Posted on 07/06/2018 7:44:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
A modest proposal:
We've all heard about "shop local" and "get your food from local farmers, not distant corporate farms." Lots of people have apple trees in their backyards. Often they can't begin to eat or give away all the apples. In the meantime, big supermarkets sell corporate apples for one dollar a pound and up. I propose that people with backyard apples be able to take them to the supermarket and sell them to the supermarket for the same price at which the supermarket is selling apples. Furthermore, they should be able to take them at any time and receive payment. If the store gets too many local apples, it can reduce its purchase of corporate apples.
My apple proposal may seem ill advised, but that is exactly how rooftop solar power works. The homeowner gets to displace power from the power company, and if the homeowner has more power than he needs, the power company is obligated to purchase it, often for the same retail price at which it sells electricity. That policy is called net metering. In order to accommodate the homeowner's electric power, the utility has to throttle down some other power plant that produces power at a lower wholesale price.
The exact arrangements for accepting rooftop solar vary by jurisdiction. In some places, net metering is restricted in one way or another.
A large-scale natural gas-generating plant can supply electricity for around 6 cents per kilowatt-hour. Rooftop solar electricity costs, without subsidies, around 30 cents per kilowatt-hour, or five times as much. Average retail rates for electricity in most places are between 8 cents and 16 cents per kilowatt-hour. Yet, paradoxically, the homeowner can often reduce this electric bill by installing rooftop solar.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
You said, . . . Doing the math, and not the Sunny Day Scenario the solar companies tout, it comes to 25 years for payback.
If payback is actually 25 years . . . I have heard of some systems where it is 40 years . . . and warranty on the solar system is only 20 years, then there is a big disconnect! How can this make sense?
A large-scale natural gas-generating plant can supply electricity for around 6 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Then why do I have to pay so stinkin’ much for power to my home?
I had a friend just do the lease-the-panels thing (lease the panels, they install them, and if your electricity bill doesn’t go down at least as much as your lease, blah blah blah). Anyway, he just did this a month or so ago, here in the metro Houston area. I’m going to check in on him and see if it’s been worth it for him. If my electricity bill goes down by $100, and the lease is only $50, or whatever, it’s worth it to me. Right now, $300 a month is too much (and I’m keeping the AC set at 76 all day and night during the summer, not freezing anyone out.)
“Batteries are still very short lived. 2-4 years if you are lucky.”
My solar batteries routinely last 10 years; have babied several out to 13 but capacity was rapidly diminishing at the end.
Leasing is a huge mistake. You save very little and likely end up locked in for 25 years, and the buyout cost is the total potential kwh's the system will generate over the remainder of the lease at market price. I've seen people try to buy out their lease when selling their house and were unable to find a buyer willing to assume it. In one case a $25K system cost almost $70K to buy out so they could sell.
Then there are the uncounted thousands of insect eating cooked or ground up bats ...
It doesn’t make any sense. Salesmen sell the Sunny Day Scenario: “When everything lines up and the skittle farting unicorns come out to play, your solar system will makes oodles of electricity and pay off in 8 years! Promise!”
“In Israel, we use something called a Dud Shemesh or Dude Shemesh. It is located on the roof of a building and heats water. It is very efficient, and ubiquitous all over the country.”
rooftop water heating panels were the original solar energy in the U.S. 30-40 years ago ...
“once the storage problem is solved”
a problem that’s been continuously worked on with very little success every since the first rechargeable battery, namely the lead acid battery, was invented in 1859 ...
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