Wowsers, you either use a fuck-ton of electricity or have a remarkably small roof area.
I just looked it up, in 2014 we used 25155 kWh of electric.
Is that "a lot"? I don't know... It is about 20% less overall than it was the year before, when we replaced our HVAC system with a much better one, so that helps...
To replace 100% of the power we use, we'd need about a 18 kW system.
At $4 a watt installed (grid tie, inverters, second meter, etc.) it would cost $70,000 to install that (probably less given the size), assuming it would even fit, which it won't.
We have no city/state rebate worth talking about, but the 30% federal rebate is nice, giving me an after tax cost of $49,000.
The payback is about 18 years, give or take a few, since I pay 11 cents per kWh today. My price per kWh over 20 years? about 9 cents, so it DOES save me money, IF I stay here 20 years, and if I want to put all that cash out up front. If I finance it, the interest eats up the savings and costs a bit more.
Which is all beside the point, such a system wouldn't fit on my roof. I can get about a 6 kW system on my roof, cutting all those numbers by a third.
It would cost me about $25,000 up front ($17K after taxes) to install such a system, all to save $100 a month on my power bill.
You're asking people to switch to a new type of lifestyle, one in which they may or may not have power to last through the night. Make your power during the day, charge your battery, then use it at night.
What if the weather is bad for a few days? No power?
This only works if you shut down the power plants, if they still have to exist, then this doesn't work because they have large fixed costs of existing that have to be paid for.
We often run our AC at night, it gets quite warm and without it it would be nearly impossible to sleep. Are you suggesting we would have a big enough battery to run the AC for several days of no solar power?
Do you have any idea how big that would have to be?
That being said, something like a 'retired' Tesla Model-S battery with half it's capacity remaining would be able to run most electric appliances, even if you might need a system smart enough to not turn on the water heater and the stove at the same time.
That is a great technical answer that does nothing to address the reality of it...
Our homes are not smart and not likely to become smart any time soon...
What you describe probably could be done and without inventing anything new or fancy. What it DOES require is money, lots of money. Who is going to pay for all that?
Hooking it up to the house, having appliances smart enough to know when to run, etc. is all going to cost a lot of money.
It is the actual implementation part that causes such ideas to fall apart. As nice as they sound, going out and re-configuring millions of homes is going to cost more money than anyone is actually going to spend.
I don't think "dirt" is required, but I do know what you mean.
And yes, they are allowed to build houses that have terrible insulation, but people like it because they are cheap.
I could, right now, spend many tens of thousands of dollars to properly insulate my home, the payback varies, but the single biggest problem I have is my windows. But good replacement windows and frames are expensive.:(
For the size of my house, yes the roof is actually quite small... 3,800 sqft and it is tall and short, with a very "broken" roofline that wasn't remotely designed to have anything installed on it.
I'm sorry that I often forget my disclaimers like 'excluding outliers', 'average situation only', etc...
I do understand... you may very well have meant well... but so many people leave out details and as they say, the devil is in the details...
A good example is that while the panels may have a long life and even a good warranty (assume you can get service on that warranty in 5-10 years), other parts such as the inverter are not so robust. What is the actual ongoing MX cost over 10 years? It is bound to be more than zero. It might not be much, I honestly don't know, but that issue is brushed under the carpet more than I care for.
Have you ever had an energy audit of your house done?
Yes, our electric company offers this and even offers a $50 bill discount and a pack of free CFL bulbs if you do it. They use a thermal camera to check for leaks and do a blower test to check the gaps in the house.
Do you know what the R-Value of your walls/roof is?
R-44 in the attic, the walls and windows are builder grade, so they are terrible of course.:) But we have so many windows it would be crazy expensive to replace them all.
What's the SEER for your air conditioner?
16, we had it replaced two years ago, a nice dual stage, dual speed TRANE unit that has saved a bunch on the summer power bills, it will outright pay for itself in about 7 years of ownership, 10 at the most. From that point of view, installing it was "free". It actually cost about $18,000 to install (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs), but it is amazingly better than the cheap 13 SEER unit the builder installed in 2001.
If you're using more than 3X the power that could be generated by solar for your roof, you may be better served by installing more insulation, replacing a marginal HVAC system with a more efficient one, etc..
Part of it is the windows, they are our single biggest source of lost energy. Due to the cheap windows installed and the frames used, we really would need to replace them outright. The glass isn't great, but the frames are just as big a problem. It would cost about $25,000 to replace them all. It would save power, but not as much has the HVAC did.
The attic probably needs more insulation added, it was installed 14 years ago, and we probably could put a new front door on that would help as well.
----
I get that not everyone uses as much power, but a 3,800 sqft house with 5 people living in it and working from home (both my wife and I work from home), uses lots of power. And of course we have a ton of "things" plugged in that suck power and electronics account for a decent amount, but HVAC remains the single largest item, it is most noticeable from winter to summer.
We do have natural gas, so heat in the winter, hot water, the clothes dryer, and the stove, are all off the electric meter, so that helps of course.:)
Cooling a home in the summer in Texas uses a lot of power... My house is big but my lot is small, the roof is bigger than the driveway is...
And consider the cost of putting up a structure that would withstand storms, that adds even more to the cost, making it completely and totally pointless...
---
I have to say, all these wonderful ideas are great, until someone has to pay for them...
The main concern for solar hasn't been one of the space necessary for a long time. Partially covering something like half the south-facing side of a roof has been sufficient to cover a home's needs for quite some time. A few more percent in panel efficiency would only decrease the coverage necessary.
This is not always true...
I live in Texas, we get a decent amount of sunshine...
My house faces "south/north", the roof is split between the two, so half of it faces almost directly south. If I cover every bit of roof that faces south with solar panels, I'll produce about 1/3 of my annual electrical consumption.
It is not possible to completely offset my annual consumption, I don't have enough roof space.
The money being used to fund "clean coal" should be directed to something that is actually clean, like development of fusion technology.
Fusion sounds nice, but that isn't here, it may be 10 years, it may be 100 years... It has been "just around the corner" my whole life...
The only remotely "clean" technology that actually exists today to provide baseload power is nuclear... but the environmentalists appear to be even more against that than they are coal....
So we have coal, and will continue to have coal, likely for the rest of our lives... because they all want rainbows and unicorns (solar and wind) which just aren't going to replace baseload coal.
We don't need "cleaner coal technologies." We need coal to be GONE. The same goes for pretty much *all* carbon-intensive fossil-fuel industries.
Sure, that is all well and good, but there is nothing to replace it...
Other than perhaps nuclear power, but the greenies seem to be even more opposed to that than they are coal...
Solar and wind are simply never going to provide the baseload, for a whole host of reasons... You'll never have enough "stored power" in the form of compressed air or lifted water to provide national baseloads in the amount required...
If for no other reason than the cost would be nuts...
Fusion sounds nice, but that isn't here, it may be 10 years, it may be 100 years... It has been "just around the corner" my whole life...
This, of course, assumes that fossil fuels stocks will continue to rise even as competition from alternative sources intensified, and as costs of production increase.
Yes, and you also assume that there is something actually called a "fossil fuel stock", which there isn't.
Exxon, BP, Shell, etc. have for years been investing in things other than oil, this isn't new for them.
50 years from now, it is quite possible BP really will stand for "beyond petroleum", which is what they already say in their marketing materials, even if it isn't quite true yet.
The value of BP stock may will be 20 times what it is today, even if all oil use stopped in 50 years. BP is a company, not a "fossil fuel stock".
Clearly, you don't understand how stock markets work. The value of a stock is merely that of its last trade. Convince someone you have a stock that is going higher and you have a buyer. Convince them it is going lower and you have more sellers and fewer buyers. The number of shares traded don't matter, merely the last trade made.
So much irony, you saying that... since you yourself don't understand how it works either...
It works on a bid/ask system, people post shares for sale and post bids to buy, the computers match them up at the highest price possible for the sellers and the lowest price possible for the buyers.
There are lots of shares for sale that don't sell due to the ask price, they are called limit orders. (and other complex order systems beyond that).
There are lots of shares that people want to buy (bid) that don't get bought because they aren't willing to pay enough.
Due to the number of people in the game, it isn't a matter of what you describe, people aren't going around trying to convince anyone their shares are worth X.
Prices don't move evenly all the time, sometimes bid or ask prices move quickly due to breaking news, in such events, sometimes humans step in to work the system (they used to do it all, but the volumes are far too big today, the NYSE that you see on CNBC is largely a TV set these days, most of the work is all done via computer now) and sometimes trading is halted until everyone can absorb the new information.
With California about to go dry and people being told not to flush their toilets, maybe maybe just maybe, they will start lynching Sierra Club members that stand in the way of dams and reservoirs.
Thank you... the stupid environmentalists have spent 30 years shooting themselves in the foot by opposing everything...
To the point where most of us have just tuned them out...
I get it, don't tread too hard on the environment, some care of it does need to be made. But how would you EVER get the Hoover Dam built today?
I suspect some environmentalists would actually support tearing down the Hoover Dam (Bolder Dam, whatever they call it these days).
Nuts, the lot of them, which is why they can't get any traction...
If the cost of producing oil is rising and the price is falling, some producers are going to face a squeeze.
Yes they will, and some will go bankrupt... but that doesn't remove the oil, gas, and coal from the market... those become assets to be sold at the bankruptcy sale, someone else will buy them on the cheap and then develop them using a lower cost basis...
From our point of view as consumers, nothing will change...
One of the biggest uses of natural gas is electricity production and it is absurdly inexpensive.
^ Truth... our power rates haven't changed in 10 years, we are part of a co-op that runs on a not-for-profit basis and pays us back anything left over in the form of capital credits (I'm still getting small checks from capital credits from 10 years ago)
I pay 11 cents per kw/h, this hasn't changed in many years... natural gas is part of the reason, cheaper coal is another, both sources are where we get all our power...
Solar can't touch that rate, I've priced it, the payback is just too long, and that is even taking into account various tax credits...
Little by little, step by step, we're going to need less fossil fuel.
Per person, maybe... but total? Not in our lifetime... not likely anyway... Every year we have more people, not less. Every year we have more people joining the middle class, not less...
Car ownership is going up, not down, worldwide... This trend will not change soon...
Don't worry, we'll let you keep your Hummer H3 matchbox cars to play with.
^ This attitude is why so many of us dismiss you and those who think like you outright.
"You'll let us..." So who died and made you King? It is that elitist attitude that is the single biggest problem of people who claim global warming is going to kill us all, you have this attitude that isn't far off from ultra religious nuts, and they all claim to be right too.
And as far as your point 6, yes, fixing is going to be expensive, but it needs to be done anyway. Carbon based fuels are running low..
Two points:
1. Carbon based fuels aren't running low, there are more reserves in the world today than there have ever been, and there is plenty more to take... this idea that we're "running out" is just nonsense.
2. If you push the change too quickly, then it will be very expensive, you won't end up with the change you want, you'll end up with war. Be careful how hard you push, lest you get pushback.
People buying Swiss watches are not buying them for the fact they're watches, they buy them because it's a status symbol completely disconnected from its primary function.
^ This...
A $20K Rolex on your wrist says, "I have more money than you do".
Slashdot Mirror
If people insulated their houses to a high level like PassivHaus
How much does that cost? What is the payback period?
But the costs to mankind of not sorting the energy issue is likely higher, but far more difficult to express in monetary value.
I actually happen to agree with you on this, but it doesn't matter because that isn't how human beings work...
You're really asking John and Jane Q. Public to spend more of their money to solve "the world's problem".
People just don't work like that.
Wowsers, you either use a fuck-ton of electricity or have a remarkably small roof area.
I just looked it up, in 2014 we used 25155 kWh of electric.
Is that "a lot"? I don't know... It is about 20% less overall than it was the year before, when we replaced our HVAC system with a much better one, so that helps...
To replace 100% of the power we use, we'd need about a 18 kW system.
At $4 a watt installed (grid tie, inverters, second meter, etc.) it would cost $70,000 to install that (probably less given the size), assuming it would even fit, which it won't.
We have no city/state rebate worth talking about, but the 30% federal rebate is nice, giving me an after tax cost of $49,000.
The payback is about 18 years, give or take a few, since I pay 11 cents per kWh today. My price per kWh over 20 years? about 9 cents, so it DOES save me money, IF I stay here 20 years, and if I want to put all that cash out up front. If I finance it, the interest eats up the savings and costs a bit more.
Which is all beside the point, such a system wouldn't fit on my roof. I can get about a 6 kW system on my roof, cutting all those numbers by a third.
It would cost me about $25,000 up front ($17K after taxes) to install such a system, all to save $100 a month on my power bill.
---
If that sounds stupid, that's because it is... :)
You could do it with a battery
I'm not sure why people keep saying this...
You're asking people to switch to a new type of lifestyle, one in which they may or may not have power to last through the night. Make your power during the day, charge your battery, then use it at night.
What if the weather is bad for a few days? No power?
This only works if you shut down the power plants, if they still have to exist, then this doesn't work because they have large fixed costs of existing that have to be paid for.
We often run our AC at night, it gets quite warm and without it it would be nearly impossible to sleep. Are you suggesting we would have a big enough battery to run the AC for several days of no solar power?
Do you have any idea how big that would have to be?
That being said, something like a 'retired' Tesla Model-S battery with half it's capacity remaining would be able to run most electric appliances, even if you might need a system smart enough to not turn on the water heater and the stove at the same time.
That is a great technical answer that does nothing to address the reality of it...
Our homes are not smart and not likely to become smart any time soon...
What you describe probably could be done and without inventing anything new or fancy. What it DOES require is money, lots of money. Who is going to pay for all that?
Hooking it up to the house, having appliances smart enough to know when to run, etc. is all going to cost a lot of money.
It is the actual implementation part that causes such ideas to fall apart. As nice as they sound, going out and re-configuring millions of homes is going to cost more money than anyone is actually going to spend.
I don't think "dirt" is required, but I do know what you mean.
And yes, they are allowed to build houses that have terrible insulation, but people like it because they are cheap.
I could, right now, spend many tens of thousands of dollars to properly insulate my home, the payback varies, but the single biggest problem I have is my windows. But good replacement windows and frames are expensive. :(
For the size of my house, yes the roof is actually quite small... 3,800 sqft and it is tall and short, with a very "broken" roofline that wasn't remotely designed to have anything installed on it.
And yes, I've had it quoted and measured.
I'm sorry that I often forget my disclaimers like 'excluding outliers', 'average situation only', etc...
I do understand... you may very well have meant well... but so many people leave out details and as they say, the devil is in the details...
A good example is that while the panels may have a long life and even a good warranty (assume you can get service on that warranty in 5-10 years), other parts such as the inverter are not so robust. What is the actual ongoing MX cost over 10 years? It is bound to be more than zero. It might not be much, I honestly don't know, but that issue is brushed under the carpet more than I care for.
Have you ever had an energy audit of your house done?
Yes, our electric company offers this and even offers a $50 bill discount and a pack of free CFL bulbs if you do it. They use a thermal camera to check for leaks and do a blower test to check the gaps in the house.
Do you know what the R-Value of your walls/roof is?
R-44 in the attic, the walls and windows are builder grade, so they are terrible of course. :) But we have so many windows it would be crazy expensive to replace them all.
What's the SEER for your air conditioner?
16, we had it replaced two years ago, a nice dual stage, dual speed TRANE unit that has saved a bunch on the summer power bills, it will outright pay for itself in about 7 years of ownership, 10 at the most. From that point of view, installing it was "free". It actually cost about $18,000 to install (5 ton downstairs, 3 ton upstairs), but it is amazingly better than the cheap 13 SEER unit the builder installed in 2001.
If you're using more than 3X the power that could be generated by solar for your roof, you may be better served by installing more insulation, replacing a marginal HVAC system with a more efficient one, etc..
Part of it is the windows, they are our single biggest source of lost energy. Due to the cheap windows installed and the frames used, we really would need to replace them outright. The glass isn't great, but the frames are just as big a problem. It would cost about $25,000 to replace them all. It would save power, but not as much has the HVAC did.
The attic probably needs more insulation added, it was installed 14 years ago, and we probably could put a new front door on that would help as well.
----
I get that not everyone uses as much power, but a 3,800 sqft house with 5 people living in it and working from home (both my wife and I work from home), uses lots of power. And of course we have a ton of "things" plugged in that suck power and electronics account for a decent amount, but HVAC remains the single largest item, it is most noticeable from winter to summer.
We do have natural gas, so heat in the winter, hot water, the clothes dryer, and the stove, are all off the electric meter, so that helps of course. :)
That wouldn't be enough either...
Cooling a home in the summer in Texas uses a lot of power... My house is big but my lot is small, the roof is bigger than the driveway is...
And consider the cost of putting up a structure that would withstand storms, that adds even more to the cost, making it completely and totally pointless...
---
I have to say, all these wonderful ideas are great, until someone has to pay for them...
That's because you have never heard of the word 'insulation'.
That is a mighty big assumption you have there...
The main concern for solar hasn't been one of the space necessary for a long time. Partially covering something like half the south-facing side of a roof has been sufficient to cover a home's needs for quite some time. A few more percent in panel efficiency would only decrease the coverage necessary.
This is not always true...
I live in Texas, we get a decent amount of sunshine...
My house faces "south/north", the roof is split between the two, so half of it faces almost directly south. If I cover every bit of roof that faces south with solar panels, I'll produce about 1/3 of my annual electrical consumption.
It is not possible to completely offset my annual consumption, I don't have enough roof space.
Not at all the same...
I do that because my children have a future, and their children have a future... that is the legacy that I'll leave...
I do many things for my kids, not for myself... but if my kids also have no future, then really it becomes pointless...
The money being used to fund "clean coal" should be directed to something that is actually clean, like development of fusion technology.
Fusion sounds nice, but that isn't here, it may be 10 years, it may be 100 years... It has been "just around the corner" my whole life...
The only remotely "clean" technology that actually exists today to provide baseload power is nuclear... but the environmentalists appear to be even more against that than they are coal....
So we have coal, and will continue to have coal, likely for the rest of our lives... because they all want rainbows and unicorns (solar and wind) which just aren't going to replace baseload coal.
We don't need "cleaner coal technologies." We need coal to be GONE. The same goes for pretty much *all* carbon-intensive fossil-fuel industries.
Sure, that is all well and good, but there is nothing to replace it...
Other than perhaps nuclear power, but the greenies seem to be even more opposed to that than they are coal...
Solar and wind are simply never going to provide the baseload, for a whole host of reasons... You'll never have enough "stored power" in the form of compressed air or lifted water to provide national baseloads in the amount required...
If for no other reason than the cost would be nuts...
Fusion sounds nice, but that isn't here, it may be 10 years, it may be 100 years... It has been "just around the corner" my whole life...
It's "American" because that's what Americans use. No-one else on the planet thinks it makes any sense, but we're stuck with it.
Go build the richest economy in the world and then you can have more of a say... frankly, that is how it works... until then, we're "Americans" :)
This, of course, assumes that fossil fuels stocks will continue to rise even as competition from alternative sources intensified, and as costs of production increase.
Yes, and you also assume that there is something actually called a "fossil fuel stock", which there isn't.
Exxon, BP, Shell, etc. have for years been investing in things other than oil, this isn't new for them.
50 years from now, it is quite possible BP really will stand for "beyond petroleum", which is what they already say in their marketing materials, even if it isn't quite true yet.
The value of BP stock may will be 20 times what it is today, even if all oil use stopped in 50 years. BP is a company, not a "fossil fuel stock".
Clearly, you don't understand how stock markets work. The value of a stock is merely that of its last trade. Convince someone you have a stock that is going higher and you have a buyer. Convince them it is going lower and you have more sellers and fewer buyers. The number of shares traded don't matter, merely the last trade made.
So much irony, you saying that... since you yourself don't understand how it works either...
It works on a bid/ask system, people post shares for sale and post bids to buy, the computers match them up at the highest price possible for the sellers and the lowest price possible for the buyers.
There are lots of shares for sale that don't sell due to the ask price, they are called limit orders. (and other complex order systems beyond that).
There are lots of shares that people want to buy (bid) that don't get bought because they aren't willing to pay enough.
Due to the number of people in the game, it isn't a matter of what you describe, people aren't going around trying to convince anyone their shares are worth X.
Prices don't move evenly all the time, sometimes bid or ask prices move quickly due to breaking news, in such events, sometimes humans step in to work the system (they used to do it all, but the volumes are far too big today, the NYSE that you see on CNBC is largely a TV set these days, most of the work is all done via computer now) and sometimes trading is halted until everyone can absorb the new information.
With California about to go dry and people being told not to flush their toilets, maybe maybe just maybe, they will start lynching Sierra Club members that stand in the way of dams and reservoirs.
Thank you... the stupid environmentalists have spent 30 years shooting themselves in the foot by opposing everything...
To the point where most of us have just tuned them out...
I get it, don't tread too hard on the environment, some care of it does need to be made. But how would you EVER get the Hoover Dam built today?
I suspect some environmentalists would actually support tearing down the Hoover Dam (Bolder Dam, whatever they call it these days).
Nuts, the lot of them, which is why they can't get any traction...
If the cost of producing oil is rising and the price is falling, some producers are going to face a squeeze.
Yes they will, and some will go bankrupt... but that doesn't remove the oil, gas, and coal from the market... those become assets to be sold at the bankruptcy sale, someone else will buy them on the cheap and then develop them using a lower cost basis...
From our point of view as consumers, nothing will change...
One of the biggest uses of natural gas is electricity production and it is absurdly inexpensive.
^ Truth... our power rates haven't changed in 10 years, we are part of a co-op that runs on a not-for-profit basis and pays us back anything left over in the form of capital credits (I'm still getting small checks from capital credits from 10 years ago)
I pay 11 cents per kw/h, this hasn't changed in many years... natural gas is part of the reason, cheaper coal is another, both sources are where we get all our power...
Solar can't touch that rate, I've priced it, the payback is just too long, and that is even taking into account various tax credits...
It was your comment about "you'll let us keep our H3 matchbox cars" that was the real issue...
Tell other people how to live and you might get a bite in return.
Little by little, step by step, we're going to need less fossil fuel.
Per person, maybe... but total? Not in our lifetime... not likely anyway... Every year we have more people, not less. Every year we have more people joining the middle class, not less...
Car ownership is going up, not down, worldwide... This trend will not change soon...
Don't worry, we'll let you keep your Hummer H3 matchbox cars to play with.
^ This attitude is why so many of us dismiss you and those who think like you outright.
"You'll let us..." So who died and made you King? It is that elitist attitude that is the single biggest problem of people who claim global warming is going to kill us all, you have this attitude that isn't far off from ultra religious nuts, and they all claim to be right too.
And as far as your point 6, yes, fixing is going to be expensive, but it needs to be done anyway. Carbon based fuels are running low..
Two points:
1. Carbon based fuels aren't running low, there are more reserves in the world today than there have ever been, and there is plenty more to take... this idea that we're "running out" is just nonsense.
2. If you push the change too quickly, then it will be very expensive, you won't end up with the change you want, you'll end up with war. Be careful how hard you push, lest you get pushback.
It's over, zip up the body bag and put the tag on the Space Age.
If that is true then we're doomed and the human race is finished...
Because sooner or later, we're going to nuke ourselves... maybe not in our lifetime, maybe so... but it will happen, it is human nature...
So why bother when the human race has no future?
People buying Swiss watches are not buying them for the fact they're watches, they buy them because it's a status symbol completely disconnected from its primary function.
^ This...
A $20K Rolex on your wrist says, "I have more money than you do".
Nothing more or less...