Yes renewable energy seems to cost more than conventional fossil but then the last has hidden costs regarding the environment now and in the future.
For better or worse, we have decided to not price those future costs into our power bills.
If we did and we taxed carbon directly (not some credit scheme, but just a direct tax on carbon production), then you might well see the uptake on solar and wind shoot through the roof.
Right now, installing solar makes no sense, at least not at the residential home scale. The payback is measured in decades.
Part of the reason for that is the cost of labor to install the panels, grid tie, etc.. The panels themselves are no longer expensive, but the labor part doesn't change much.
If my cost of power went from 10.7 cents per kWh to 25 cents per kWh, those numbers change very quickly.
----
The interesting thing is that while solar and wind would become very competitive if we had a carbon tax, so would nuclear. Right now nuclear is having a hard time competing with coal and natural gas due to the low prices of burning those.
Yea... By the numbers, Texas probably has a larger portion its population that live in hotter climates than California, requiring constant A/C usage during warmer months.(Likely not constant, but definately more during the day...) Which, in the southern half of Texas, equates to about 8-9 months of the year.
Houston is an interesting beast...
The temp might be 85 degrees outside, but the RV is 90%. You don't run the AC because it is too hot, you run it to remove the humidity from the air.
My father lived in Houston for a long time, the summers there can be brutal due to the humidity.
With a little more insulation than usual, you can do that pretty much anywhere in the USA.
No, you really can't... you think so, but that doesn't make it true.
When it is 10 degrees outside, you must have heat. Insulation reduces the rate of heat loss, it doesn't remove it.
Our heat is provided by natural gas anyway, so not counted in electricity consumption. AC is where that really comes into play.
When it is 100 degrees out for a whole month and it remains 90 degrees even past midnight, you simply must have AC.
Now it is true that better insulation would reduce the overall need, since it would reduce the rate of heat penetration of the home. A more efficient HVAC would also help. I installed one two years ago and my power bills took a huge dive, about 30% less total across the year, and that is with doing nothing to insulation.
The HVAC has a 10 year parts/labor warranty and has a payback of 7 years. It is effectively "free" when you consider the cost can be financed for 7 years at about the monthly power bill savings.
Yes, unless you want to turn them into public owned utilities. Which is an option to consider.
But then if we turn them into public utilities owned by the government, solar then becomes an option.
----
Let me put it this way. If solar on the roof top makes so much sense, why aren't the power companies themselves offering to install the panels and sell you the power?
"Be GREEN at NO COST to YOU" could be the tag line.
They might even be able to offer you a 5% discount for reducing stress on the grid during peak demand times, that would get even more people to do it.
So why don't they? Could it be that without someone else paying for 30-50% of it that it makes no economic sense at all?
-----
As a further side note, it is quite possible that it would make sense to install them when building new houses, you get economies of scale when you do things in bulk. Installing 250 rooftop panel systems all at the same time, in the same place, might well make sense. It is the one-at-a-time installs that don't make any sense, labor is most of the cost.
Yes, I'm aware the panels have gotten much cheaper, now how do you get the labor of installing them cheap too? Solve that and you can be rich.:)
But every single form of energy is subsidized by the government. So why are we singling out solar again?
No, it really isn't... this is a common misconception by people who don't really understand this stuff...
The government does allow lots of tax breaks for oil and gas drilling, that is true. But they allow similar breaks for almost any kind of business investment. The ones for oil and gas are a bit more favorable, but they aren't FREE MONEY.
The government is not writing checks out of the general fund to pay people to drill for oil.
The government IS writing checks out of the general fund to pay people to install solar.
That is a huge difference.
The tax breaks for oil and gas can only save you money if you have other investments to write them off against, and even then you must have spent money on the oil and gas drilling first to be able to claim the deductions.
The 30% the government will pay towards solar installation is a TAX CREDIT, not a TAX DEDUCTION. That is a massive difference, one well worth understanding before claiming oil and gas gets some huge break.
I'm curious. What is it about solar energy that spurs such surprising anger among this segment of Slashdot readers? What did solar energy do to you?
I think it is the government subsidy part that upsets so many.
I love saving money, if solar power will save me money, sign me up!
What bugs me is when it costs more than existing sources and only "appears" to be cheaper once tax dollars have paid down the cost enough to look that way.
Residential solar is currently in that boat, it makes no economic sense without tax incentives. Utility scale solar may be in another boat, given the lower cost per unit of power produced since almost everything is cheaper at large scale.
If utility solar makes economic sense, by all means, install it and use it, I'm all for that.
Just don't ask me to pay for other people's solar installation using my tax dollars then claim it is "cheaper" when it isn't.
-----
Side note: A comment here on Slashdot actually got me to do something about my own power use. Someone posted numbers on LED bulbs compared to incandescent and CFLs and I was a bit surprised, because they put it in terms of dollar cost per year and compared it to the new, lower prices of LED bulbs.
Amazon recently had a sale on LED bulbs, 60w replacements that use just 8w, for $5 a bulb. I bought 30 of them. The payback in cost is less than a year. It is a no-brainer.
If solar made that kinda sense, I'd install it tomorrow, as it stands, my payback is currently about 15 years, and that is WITH tax incentives. It makes no sense.
The end goal is to utilize what Amazon sees as a slice of virgin airspace â" above 200ft, where most buildings end, and below 500ft, where general aviation begins.
Yea, I hate to break it to Amazon, but that airspace isn't "virgin", it is currently the domain of helicopters.
Normally, helicopters will fly 500ft above the ground, give or take a bit, but they do not have a lower limit.
FAR 91.119 says "Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes..." and it turns out to be illegal to fly an airplane less than 1000' above the rooftops of a city (i.e., about 1200' above the ground) or 500' from any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure in the countryside (i.e., at least 500' above the ground). This is a much closer look than you would get in a commercial airliner, but it isn't all that close. FAR 91.119(d) says "Helicopters may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section if the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface."
As long as the helicopter could autorotate to a tennis court, road, or field in the event of an engine failure, the pilot can fly much lower than in an airplane.
Source - Me... I'm a Certified Flight Instructor in both helicopters and airplanes, with thousands of hours of dual given, 2 years spent as a Chief Flight Instructor in a FAA Part 141 school, as well as nearly 10 years of commercial flight experience in tours, offshore, and EMS.
Amazon is out of their mind if they think this is ever going to work. If nothing else, the police and EMS helicopters are not going to get out of their way and they have more of a need to be there.
The concept seems good - but unless they are adding a lot of value, all they are doing is providing the same service as Yellow Pages, with the possibility of reviews. Or am I missing something? The review concept would be useful, but that's about it, surely.
Amazon will kick off providers who are not doing a good job, Amazon provides their A-to-Z guarantee, so if I have a problem, I don't have to pay (or Amazon pays me back).
That is why.
I've already booked someone for Thursday this week, I think this is a wonderful service and I expect to use it several times a year.
In my experience, Amazon's customer service is second to none, they understand that a long term customer is worth more than short term profits, they often have refunded me without requiring a cheap return or sent out a replacement, or taken something back past the 30 day return policy, without my having to make a fuss.
As a result, I spend a lot of money there, just bought several hundred dollars worth of LED light bulbs this week, as an example.
Give me great service and I'll give you my business, it is just that simple.
$140 for office chair assembly? $180 for bed assembly? $120 for treadmill? And plenty more just as crazy
I'm pretty generous when it comes to hiring people to do things I don't want too, but who in their right mind would pay those rates? If I'm being conservative that's still like $300 an hour.
It just launched, those are the early prices without competition.
Give it a month or two, you'll see those come down.
Have you noticed the small place called Europe over the other side of the Atlantic?
Almost all of it bar the openly racist parties is to the left of almost all of the US politically.
That is what they tell you, but frankly I'm not actually convinced that is true...
The parts of Europe that it is more true of, won't survive long term in their current state... They are being held up due to the Euro and Germany more than anything else, but that likely isn't a long term solution...
Most backups would be erased or encrypted by the ransomware.
How? A proper backup system has offline copies that aren't connected to anything and it also has versioning of backups so if somehow the last backup is messed up, the one before that or the one before that works.
Windows encourages bad practices. Did you ever see a ready build PC with all the data on a separate derive or partition? No, they make it so a re-install makes you lose all your data.
This hasn't been true for awhile...
I recently reinstalled Windows 8 on a machine that someone brought to me that had been messed up.
Easy peasy, do a "clean install" on the existing partition, it moves everything from Windows and Program Files to Windows.Old, gives you a clean install without wiping data, you pick out what you need then delete the.old folder.
So if they caught these asshats the total surveillance state they (the NSA) built is justifiable? The ends justify the means... I can't say I agree with you.
I didn't say it was justifiable, I said I wouldn't mind so much...
While I still would be against it, at least there would be something positive about it. Not everything is black and white.
- Finding these criminals may not help make the computers run again.
No, but it would prevent them from doing it again.
- Finding these criminals may be beyond the abilities of the US Government. The NSA is not all powerful, the simple fact that Snowden's leaks exist prove it.
True, but I'd be shocked if finding THESE SPECIFIC criminals was beyond the US Government.
- If the criminals are not in the US, this greatly limits the abilities of the US justice.
If they are US citizens, then they deserve their rights and day in court. If they are not and can be reached by US Justice, then follow that path. If they are beyond the US Justice system, then they are enemies of the state and attacking US citizens is an act of war and the military should deal with them.
- Solving the problem probably involves first paying the ransom.
I'd rather spend triple the money to NOT pay the ransom and reformat and reinstall all the computers, and restore from the last good backups.
- If the NSA actually helps finding the criminals, I seriously doubt it will be public.
Maybe it should be, it would help their image. Catching the criminals should at least be made public, to let everyone know that crime doesn't pay.
After all, if you can do this without getting caught, what is to stop 10 more people from doing it?
Fair enough.... My next question is... if the FBI called the NSA and said, "we want to catch these guys, can you help?", would they?
Should the CIA/NSA/FBI be different agencies, or should they be one with the single goal of protecting Americans against crimes committed while respecting the US Constitution in the process?
If our government actually did something about stuff like this, I think people would believe in their government a bit more, but as it stands, it seems like the NSA and such only want to either spy on us or topple governments that don't tow the line for the US.
I cannot imagine that finding these criminals is beyond the abilities of the US Government, it just seems like they don't even try.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes renewable energy seems to cost more than conventional fossil but then the last has hidden costs regarding the environment now and in the future.
For better or worse, we have decided to not price those future costs into our power bills.
If we did and we taxed carbon directly (not some credit scheme, but just a direct tax on carbon production), then you might well see the uptake on solar and wind shoot through the roof.
Right now, installing solar makes no sense, at least not at the residential home scale. The payback is measured in decades.
Part of the reason for that is the cost of labor to install the panels, grid tie, etc.. The panels themselves are no longer expensive, but the labor part doesn't change much.
If my cost of power went from 10.7 cents per kWh to 25 cents per kWh, those numbers change very quickly.
----
The interesting thing is that while solar and wind would become very competitive if we had a carbon tax, so would nuclear. Right now nuclear is having a hard time competing with coal and natural gas due to the low prices of burning those.
Yea... By the numbers, Texas probably has a larger portion its population that live in hotter climates than California, requiring constant A/C usage during warmer months.(Likely not constant, but definately more during the day...) Which, in the southern half of Texas, equates to about 8-9 months of the year.
Houston is an interesting beast...
The temp might be 85 degrees outside, but the RV is 90%. You don't run the AC because it is too hot, you run it to remove the humidity from the air.
My father lived in Houston for a long time, the summers there can be brutal due to the humidity.
With a little more insulation than usual, you can do that pretty much anywhere in the USA.
No, you really can't... you think so, but that doesn't make it true.
When it is 10 degrees outside, you must have heat. Insulation reduces the rate of heat loss, it doesn't remove it.
Our heat is provided by natural gas anyway, so not counted in electricity consumption. AC is where that really comes into play.
When it is 100 degrees out for a whole month and it remains 90 degrees even past midnight, you simply must have AC.
Now it is true that better insulation would reduce the overall need, since it would reduce the rate of heat penetration of the home. A more efficient HVAC would also help. I installed one two years ago and my power bills took a huge dive, about 30% less total across the year, and that is with doing nothing to insulation.
The HVAC has a 10 year parts/labor warranty and has a payback of 7 years. It is effectively "free" when you consider the cost can be financed for 7 years at about the monthly power bill savings.
After-all, the pre-subsidy price is just poking around the cost of coal power.
It might be, at utility scale... but it isn't at consumer scale...
The payback is still measured in decades...
If it makes economic sense for power companies to install large solar systems, by all means, do so. I wouldn't tell them to do otherwise.
But it still makes no sense to install them on your home.
Do you feel the same way about nuclear?
Yes, unless you want to turn them into public owned utilities. Which is an option to consider.
But then if we turn them into public utilities owned by the government, solar then becomes an option.
----
Let me put it this way. If solar on the roof top makes so much sense, why aren't the power companies themselves offering to install the panels and sell you the power?
"Be GREEN at NO COST to YOU" could be the tag line.
They might even be able to offer you a 5% discount for reducing stress on the grid during peak demand times, that would get even more people to do it.
So why don't they? Could it be that without someone else paying for 30-50% of it that it makes no economic sense at all?
-----
As a further side note, it is quite possible that it would make sense to install them when building new houses, you get economies of scale when you do things in bulk. Installing 250 rooftop panel systems all at the same time, in the same place, might well make sense. It is the one-at-a-time installs that don't make any sense, labor is most of the cost.
Yes, I'm aware the panels have gotten much cheaper, now how do you get the labor of installing them cheap too? Solve that and you can be rich. :)
But every single form of energy is subsidized by the government. So why are we singling out solar again?
No, it really isn't... this is a common misconception by people who don't really understand this stuff...
The government does allow lots of tax breaks for oil and gas drilling, that is true. But they allow similar breaks for almost any kind of business investment. The ones for oil and gas are a bit more favorable, but they aren't FREE MONEY.
The government is not writing checks out of the general fund to pay people to drill for oil.
The government IS writing checks out of the general fund to pay people to install solar.
That is a huge difference.
The tax breaks for oil and gas can only save you money if you have other investments to write them off against, and even then you must have spent money on the oil and gas drilling first to be able to claim the deductions.
The 30% the government will pay towards solar installation is a TAX CREDIT, not a TAX DEDUCTION. That is a massive difference, one well worth understanding before claiming oil and gas gets some huge break.
None of it. As I already pointed out in the first post to this thread: all this is filtered out and deposited, and not 'emitted'.
Citation Needed
The sad part is that states like Florida are making it harder to install solar.
They are?
They are removing rebate programs that subsidize the cost of installing solar.
This does not prevent you from installing solar, it just removes the fake "lower cost" from doing so.
I'm curious. What is it about solar energy that spurs such surprising anger among this segment of Slashdot readers? What did solar energy do to you?
I think it is the government subsidy part that upsets so many.
I love saving money, if solar power will save me money, sign me up!
What bugs me is when it costs more than existing sources and only "appears" to be cheaper once tax dollars have paid down the cost enough to look that way.
Residential solar is currently in that boat, it makes no economic sense without tax incentives. Utility scale solar may be in another boat, given the lower cost per unit of power produced since almost everything is cheaper at large scale.
If utility solar makes economic sense, by all means, install it and use it, I'm all for that.
Just don't ask me to pay for other people's solar installation using my tax dollars then claim it is "cheaper" when it isn't.
-----
Side note: A comment here on Slashdot actually got me to do something about my own power use. Someone posted numbers on LED bulbs compared to incandescent and CFLs and I was a bit surprised, because they put it in terms of dollar cost per year and compared it to the new, lower prices of LED bulbs.
Amazon recently had a sale on LED bulbs, 60w replacements that use just 8w, for $5 a bulb. I bought 30 of them. The payback in cost is less than a year. It is a no-brainer.
If solar made that kinda sense, I'd install it tomorrow, as it stands, my payback is currently about 15 years, and that is WITH tax incentives. It makes no sense.
The end goal is to utilize what Amazon sees as a slice of virgin airspace â" above 200ft, where most buildings end, and below 500ft, where general aviation begins.
Yea, I hate to break it to Amazon, but that airspace isn't "virgin", it is currently the domain of helicopters.
Normally, helicopters will fly 500ft above the ground, give or take a bit, but they do not have a lower limit.
FAR 91.119 says "Except when necessary for takeoff or landing, no person may operate an aircraft below the following altitudes..." and it turns out to be illegal to fly an airplane less than 1000' above the rooftops of a city (i.e., about 1200' above the ground) or 500' from any person, vessel, vehicle, or structure in the countryside (i.e., at least 500' above the ground). This is a much closer look than you would get in a commercial airliner, but it isn't all that close. FAR 91.119(d) says "Helicopters may be operated at less than the minimums prescribed in paragraph (b) or (c) of this section if the operation is conducted without hazard to persons or property on the surface."
As long as the helicopter could autorotate to a tennis court, road, or field in the event of an engine failure, the pilot can fly much lower than in an airplane.
Source - Me... I'm a Certified Flight Instructor in both helicopters and airplanes, with thousands of hours of dual given, 2 years spent as a Chief Flight Instructor in a FAA Part 141 school, as well as nearly 10 years of commercial flight experience in tours, offshore, and EMS.
Amazon is out of their mind if they think this is ever going to work. If nothing else, the police and EMS helicopters are not going to get out of their way and they have more of a need to be there.
I am simply glad that Vine reviews are marked as such, so that I know the person got a free item.
The program doesn't bother me, it is transparent. It would bother me if they tried to hide it.
The concept seems good - but unless they are adding a lot of value, all they are doing is providing the same service as Yellow Pages, with the possibility of reviews. Or am I missing something? The review concept would be useful, but that's about it, surely.
Amazon will kick off providers who are not doing a good job, Amazon provides their A-to-Z guarantee, so if I have a problem, I don't have to pay (or Amazon pays me back).
That is why.
I've already booked someone for Thursday this week, I think this is a wonderful service and I expect to use it several times a year.
In my experience, Amazon's customer service is second to none, they understand that a long term customer is worth more than short term profits, they often have refunded me without requiring a cheap return or sent out a replacement, or taken something back past the 30 day return policy, without my having to make a fuss.
As a result, I spend a lot of money there, just bought several hundred dollars worth of LED light bulbs this week, as an example.
Give me great service and I'll give you my business, it is just that simple.
These business are local businesses which originally did not depend on Amazon. So what stops people from bypassing Amazon after locating the business?
That will happen to some extent, but keep in mind that Amazon will also refund the difference if you're offered a lower price from the same provider.
Amazon also provides their A-to-Z guarentee, if I have a problem, I have someone to complain to besides the service provider.
I may not know "Joe's Ceiling Fan Installation Company", but I know who Amazon is. I also know what kind of customer service Amazon provides.
If Joe shows up and does a crappy job, or if he tries to charge me more, or if something else goes wrong, Amazon will make it right.
That has value to me.
$140 for office chair assembly?
$180 for bed assembly?
$120 for treadmill?
And plenty more just as crazy
I'm pretty generous when it comes to hiring people to do things I don't want too, but who in their right mind would pay those rates? If I'm being conservative that's still like $300 an hour.
It just launched, those are the early prices without competition.
Give it a month or two, you'll see those come down.
I like being able to see reviews from Amazon customers with "verified purchase" next to their names, means much more than random comments online.
Have you noticed the small place called Europe over the other side of the Atlantic?
Almost all of it bar the openly racist parties is to the left of almost all of the US politically.
That is what they tell you, but frankly I'm not actually convinced that is true...
The parts of Europe that it is more true of, won't survive long term in their current state... They are being held up due to the Euro and Germany more than anything else, but that likely isn't a long term solution...
In a normal country it would be about 75% of the population.
Since the world is still functioning, that is not possible.
As someone to the left of the D's
What the heck is to the left of the D's?
Turn off all the lights and go live in caves?
But with Airbus aircraft, the computers are in control and there is no such thing as "manual".
This is not true, there is indeed a manual reversion mode to remove the computers from the flight decisions.
There are edge cases where a pilot needs to have manual control of the airplane.
Sadly, that also allows this to happen, but there are other cases where a lack of it causes crashes.
No system is perfect.
Most backups would be erased or encrypted by the ransomware.
How? A proper backup system has offline copies that aren't connected to anything and it also has versioning of backups so if somehow the last backup is messed up, the one before that or the one before that works.
Windows encourages bad practices. Did you ever see a ready build PC with all the data on a separate derive or partition? No, they make it so a re-install makes you lose all your data.
This hasn't been true for awhile...
I recently reinstalled Windows 8 on a machine that someone brought to me that had been messed up.
Easy peasy, do a "clean install" on the existing partition, it moves everything from Windows and Program Files to Windows.Old, gives you a clean install without wiping data, you pick out what you need then delete the .old folder.
Works like a champ...
So if they caught these asshats the total surveillance state they (the NSA) built is justifiable? The ends justify the means... I can't say I agree with you.
I didn't say it was justifiable, I said I wouldn't mind so much...
While I still would be against it, at least there would be something positive about it. Not everything is black and white.
- Finding these criminals may not help make the computers run again.
No, but it would prevent them from doing it again.
- Finding these criminals may be beyond the abilities of the US Government. The NSA is not all powerful, the simple fact that Snowden's leaks exist prove it.
True, but I'd be shocked if finding THESE SPECIFIC criminals was beyond the US Government.
- If the criminals are not in the US, this greatly limits the abilities of the US justice.
If they are US citizens, then they deserve their rights and day in court. If they are not and can be reached by US Justice, then follow that path. If they are beyond the US Justice system, then they are enemies of the state and attacking US citizens is an act of war and the military should deal with them.
- Solving the problem probably involves first paying the ransom.
I'd rather spend triple the money to NOT pay the ransom and reformat and reinstall all the computers, and restore from the last good backups.
- If the NSA actually helps finding the criminals, I seriously doubt it will be public.
Maybe it should be, it would help their image. Catching the criminals should at least be made public, to let everyone know that crime doesn't pay.
After all, if you can do this without getting caught, what is to stop 10 more people from doing it?
Fair enough.... My next question is... if the FBI called the NSA and said, "we want to catch these guys, can you help?", would they?
Should the CIA/NSA/FBI be different agencies, or should they be one with the single goal of protecting Americans against crimes committed while respecting the US Constitution in the process?
...they went after these criminals.
If our government actually did something about stuff like this, I think people would believe in their government a bit more, but as it stands, it seems like the NSA and such only want to either spy on us or topple governments that don't tow the line for the US.
I cannot imagine that finding these criminals is beyond the abilities of the US Government, it just seems like they don't even try.