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Posted on 05/03/2011 8:30:44 AM PDT by bigbob
Insulation is the most cost effective thing you can put in any house. It will typically pay for itself in 3-5 years.
The govt. should be giving a 100% tax credit instead of the 33% they have been.
I also thought the appliance rebate was a good idea. When we replaced our washing machine our electricty and water usage went down. When I replaced my fridge my electric went dowm $20 the first month.
The window/exterior door rebate was also a good idea. All of these ideas cut energy use, save the homeowner money and promote products that are primarily manufactured in the US. They also were tax credits(ie. you need to pay tax to get the credit).
Go ahead - 2banana to be famous!
LOL! I don’t know how famous you’ll be but with some of the family I have you’re more likely to be infamous....just like me.
I forgot....thank you!
“The price of these eyesores, and the minimal energy they produce is reason enough not to use or make them. Has anyone done a study of how much energy they take to make, compared to energy used the conventional way?”
Yea, I did an estimate once. It’s pathetic. The panels are fixed, so they lose a boatload of power they would otherwise get if they were tracking. Second, the New Jersey weather isn’t exactly the ideal for solar panels (they haven’t figured that out yet, though). Third, all of these have some degree of shadowing, I suspect a lot of them have a lot of shadowing. So, on the production end, they’ll be lucky to produce 1/3 of the power that they would produce if they were in the California desert, as part of a farm, with tracking (and even that is not yet economic). Snow on them probably doesn’t help either...but when you’re talking milliwatts anyway, who cares. Finally, you have the cost of having to go pole-to-pole to install them. Not cheap.
But, since New Jersey must be swimming in money, I guess it’s a fantasy they can engage in.
They are building a very large solar “farm” in Kittitas county Washington. This far North it will get hot in the summer, but winters are often 5 months long, with accumulations of 2-3 feet. Last winter we had over 10 feet of snowfall in the lowlands. This is farm country, and of course there are two separate wind farms too. When the power went out last winter, it quickly came back on. The power companies actually lied to the people of the area. They told them to be thankful for the wind turbines, it was the only thing working.....lol. It is amazing how many people actually think that the wind and solar farm are a separate power source outside the grid.
“They are building a very large solar “farm” in Kittitas county Washington. This far North it will get hot in the summer, but winters are often 5 months long, with accumulations of 2-3 feet. Last winter we had over 10 feet of snowfall in the lowlands. This is farm country, and of course there are two separate wind farms too. When the power went out last winter, it quickly came back on. The power companies actually lied to the people of the area. They told them to be thankful for the wind turbines, it was the only thing working.....lol. It is amazing how many people actually think that the wind and solar farm are a separate power source outside the grid.”
Incredible how we’re forcing them to throw money down the drain. Why don’t they just build dams in the middle of the desert (on dry land), while they’re at it? At least they won’t have to maintain the dams and they’ll get only slightly less power from them.
And - for the home building improvements - all labor is local, in a depressed building business environment.
Everyone in Washington needs to go when two regular guys on FR can come up with ten better plans than what the gov is doing in ten minutes.
Guess I should turn off my second fridge! I don’t drink that much beer anyway.
Omitted from the article was the amount of time it will take for these panels to be vandalized.
“Guess I should turn off my second fridge!”
I live in NH where we are paying $.16/KW of electricity.
I think we are the highest in the country. It probably does not matter as much in places where it is $.05/kw.
We also heat our homes with #2 heating oil which is now about $3.60/gallon. Natural gas is not readily available here in NH except in the major cities.
Therefore, the higher the energy cost, the quicker the payoff for things like insulation.
One basketball hit....solar panel gone! :-)
Honestly, reality is stranger than Ayn Rand's fiction! :-)
not to mention rocks, bb gun or pellet gun
Dayum, that’s weird! A good argument for ending solar subsidies (along with all other energy subsidies).
Why can’t these miserable people fight the next freeway expansion like everyone else?
ML/NJ
Badly. Also, they will not generate much power encrusted with bird droppings and dirt.
One thing that environmentalists do not take into account is the work (and pollution) involved in keeping solar panels clean.
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