have a ton of laywers on their side saying seeya to your proposed scam. There is no lein involved. This is a rental not a lease or a sale.
The article claims that this is different from ASIMO in that it is unprogrammed. Perhaps this means that the feedback from the gyro is used more directly?
s -selling-solar.html
In any case, this certainly looks like my friend getting over hip replacement surgery. I wonder if one application would be in working out better models of physical therepy. Give the robot the same change in leg length and muscle weakness, see how it compensates, then have the patient imitate. The recovery buddy?
Walk with Sun Dexter! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Thanks for looking at the contract and raising these questions; they are important ones. Let me say right off that the phone line requirement was a big hold up for me. Back in December I received assurance that VOIP would be OK and on a recent technical call it was clear that the engineering side prefers a router connection if available. Now, if you assume that some time in the future, you won't want any form of two way data in your home that the solar power system can use for communication then your argument about hidden cost would be valid I thing. However, the contract is up front about the need for a communication method. It is just less flexible than the reality.
- could-be-paid-for-by.html) but in this case, I'd expect them to face criminal penalties.
I took that out of order because this is a clause in the contract which requires additional information. Back to the first isssue: my point was that with a large market penetration, solar hot water is a bad technology if you take it to be mutually exclusive since it cannot do as much as PV. I also pointed out that they are not mutually exclusive.
On the anticipated cost per peak watt, it is true that a decade is involved since this is the period over which the cost of contruction is spread, but this is not the sense you mean. To me, a cost much above $1.53 would be bad sign given where production in China is heading.
On the plant construction contract, delay penelties have been mentioned by both the CEO and CTO. There are also bonuses for early completion. Presumably the timescale is based on past experience in building such plants. As is normal with a startup, there are a number of NDA's in effect. I am not a party to any of them so I don't have any information that I would not be able to disclose anyway. But, I would say that contracts generally do exist prior to execution, that's why they are written. I do think you've argued yourself into a corner here though. The company can't be scamming consumers since it takes no money and now it can't be scamming investors since you say they don't exist. About the only thing left is that this is another ploy by ExxonMobil to delay adoption of renewables. I wouldn't put it past them (http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/your-opinion
On panel degradation, no, the systems are sized to meet 100% of annual use at the beginning. Since the customer's annual use may change, they will be resized up or down to compensate. I'd expect degradation to have a smaller variance, but if this is the main thing, panels will be added to keep up with the degradation. This is an advantage to renting.
Telephone line: already covered.
There is no lein on the home. Mortgage holders must ackowledge that there can be no lein on the system. If you think about it this makes a lot of sense. This is a rental contract, not a sales contract. In the case of foreclosure, the company needs to be able to recover its property.
If you rent a car, you, or your insurance company, are on the hook if it is damaged. Same thing here. The company plans to provide a method of insurance if the homeowners policy won't cover it. We are getting different answers so far from State Farm. My agent says Fire, Explosion and Theft, while an agent in IL says everything but flood and nuclear incident. More work is needed here.
If you don't approve the system design the contract is over. That is what approval means in 7.2.
The rent is on what the system actually produces, not on what is might produce. If you don't pay your bill, you still owe it. If the system is removed owing to default, it won't be producing power so there can't be any claim on lost revenues. 9.1 basically says you can't use your security deposit to pay your past due rent. I've never seen a rental contract that does not say that.
Citizenre will be offereing systems for sale, but this offer is for rental. I hope you will reconsider your accusation that this is a scam since it does not appear to be based on any facts, only misunderstandings.
Well, converting 10 houses to solar hot water still does not do as much converting 10 to 100% PV and if the aim of 25% market penetration is achieved then there are only three houses left for your plan. So, in some sense you plan would limit the transition to renewables rather than boost it. That said, some of my customers have solar hot water and still have space on their roofs so we'll see if enough remains for both of if we'll need to go with a ground mounted system. Since our systems convert to 120 V AC near the panels, they can be mounted up to 300 yards away from the interconnect box.
Citizenre's anticipated cost of production is $1.53 per peak watt. This makes the model profitable without considering renewable energy credits and other incentives. The contract to build the plant includes penalties for delays. So, while the systems are not available now, they will be avialable soon enough so that preselling the plant production capacity makes sense. I doubt customers are going to put up with delays as long as you are anticipating and since the contract only binds the company to its offered rate until the system is designed and approved by the customer, there is no reason another company couldn't install sooner and take away the customers we've signed up. You snooze you lose.
Citizenre is privately held and has not yet revealed its financial backing. When it does, you'll have to decide for yourself if they are the soakable sort. In terms of expressions of interest, I know that many people are waiting for this information to decide about either signing up to get a system or starting to sell the contracts. For me, enough detailed technical information had been provided so that I figure this will work, and I think this can have the greatest environmental impact in the shortest time of anything out there except perhaps wind. Efficiency can't do this as quickly at this scale. That said, all of us are trying to be sure our customers are aware of what efficiency measures they can take, and our engineers are going to be trying to ensure that these measures are in place so that we don't have to come back later to resize the systems just because customers have switched to CFLs. So, we are having an impact now on the efficiency side, though not a huge one yet since a lot of our customers have been working on these issues already, not all though.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is the big power outages owing to grid stress come during the day in the summer. This is when all of the most expensive generation is on and it still does not work. People die. Money is lost. Food is spoiled. Adding in significant solar power helps with this.
s -selling-solar.html. Take the numbers at the bottom, tons of CO2 etc. and reduce
them by the portion of electricity use that hot water alone represents, and there is the main difference. You'll also save about $10K for
a typical bill. You probably save about the same doing hot water alone on the money side, but on the environmental side you miss quite a lot.
I'd suggest that you look at the Solar Savings Calculator on any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Basically, Citizenre wants to make it possible for anyone to get solar. At the moment, to get solar you've got to be pretty upscale. I don't think you've got to be subprime for $40K to look daunting. Citizenre is trying to make getting solar a nobrainer. It hasn't done it yet, that is going to take a pretty good demonstration of the business and and a lot of education. Nobrainers are made not born, but that's the plan. All of this discussion now helps though. You poke holes in it, and I've got to scratch my head about how does that work. This is all the sort of work that makes things smooth for the future. New projects are always that way. Some succeed to eventually become graceful and others fail. My bet is on success in this case but it is a gamble, not a sure thing yet.
Well the thing is, people tend to use more energy during work. And, as it happens, people have a habit of working when the Sun is up.
The nice thing about renting solar is that you can replace what your utility provides for no more than you already pay. You could also reduce what you pay in both cases with conservation. But in terms of dollars spent, getting all your electic use off fossil fuels is a higher impact than just some, and it is for no more money spent whereas your plan requires scraping some new money together first. I'm a green, I'm for self-sufficient communities, local ownership, bioregionalism with some caveats, basically all the old style conservative stuff. Greens are not liberals. But, I also see the need for a very rapid adjustment to how we get energy and this model looks like about the most rapid there is. It should shift the solar market dramatically.
One of the associate I'm training is actually much more experienced in business than I am and he checked on property tax liability where he lives and found that because its a rental and not owned there is none. So, he's training me in this case. On the other hand, if a number of homes sell for a higher price because they have these systems, property values will go up so unless tax rates are decreased to compensate I guess everyone's taxes will go up. This is a little like your idea that prices for those still using fossil fuels will go up though it is a little more pure since I'd expect a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system (note to Sierra Club, this is not an endorsement) will have a larger impact and sooner in the case of fossil fuel users. But, I'm going to look further into the property tax issue as I go along. There is probably something to your point here because the contract does put responsibility for such things on the renter.
Interesting that is bankers who are tracking this, n'est pas?
My neighbor has trouble with his phone connection all the time. The phone company's solution? Ignore it. He still has to pay his bill if it works or not. With the Citizenre model things are a little different. If the system does not produce, the company does not make money and the customer has to pay the utility at a higher rate (on average over the life of the contract) so there is a common interest in keeping the system in good repair. All sorts of things could happen but a lot of them are covered in the contract. You can see this following any of the links at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html. Click on "Reserve your System" and get the PDF
at the bottom of the page. If you see some "what ifs" that seem important but aren't covered please let me know and I'll put in a support ticket. I've already put in a number of these based on comments from slashdot. Discussion here has been quite helpful.
Well, highest demand actually happens in the summer. Winter peaks don't always happen at night, but they also don't strain the grid or use so much high cost generation which seemed to be your original worry I think.
There are a lot of advantage to owning, but if as you say, the Citizenre system increases a home's value even though it is a rental, that is a benefit that the two modes would share I guess.
Using electric hot water heating has its efficiency disadvantages no matter what you use, though wasting solar power is not the same as wasting fossil power I think. Geothermal systems often include hot water heating as an extra benefit.
A nice thing about renting solar is that it eliminate a lot of the "either or" issues you are raising. Rent solar for what you pay your utility anyway and you are no longer in the position of making all those alternative choices you mention. You can just do both.
But, I generally agree that conservation is about the cheapest form of energy right now. You might like to look at http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/trimming.html where I report on a recent energy efficiency meeting in DC.
There were at least 4 posts in the firehose on this, with a number rising. Questions about the marketing method have been festering in comments for a while now. Why not have it out?
This story has about a third as many posts so far as other stories on power generation, but 200 posts is still respectable. If Slashdot waits for full production and market acceptance, it will be runing stories like "Utility install new poles in new development." Slashdot readers want to know about new stuff. That means they read about a lot of vaporware but that goes with the territory. They also learn about technology trends sooner than most as well. That's the stuff that matters.
Insulation and geotermal heat pumps pay for themselves faster than solar power and have a lower initial cost, so yes, do this first. I'm trying to help customers with these things. Most have already gone to CFLs but some have not. That is a $40 savings per bulb. I'd say that the efficiency measures are even more valuable to people who are planning on selling soon because they can get more for their house if it is improved in that way and sell it sooner in a slow market which can be very important.s -selling-solar.html
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Rent solar and transfer the contract when you sell: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Well, I always multiply by at least a factor of pi in these articles but going below wholesale may be soon. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/m oney/2007/02/19/ccview19.xml.
s -selling-solar.html
As I've said, I expect other companies to compete with Citizenre. The Salt River Projet in Arizona is already into solar and seems to have the confidence of its rate payers so it might see the possibility of renting rate payers roofs as a good thing. So far though I think they are just filling up desert. Doing it that way is probably easier for them. Note that because of the existing relationship between utilities and their rate payers, it is more likely that the utility would pay a consideration to the customer for the use of the roof: utility pays rate payers rent. For Citizenre, customers pay the company rent.
Each utility is limited to its territory. Citizenre is limited to net metering states and their caps. Citizenre's market is larger than any one utility's market. Also, I could see utlities that are not accomodating to net metering losing territiry to those which are. APS might lose downtown Phoenix to SRP for example.
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Solar, its abundant: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-user
Actually I think you have that backwards. Solar power produces most near times of highest demand. This helps to keep the more expensive sources off line. We see the highest demand on hot sunny days (those being the hottest) because of the air conditioning load. Even on a cold cloudy day, solar power is still contributing during the peak of demand. It is doubtful that reimposing a cap will have much support in NJ since it would mean that fewer people could save money.
With reduced demand over all, it may well be that energy storage that already exists will be used to greater effect since it can be run (pumped) using cheaper sources.
That's a neat link. Maryland also caps incentives for home owners but not for commercial entities. There are many paths to solar power. I think it is worth remembering that solar power is the basic input in just about everything we do, even the fossil fuels are fossil solar power. 15% efficiency though is much much better than the fossil fuels, which lost a lot along the way, or even plants directly. This makes solar power about the best deal going no matter how it is managed.
I'm not sure I can answer all of this. I'd say that after the first year the company also holds 2 billion in assets. So it is not as though the money is thrown away. Now a portion of these will be sold out right. A portion will be set to work earning money over time. The amount of time is 25 years. I think you left out a factor of 5 when you estimated 360 million in five years so lets make that 1.8 billion in five years. Now, the assets have almost payed for themselves in that time and most of the remaing 20 years is profit. I think your $300/mo number is a little high but if we cut in in half, then there is still a pretty good margin.
In terms of hacking, I think you might have a point. One might be able to shave off a few percent of the production without getting picked up by the system monitor. Much more than that and the weatherman would give you away. I don't think a tarp helps since if you did that you'd have to pay the utility at a higher rate.
I can say that Styler is pretty responsive to issues that people raise. He really likes network marketing. And, he is not asking anyone in sales for money that I know of to do sales. People are signed up to get systems, but no money has changed hands since the brick a mortar franchises don't have panels yet. He says that he objects to systems where quotas drive people to sell to themselves (the pyramid) and was involved in the prosecution of Equinox after he left that company over his objection to that scheme. Both investors and franchises have to pony up bucks. This is pretty normal though.
As I say, I'm not sure I've covered everything.
I agree that suggesting that little effort is required would be misleading. I've been dogging it today and I still haven't sold you ;-)
I should say that there is a clear division, for residential service, between franchises and sales. Franchises are brick and mortar with assets to protect along with bonding and licensing requirements. Sales are independent as you point out. It is a good question though, who pays for say faulty workmanship? The contact says it is the company. But what if the franchise was not following its franchise agreement? This is a bit of contract law that is beyond me. I'd guess the company is responsible for taking measures to ensure the franchise is living up to its agreement and if there has been deception on the part of the franchise then the franchise pays and if not the company pays as the contract states.
For commercial sales, the franchises are responsible for both sales and installation, the company is a supplier of parts.
I'd tend to agree, we throw away solar power on every square meter of Earth where there is not a solar panel anyway. Not really since the plants like it and that is a very good thing for us. But, discarded solar power is not wasted power in the same way that discarded fossil power is wasted. You didn't have to do anything to get it in the first place and it was coming anyway. You could argue that you are using more than your share of solar panels, but that is a little like saying that a tree is using more than its share of leaves.
On the grid, you don't want to over produce because of the financial penalty unless you get a deal like the one at http://www.ncgreenpower.org/. But that will change as solar becomes cheaper than wholesale electricity.