I was thinking the same thing.
I’ve been hesitant about installing solar, due to he fact that solar panels are very toxic and are hard to dispose of when they’re at the end of their usefulness.
But reading this, I’m thinking that my backup generator isn’t going to help much when the electric grid collapses.
Any Freepers have suggestions as to a reputable company that installs solar?
The problem with solar cells, is they have a half life ranging between 10 and 20 years. That means their output drops 50% every 10 or 20 years.
However, they will last longer than the 200 gallons of LPG powering my standby generator.
The other problem is that they are composed in part from gallium arsenide, a nasty toxin, so disposal is problematic.
There is no easy solution. The best solution is going Amish, because they rely the least on technology.
For those of us who are older, that’s not going to happen.
The outlook, especially for seniors and city dwellers, is very gloomy.
There are some home made solar experts right here at freerepublic. What they have taught me so far is solar is not ready made to allow one to exit the grid worry free.
It is a great supplement to reduce dependency on the grid but wind, weather, location, and size of your system dictate how much dependency on the grid you may have.
Our whole focus should be on keeping the grid and making it fool proof. A point that has become extremely serious the more environmental idiots have the ear of grid regulating agencies.
Find out where your supplier sits in the grid mess. Are they a producer of power or merely a buyer and provider of electric energy. Producers are the ones most impacted by injurious rules dedicated to destroying what at one time was a very reliable power grid.
The USA is at this moment not in pursuit of reliability in my opinion, having shut down gigawatts of coal fired power plants due to environmental activism with very little if any replacement with something at least as reliable as coal.
My own electric coop is whining about the loss of available energy should there be events that place stress on the grid, and there are always events that place stress on the grid.
Lastly, but not leastly, I’m meeting with the President of the coop to more fully understand what he and the coop are up against. They are not producers, and like you and me are subject to the whims of available production. Production that has been seriously reduced in the last few years by plant shutdowns with minimal replacement.
The grid is in jeopardy and going solar doesn’t solve the problem, and solar is more than likely viewed much like the power grid in the eyes of environmental idiots. Progress is not part of their focus.
Problem is storage if you do it by legal codes. Unless your state and local codes allow you to use batteries to store power for back up, then “grid tie” solar systems will also go down and are useless when the grid goes down.