Irrelevant - the moment a self-driving car has an accident that causes loss of life, there'll be a public outcry against them, and a demand that they be banned for being too unsafe, statistics-be-damned.
What is sad is that you're probably right and it shows how ignorant most humans really are...
We are not, in general, as smart as we think we are...
Main disadvantage? Sometimes there's no car nearby, and of course the usual parking space hunt in the city.
You think THAT is the main disadvantage?
I suppose to people who are used to public transportation, your idea makes sense. To the rest of us who don't ride public transport, it is a horrible idea.
Bleah, getting into a car that 500 people have been in? NO THANK YOU...
Just not gonna do it, it isn't a tech issue, it is a "I like my car because I'm the only one who drives it" issue...
Net metering won't go away until you're getting up past Hawaii install levels, where a substation's power flow might actually go negative during the day. Daytime power demand is sufficiently higher that they're still more than breaking even on solar panels saving them 'expensive' power.
I had another thought regarding this point...
You may well be right for now, and the reality is the total solar generation on rooftops is a rounding error right now...
However... if you're basing the decision on installing $50,000 worth of solar panels based on the power they will produce for 20 years, don't you think it would be smart to consider what happens to the math if/when net metering goes away?
Lets say you install enough solar to produce 100% of the power you use all year. Right now, your bill will go to zero. That is great... but what happens if in 5 years they change it to pay you 5 cents per kWh and bill you 15 cents per kWh?
Those numbers that made solar look so good are gone, replaced by terrible numbers. Why? Because you don't actually produce and store all your power onsite, you use power from the grid at times and produce a surplus that you feedback.
It may even out, but that only matters if you're on net metering. Run the math again with the above split and solar becomes a horrible investment.
You don't actually need a second meter for net metering(though your power company requiring it is entirely possible), though it's 'nice' to know how much energy your array is generating(and to tell you if something is wrong), but most inverters have that. Your standard electric meter is perfectly happy to run backwards, and that's all that's necessary for 'net' metering.
We have smart meters now, they are digital and they take the readings remotely. I am pretty sure they require a second meter, these can't run backwards, or so that is what I understand.
Looking it up, you're serviced by Oncor, right? It's probably because of their Incentives, specifically $539 per kW, and $0.3462/kWh. That's not net metering. That's selling your energy for 3 times the regular going rate. Just remember that solar generally displaces more expensive peak power.
Oncore has some nice incentives to installing solar, CoServ does not. But then I pay less for power from CoServ, so there is that (nothing is free).:)
Net metering won't go away until you're getting up past Hawaii install levels, where a substation's power flow might actually go negative during the day. Daytime power demand is sufficiently higher that they're still more than breaking even on solar panels saving them 'expensive' power.
Net metering is already being challenged by the power companies... it is not a technical issue, it is a revenue and political issue.
It is also reasonable... Imagine if 20% of their customers install solar, they still expect the grid to be there at night and during bad weather, yet don't want to pay anything. What if 20% of the customers install enough solar to produce 100% of the annual power use. What then, no bill at all? So they want the grid to stay up and to be able to draw power when they want it, but to pay nothing at all?
Where I live we have net metering, so I would have a second meter on the house showing the power fed back to the grid. The power company has to install it and they have to do some other work which I don't claim to understand, but there is a cost for that. I don't think it is huge however.
I don't expect net metering to survive, that is part of the problem with doing the math on these systems, you assume that if the system generates 30% of the power you use then your bill will go down by 30%.
It will, mostly, for now... other than the fixed monthly fees, which won't change... but when net metering goes away and they pay you wholesale price for the power you make and charge you retail, that changes the math...
Yes, there is a permit and inspections for the installation, and I think a licensed electrician has to sign off on the work (part of the challenge in doing it yourself is finding one who will do that and what they'll charge for it, but it can be done)
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Again I come back to there being 270,000 people in my city and only 175 solar installations on homes. If it made ANY kind of financial sense, that number should be much higher.
Bolting panels to the roof is not the challenge, at least I don't think it is...
Installing the inverter, a second panel, a second meter, getting it grid tied so the power runs both ways, I think is far more challenging...
But I'm not an electrician and I don't have the tools to do it anyway. I'm pretty handy around the house, but I draw the line at anything with power, that is a good way to end up dead if you don't know what you're doing. Dead, or perhaps a fire.:(
If someone offered me a 8kw system for $2 a watt installed with grid tie, I'd be all over that. I haven't found it.
If anyone in the DFW area knows of a solar installer who does it for less than about $3.50 per watt, I'm all ears.
Seriously, price is the only reason I wouldn't do it, otherwise I'm totally onboard for solar, but even the local solar association says it costs about $3.50 per watt and the two installers I've spoken to were in that price range.
At least for monthly charges, keeping inflation in mind is good as well - present money is generally worth more than future money, so if you can lock in your power usage at $200/month for the next ~20 years or so, you could still be paying $200/month for your electricity*, while everybody else is paying $300 for that same electricity from the power company.
Yes, but to save $100 a month in 10 or 20 years, I have to pay $50,000 up front ($35K after tax credit), all to end up more or less back where I was.
$100 a month is not a material amount of money to me, and the $20-30 a month it would save someone closer to the average or mean shouldn't be material either.
I maintain that solar, outside of massive rebates and incentives from government and utilities, simply makes no sense to install on residential roofs.
When I called several local solar companies a year ago to get fresh quotes, the first question they asked was, "Who provides your power". It is either Encore or CoServe. Encore offers some really nice rebates (or they did) and of course those are baked into the price. CoServe does not, they pay $1,000 max towards solar as a token contribution. In return I pay a net of less than 11 cents a kWh, while the average Encore customer pays about 3 cents more.
The lesson? Rebates and tax credits aren't free.:)
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Now that being said, solar may well make sense for utilities to install, they can do so at scales that are more competitive and I would encourage them doing so if the price is about the same as existing supplies.
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I will further note that the above numbers apply to this power market. In Australia the average customer pays double per kWh that I do (actually closer to 2.5 times as much). If my rate went to 25 cents per kWh tomorrow, I'd probably have panels on the roof the following month. I suspect that 12 months later, many more people would, and that 30% tax credit wouldn't last long either, it would become too expensive.
If you've paid attention, I've been basically suggesting fixing up your house's insulation situation before installing solar panels.
Fair enough... I should do that at some point, but it is on "the list".:)
Blowing more wool into the attic isn't hugely expensive, it will get done at some point. The windows cost more to replace than they will save, sad to say.
~22k kWh/year? You said earlier that your house has a 2200 sqft footprint.
So if we figure that we have about 1200 sqft to play with(remember roof tilt!), and each panel is 5.5x3.25, or 18 square feet(I'm rounding up). We're looking at 66.7 panels worth of space, but I'll round down to 60.
It is actually just over 25K KWh a year, summer bumps up the average, 22k is based off last month's bill.
Replacing the HVAC did more to save me on power than anything else I could do, and I had to since the compressor failed on the old unit and repairing it would have been several thousand dollars.
60 240W panels = 14.4 kw. Plugging the data in to PVWatts for Texas and leaving everything else as default., I get 21k kWh of electricity a year.
I wish, but my roof is an odd series of angles, I can get about 8kw up there, it has been measured by a solar power installation company, that is all that is going to fit. A bunch of it is unusable due to shape.
So while it sounds like you'd still be buying electricity from the power company with a roof 'completely' filled with PV panels, it'd come pretty close. It's almost certain that if you undertook some additional energy saving measures such as replacing your windows or insulating your walls* that your power needs would drop to the point that, yes, you could reach net zero without having to fill your south-facing roof completely with solar panels.
Lets pretend for a minute that I could do that, lets say it would fit.
To install 14.4 kw worth of panels would cost about $50,000 in out of pocket cost. Take 30% off for the federal tax credit leaving me with a net cost of $35,000. I get cheap power so I don't get utility rebates for installing it, so the 30% is it.
That system would save me about $200 a month on my power bill. Out of my $300 a month I pay on average, about $220 of it goes for electricity, the other $80 goes to natural gas.
Do you think spending $35,000 up front to save $200 a month makes sense? Ok, lets say I don't spend it up front, lets say I get a 15 year mortgage to pay for it. That would cost about $268 a month for 15 years. Now granted it does add something of value to the house. Not as much as the solar sellers would suggest of course, but it adds something.
But then in 10 years the inverter needs to be replaced, and I'll have to keep them clean, and worry about them, and make sure they are insured...
All to do what? This doesn't solve a problem.
Let me put this another way... Plano, TX, a city with about 270,000 people.... As of the end of 2014, do you know how many homes here have solar on the roof? Want to take a guess?
Plano, TX is one of the wealthiest cities west of the Mississippi, we can afford to install solar, I can write a check for it tomorrow. Why don't I? Because it is a stupid investment and a poor use of capital.
I've averaged 740 KWh per month of electricity over the last 12 months, and my average power bill was $105.79. This calculator suggests that I'd need about 5500 watts of capacity to replace 100% of my usage, which would cost less than $10,000 for most of the choices on that page (plus installation). Even if installation doubled the price to $20K, your estimate is still 50% too high.
The cost of the panels isn't the issue, it is the cost of installation. There is more to installing panels than bolting them to the roof.
That is their "FAQ" about what it takes to get solar on the roof.
"âoeHow much does it cost?â The cost of installing a solar PV depends on the size of your house. The average residential system is 5 kW and the average price per watt is about $3.50. (This is based on data for Texas residential sized systems from Figure 16 of this report - Tracking the Sun VII: An Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998-2013.) Therefore, an average 5 kW system would cost $17,500 before any incentives are applied."
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So you'd spend $17,500 to remove a $100 a month electric bill? That is not a good deal.
And that, by the way, is ignoring (a) tax credits (and Georgia's state tax credit is quite good)
Sure, you can get that deal, but everyone can't. If there was a real push to install solar on a wide basis those tax credits would vanish very quickly. To figure out if solar makes sense as a wide scale replacement for coal and natural gas, you have to look at the actual cost, not the "cost to you".
As a side note, you're pay 14.2 cents per KWh, that strikes me as expensive. If you paid my rate of 10.7 cents, your bill would be $79.18, which makes the above $17,500 even worse.
Neither do I, since I've lived here most of my life...
But I can tell you that if you dig more than about 6 inches down you run into clay that requires power equipment to move, you'd be wasting your time with a shovel.
Just to dig a hole for a pool runs between $10K and $20K, and that is much smaller than a proper basement would be.
Setting up stack-effect cooling with a dehumidifier on the cool-air input end would still be much more efficient than AC.
It might be, but that costs more money, what I have is paid for... and what I have is what I'd have to have anyway for when it is 104 degrees out...
This is not a serious issue to most people. It is a mild background concern to most people, but it sure isn't in their top 5 issues to care about.
You're asking most people to go out and spend real money, and in some cases a lot of it, to solve a problem they don't think they have.
This is why I am saying that most people here are kidding themselves and not living in reality. Solutions have to be ones that will actually happen, not just be technically possible, but be ones that people will spend money on.
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It is also worth noting that you keep thinking that insulation and AC are my primary electric uses, they are not. Perhaps 1/3 of my annual bill is AC, the rest is everything else. So if I turned my AC off tomorrow it would only save me about $100 a month on average.
The lights, computers, and everything else suck up a lot of power.
Here's the problem: your entire outlook is based on the presumption that everybody's house is as ridiculously wasteful as yours. This is not the case. You are an outlier.
The irony is that you have it backwards...
If solar doesn't work for me, then it SURE doesn't work for people who use LESS power.
Lets take your typical home of 2,000 sq/ft that uses a more modest amount of power, say 1/3 of what I use.
Their average monthly bill is about $100 a month and it'll cost about $30,000 worth of solar panels and batteries to remove it.
That is an equally stupid use of capital.
I'm not against solar, I'm against wasting money on things that don't return an investment on the capital spent to make them happen.
This isn't a "vote!" There's no such thing as picking some kind of silver-bullet absolute winner and ignoring everything else; the choices are not mutually exclusive. The correct solution is to use whatever technology is most appropriate for a given situation. Solar and nuclear (etc.) can coexist perfectly well.
There sure seem to be a lot people thinking that solar and wind can fix everything...
They will help and I have nothing against them, but I also live in reality and understand that they will not provide a replacement for coal anytime soon...
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The issue is, why are we trying to replace coal? Is it because of CO2 emissions? If so, then we need to do that sooner rather than later. Solar and wind can't do that.
Only nuclear can, but we have so many people who gasp, "oh my god, the nuclears!" and run in fear.
That is from a site called TREEHUGGER! Clearly a biased source and even they talk about the growth in coal power. (complain more accurately, but same thing)
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Now coal is having a hard time in the US, partly due to the EPA and partly due to the price of natural gas.
But at the end of the day, what is going to keep the lights on at night?
Many houses are not as pathologically bad as yours.
I think you're overestimating how much power I used is from the AC.
Last month's bill, we didn't use the AC at all and we still used 1766 KWh of power. That will double in the summer time, but annually AC is at most 1/3 of my total power use.
Making the house more insulated won't change the total number by as much as you think it will.
By the way: clay soil is not why houses in your area don't have basements. I'm guessing you're on the coastal plain, with a high water table and without hills, and that's why. In the Piedmont, where I live, we have clay soil and basements.
Actually it is...
I live in Dallas, we're 650 feet above sea level... Houses in central Dallas often are pier and beam, they have crawl spaces under the house, but not true basements.
I live north of there in Plano, our soil is a nasty thick clay that takes heavy equipment to dig into. Even digging a pool is a PITA and expensive because of that.
I do someone who said "screw it, I want a basement, I don't care" and did it anyway. It was over $100,000 to add it into his new home he built.
You might be able to improve things by installing some canopies to shade your windows.
Yes, if that didn't change the appearance of the house... My HOA would never allow that...
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I'm not trying to be difficult, even if that sounds like it...
The thing is, so many ideas sound great until they hit the reality of the road...
We have the system in place that we have for a reason, it won't change easily, quickly, or cheaply, no matter the reason (even global warming).
Frankly I think the smart path to take is to work on how the power company makes power. Get them to do it, it makes far more sense to adjust at that level than to try and install solar on hours one at a time.
Putting aside that our water heater runs on natural gas and thus wouldn't make much difference in terms of power draw... (it does need power, but not much)
Many things don't like having their power just cut off, it isn't good for things that expect to be supplied with power 24/7.
A refrigerator is a good example, it isn't "smart" in that it doesn't know to bring the temp down a few degrees before a load of dishes is going to be washed since it won't have power for an hour. If the power is cut in the middle of running, it can mess up the settings on the front and inside.
Most appliances are simply not met to be cut off from power.
Well, that depends on the 'expense' side, whether you still have a grid connection, access to cheap natural gas, etc...
If you absolutely MUST have power at all times, exceeding that of even the power grid in many areas*, you have choices. Depending on things, if you're off the grid I'd start with a small NG generator that's programmed to come on when the battery reaches a critical level. Off hand, I'd say 10%.
Why would I give up the grid connection?
It just kinda feels like a lot of people want to solve a problem that we don't have. If the problem is the coal fired power plants, then replace them with nuclear and call it a day. Solar is a mess to try and use it for anything other than daytime supplemental power and even then, it really only makes sense when installed at utility scale, the home installs don't make sense (unless massively subsidized by various rebates and incentives and tax credits).
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Irrelevant - the moment a self-driving car has an accident that causes loss of life, there'll be a public outcry against them, and a demand that they be banned for being too unsafe, statistics-be-damned.
What is sad is that you're probably right and it shows how ignorant most humans really are...
We are not, in general, as smart as we think we are...
Main disadvantage? Sometimes there's no car nearby, and of course the usual parking space hunt in the city.
You think THAT is the main disadvantage?
I suppose to people who are used to public transportation, your idea makes sense. To the rest of us who don't ride public transport, it is a horrible idea.
Bleah, getting into a car that 500 people have been in? NO THANK YOU...
Just not gonna do it, it isn't a tech issue, it is a "I like my car because I'm the only one who drives it" issue...
Net metering won't go away until you're getting up past Hawaii install levels, where a substation's power flow might actually go negative during the day. Daytime power demand is sufficiently higher that they're still more than breaking even on solar panels saving them 'expensive' power.
I had another thought regarding this point...
You may well be right for now, and the reality is the total solar generation on rooftops is a rounding error right now...
However... if you're basing the decision on installing $50,000 worth of solar panels based on the power they will produce for 20 years, don't you think it would be smart to consider what happens to the math if/when net metering goes away?
Lets say you install enough solar to produce 100% of the power you use all year. Right now, your bill will go to zero. That is great... but what happens if in 5 years they change it to pay you 5 cents per kWh and bill you 15 cents per kWh?
Those numbers that made solar look so good are gone, replaced by terrible numbers. Why? Because you don't actually produce and store all your power onsite, you use power from the grid at times and produce a surplus that you feedback.
It may even out, but that only matters if you're on net metering. Run the math again with the above split and solar becomes a horrible investment.
You don't actually need a second meter for net metering(though your power company requiring it is entirely possible), though it's 'nice' to know how much energy your array is generating(and to tell you if something is wrong), but most inverters have that. Your standard electric meter is perfectly happy to run backwards, and that's all that's necessary for 'net' metering.
We have smart meters now, they are digital and they take the readings remotely. I am pretty sure they require a second meter, these can't run backwards, or so that is what I understand.
Looking it up, you're serviced by Oncor, right? It's probably because of their Incentives, specifically $539 per kW, and $0.3462/kWh. That's not net metering. That's selling your energy for 3 times the regular going rate. Just remember that solar generally displaces more expensive peak power.
No, CoServ:
http://www.coserv.com/
It is straight net metering, they simply subtract what you generate and put to the grid from what you take, no more or less.
http://www.coserv.com/Customer...
Oncore has some nice incentives to installing solar, CoServ does not. But then I pay less for power from CoServ, so there is that (nothing is free). :)
Net metering won't go away until you're getting up past Hawaii install levels, where a substation's power flow might actually go negative during the day. Daytime power demand is sufficiently higher that they're still more than breaking even on solar panels saving them 'expensive' power.
Net metering is already being challenged by the power companies... it is not a technical issue, it is a revenue and political issue.
It is also reasonable... Imagine if 20% of their customers install solar, they still expect the grid to be there at night and during bad weather, yet don't want to pay anything. What if 20% of the customers install enough solar to produce 100% of the annual power use. What then, no bill at all? So they want the grid to stay up and to be able to draw power when they want it, but to pay nothing at all?
That can't last.
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
Where I live we have net metering, so I would have a second meter on the house showing the power fed back to the grid. The power company has to install it and they have to do some other work which I don't claim to understand, but there is a cost for that. I don't think it is huge however.
I don't expect net metering to survive, that is part of the problem with doing the math on these systems, you assume that if the system generates 30% of the power you use then your bill will go down by 30%.
It will, mostly, for now... other than the fixed monthly fees, which won't change... but when net metering goes away and they pay you wholesale price for the power you make and charge you retail, that changes the math...
Yes, there is a permit and inspections for the installation, and I think a licensed electrician has to sign off on the work (part of the challenge in doing it yourself is finding one who will do that and what they'll charge for it, but it can be done)
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Again I come back to there being 270,000 people in my city and only 175 solar installations on homes. If it made ANY kind of financial sense, that number should be much higher.
Bolting panels to the roof is not the challenge, at least I don't think it is...
Installing the inverter, a second panel, a second meter, getting it grid tied so the power runs both ways, I think is far more challenging...
But I'm not an electrician and I don't have the tools to do it anyway. I'm pretty handy around the house, but I draw the line at anything with power, that is a good way to end up dead if you don't know what you're doing. Dead, or perhaps a fire. :(
If someone offered me a 8kw system for $2 a watt installed with grid tie, I'd be all over that. I haven't found it.
it is a misconception especially repeated here on /. that wind and solar are "not base load".
It isn't a misconception, it is true. That you don't want to hear it doesn't change that.
I run my AC at night, solar doesn't power that. The wind blows, then it doesn't, then it does.
Neither of those are base load 24/7/365 power sources, basic common sense should tell you that.
Germany's politicians are selling a line of bull and the population is buying it...
You aren't going to run Germany on wind and solar, no matter how much you wish you could...
But you won't believe me, only time will teach that lesson...
The rest is just the same, there is nothing different that justifies a bigger energy footprint.
I am curious as to what you pay for power in Italy...
That is one difference, if something is cheap people tend to use more of it...
If anyone in the DFW area knows of a solar installer who does it for less than about $3.50 per watt, I'm all ears.
Seriously, price is the only reason I wouldn't do it, otherwise I'm totally onboard for solar, but even the local solar association says it costs about $3.50 per watt and the two installers I've spoken to were in that price range.
At least for monthly charges, keeping inflation in mind is good as well - present money is generally worth more than future money, so if you can lock in your power usage at $200/month for the next ~20 years or so, you could still be paying $200/month for your electricity*, while everybody else is paying $300 for that same electricity from the power company.
Yes, but to save $100 a month in 10 or 20 years, I have to pay $50,000 up front ($35K after tax credit), all to end up more or less back where I was.
$100 a month is not a material amount of money to me, and the $20-30 a month it would save someone closer to the average or mean shouldn't be material either.
I maintain that solar, outside of massive rebates and incentives from government and utilities, simply makes no sense to install on residential roofs.
When I called several local solar companies a year ago to get fresh quotes, the first question they asked was, "Who provides your power". It is either Encore or CoServe. Encore offers some really nice rebates (or they did) and of course those are baked into the price. CoServe does not, they pay $1,000 max towards solar as a token contribution. In return I pay a net of less than 11 cents a kWh, while the average Encore customer pays about 3 cents more.
The lesson? Rebates and tax credits aren't free. :)
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Now that being said, solar may well make sense for utilities to install, they can do so at scales that are more competitive and I would encourage them doing so if the price is about the same as existing supplies.
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I will further note that the above numbers apply to this power market. In Australia the average customer pays double per kWh that I do (actually closer to 2.5 times as much). If my rate went to 25 cents per kWh tomorrow, I'd probably have panels on the roof the following month. I suspect that 12 months later, many more people would, and that 30% tax credit wouldn't last long either, it would become too expensive.
If you've paid attention, I've been basically suggesting fixing up your house's insulation situation before installing solar panels.
Fair enough... I should do that at some point, but it is on "the list". :)
Blowing more wool into the attic isn't hugely expensive, it will get done at some point. The windows cost more to replace than they will save, sad to say.
~22k kWh/year? You said earlier that your house has a 2200 sqft footprint.
So if we figure that we have about 1200 sqft to play with(remember roof tilt!), and each panel is 5.5x3.25, or 18 square feet(I'm rounding up). We're looking at 66.7 panels worth of space, but I'll round down to 60.
It is actually just over 25K KWh a year, summer bumps up the average, 22k is based off last month's bill.
Replacing the HVAC did more to save me on power than anything else I could do, and I had to since the compressor failed on the old unit and repairing it would have been several thousand dollars.
60 240W panels = 14.4 kw. Plugging the data in to PVWatts for Texas and leaving everything else as default., I get 21k kWh of electricity a year.
I wish, but my roof is an odd series of angles, I can get about 8kw up there, it has been measured by a solar power installation company, that is all that is going to fit. A bunch of it is unusable due to shape.
So while it sounds like you'd still be buying electricity from the power company with a roof 'completely' filled with PV panels, it'd come pretty close. It's almost certain that if you undertook some additional energy saving measures such as replacing your windows or insulating your walls* that your power needs would drop to the point that, yes, you could reach net zero without having to fill your south-facing roof completely with solar panels.
Lets pretend for a minute that I could do that, lets say it would fit.
To install 14.4 kw worth of panels would cost about $50,000 in out of pocket cost. Take 30% off for the federal tax credit leaving me with a net cost of $35,000. I get cheap power so I don't get utility rebates for installing it, so the 30% is it.
That system would save me about $200 a month on my power bill. Out of my $300 a month I pay on average, about $220 of it goes for electricity, the other $80 goes to natural gas.
Do you think spending $35,000 up front to save $200 a month makes sense? Ok, lets say I don't spend it up front, lets say I get a 15 year mortgage to pay for it. That would cost about $268 a month for 15 years. Now granted it does add something of value to the house. Not as much as the solar sellers would suggest of course, but it adds something.
But then in 10 years the inverter needs to be replaced, and I'll have to keep them clean, and worry about them, and make sure they are insured...
All to do what? This doesn't solve a problem.
Let me put this another way... Plano, TX, a city with about 270,000 people.... As of the end of 2014, do you know how many homes here have solar on the roof? Want to take a guess?
175
http://www.solarizeplano.org/p...
Plano, TX is one of the wealthiest cities west of the Mississippi, we can afford to install solar, I can write a check for it tomorrow. Why don't I? Because it is a stupid investment and a poor use of capital.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
I would LOVE for solar to make more sense, it is free power from the sun. But it costs too much to install and takes too long to pay for itself.
I'm not against solar, I'm against wasting money.
And that is fine, except...
What problem is all this trying to solve? That is, at the end of the day, where I'm getting a bit lost...
I get that technically we could do it... but why?
I already have reliable power, why would I want to switch to anything less than that?
It seems like a solution in search of a problem.
I've averaged 740 KWh per month of electricity over the last 12 months, and my average power bill was $105.79. This calculator suggests that I'd need about 5500 watts of capacity to replace 100% of my usage, which would cost less than $10,000 for most of the choices on that page (plus installation). Even if installation doubled the price to $20K, your estimate is still 50% too high.
The cost of the panels isn't the issue, it is the cost of installation. There is more to installing panels than bolting them to the roof.
http://www.solarizeplano.org/
That is a group of pro-solar people right here in my home town.
https://docs.google.com/docume...
That is their "FAQ" about what it takes to get solar on the roof.
"âoeHow much does it cost?â
The cost of installing a solar PV depends on the size of your house. The average residential system is 5 kW and the average price per watt is about $3.50. (This is based on data for Texas residential sized systems from Figure 16 of this report - Tracking the Sun VII: An Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998-2013.) Therefore, an average 5 kW system would cost $17,500 before any incentives are applied."
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So you'd spend $17,500 to remove a $100 a month electric bill? That is not a good deal.
And that, by the way, is ignoring (a) tax credits (and Georgia's state tax credit is quite good)
Sure, you can get that deal, but everyone can't. If there was a real push to install solar on a wide basis those tax credits would vanish very quickly. To figure out if solar makes sense as a wide scale replacement for coal and natural gas, you have to look at the actual cost, not the "cost to you".
As a side note, you're pay 14.2 cents per KWh, that strikes me as expensive. If you paid my rate of 10.7 cents, your bill would be $79.18, which makes the above $17,500 even worse.
Nope, not at all...
The elevation doesn't vary more than 100 feet across a hundred miles in any direction.
It is very, very flat.
Neither do I, since I've lived here most of my life...
But I can tell you that if you dig more than about 6 inches down you run into clay that requires power equipment to move, you'd be wasting your time with a shovel.
Just to dig a hole for a pool runs between $10K and $20K, and that is much smaller than a proper basement would be.
Setting up stack-effect cooling with a dehumidifier on the cool-air input end would still be much more efficient than AC.
It might be, but that costs more money, what I have is paid for... and what I have is what I'd have to have anyway for when it is 104 degrees out...
This is not a serious issue to most people. It is a mild background concern to most people, but it sure isn't in their top 5 issues to care about.
You're asking most people to go out and spend real money, and in some cases a lot of it, to solve a problem they don't think they have.
This is why I am saying that most people here are kidding themselves and not living in reality. Solutions have to be ones that will actually happen, not just be technically possible, but be ones that people will spend money on.
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It is also worth noting that you keep thinking that insulation and AC are my primary electric uses, they are not. Perhaps 1/3 of my annual bill is AC, the rest is everything else. So if I turned my AC off tomorrow it would only save me about $100 a month on average.
The lights, computers, and everything else suck up a lot of power.
Here's the problem: your entire outlook is based on the presumption that everybody's house is as ridiculously wasteful as yours. This is not the case. You are an outlier.
The irony is that you have it backwards...
If solar doesn't work for me, then it SURE doesn't work for people who use LESS power.
Lets take your typical home of 2,000 sq/ft that uses a more modest amount of power, say 1/3 of what I use.
Their average monthly bill is about $100 a month and it'll cost about $30,000 worth of solar panels and batteries to remove it.
That is an equally stupid use of capital.
I'm not against solar, I'm against wasting money on things that don't return an investment on the capital spent to make them happen.
This isn't a "vote!" There's no such thing as picking some kind of silver-bullet absolute winner and ignoring everything else; the choices are not mutually exclusive. The correct solution is to use whatever technology is most appropriate for a given situation. Solar and nuclear (etc.) can coexist perfectly well.
There sure seem to be a lot people thinking that solar and wind can fix everything...
They will help and I have nothing against them, but I also live in reality and understand that they will not provide a replacement for coal anytime soon...
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The issue is, why are we trying to replace coal? Is it because of CO2 emissions? If so, then we need to do that sooner rather than later. Solar and wind can't do that.
Only nuclear can, but we have so many people who gasp, "oh my god, the nuclears!" and run in fear.
So we have coal...
http://www.treehugger.com/clim...
That is from a site called TREEHUGGER! Clearly a biased source and even they talk about the growth in coal power. (complain more accurately, but same thing)
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Now coal is having a hard time in the US, partly due to the EPA and partly due to the price of natural gas.
But at the end of the day, what is going to keep the lights on at night?
Coal, natural gas, or nuclear will...
Many houses are not as pathologically bad as yours.
I think you're overestimating how much power I used is from the AC.
Last month's bill, we didn't use the AC at all and we still used 1766 KWh of power. That will double in the summer time, but annually AC is at most 1/3 of my total power use.
Making the house more insulated won't change the total number by as much as you think it will.
By the way: clay soil is not why houses in your area don't have basements. I'm guessing you're on the coastal plain, with a high water table and without hills, and that's why. In the Piedmont, where I live, we have clay soil and basements.
Actually it is...
I live in Dallas, we're 650 feet above sea level... Houses in central Dallas often are pier and beam, they have crawl spaces under the house, but not true basements.
I live north of there in Plano, our soil is a nasty thick clay that takes heavy equipment to dig into. Even digging a pool is a PITA and expensive because of that.
I do someone who said "screw it, I want a basement, I don't care" and did it anyway. It was over $100,000 to add it into his new home he built.
You might be able to improve things by installing some canopies to shade your windows.
Yes, if that didn't change the appearance of the house... My HOA would never allow that...
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I'm not trying to be difficult, even if that sounds like it...
The thing is, so many ideas sound great until they hit the reality of the road...
We have the system in place that we have for a reason, it won't change easily, quickly, or cheaply, no matter the reason (even global warming).
Frankly I think the smart path to take is to work on how the power company makes power. Get them to do it, it makes far more sense to adjust at that level than to try and install solar on hours one at a time.
Putting aside that our water heater runs on natural gas and thus wouldn't make much difference in terms of power draw... (it does need power, but not much)
Many things don't like having their power just cut off, it isn't good for things that expect to be supplied with power 24/7.
A refrigerator is a good example, it isn't "smart" in that it doesn't know to bring the temp down a few degrees before a load of dishes is going to be washed since it won't have power for an hour. If the power is cut in the middle of running, it can mess up the settings on the front and inside.
Most appliances are simply not met to be cut off from power.
*My grandparents are out of power, on average, for about 3 days a year while the power company fixes power lines.
Yuck, that is terrible...
*knock on wood*, our power never goes out. I think in 9 years of living here, it has been out once, for maybe 4 hours...
Well, that depends on the 'expense' side, whether you still have a grid connection, access to cheap natural gas, etc...
If you absolutely MUST have power at all times, exceeding that of even the power grid in many areas*, you have choices. Depending on things, if you're off the grid I'd start with a small NG generator that's programmed to come on when the battery reaches a critical level. Off hand, I'd say 10%.
Why would I give up the grid connection?
It just kinda feels like a lot of people want to solve a problem that we don't have. If the problem is the coal fired power plants, then replace them with nuclear and call it a day. Solar is a mess to try and use it for anything other than daytime supplemental power and even then, it really only makes sense when installed at utility scale, the home installs don't make sense (unless massively subsidized by various rebates and incentives and tax credits).