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Switching To Solar Power — Six Months Later
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jan 14, 2009 10:15 AM
from the it-burns-my-eyes dept.
from the it-burns-my-eyes dept.
ThinSkin writes "Slashdot readers may remember an article regarding ExtremeTech's Loyd Case's experiences with solar power for the home after one month of usage. During that time six months ago, it sure seemed like a great deal, but the tables have turned significantly once winter approached. While it's no surprise solar power generation is expected to dwindle during the winter, Loyd compares solar power data of the last six months to determine if solar power is still worth the time and money."
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Switching To Solar Power – One Month Later 730 comments
ThinSkin writes "After an interesting article on solar panel installation for the home, Loyd Case at ExtremeTech has written a follow-up after about a month of normal use. Posting an $11.34 electric bill (roughly 3% of previous months), Loyd shares his experiences using solar power and how it can be fun for the geek, with computer monitoring services and power generation data. Of course, solar power isn't all fun and games, given the amount of required maintenance — even unpredictable maintenance, like wiping off accumulated ash from fires in Northern California."
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Switching To Solar Power, One Year Later 541 comments
ThinSkin writes "Slashdot readers may recall Loyd Case's series of articles illustrating his experiences after switching to solar power for his family home. Loyd shared his one month update, a six month update, and now finally concludes his series after one year of solar power. Despite the $38,000 initial cost for the setup, Loyd is very optimistic after a $3,000 savings in one year, meaning that in about 12 years he will break even — though he suspects ten years is a better estimate considering other factors. Other reasons such as feeling 'green,' increasing the property value of his house, and the 'spousal acceptance factor' all support Loyd's decision on why he'd do it all over again if he had to." The article is spread annoyingly over multiple pages, like everything at the site, and the print version omits the graphs.
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$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
Who the hell uses that much electric power?
Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Funny)
You ask how he uses $400 a month in electricity? His tech is EXTREME!
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Funny)
Extreme Tech, and they still can't put the article in a single page.
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Shh... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't tell anyone, but there's a tab on the first page that's labeled "print". I don't get to wait for ads and pictures to load, but it has the text.
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Re: (Score:3)
California residents... Cal is notorious for having very expensive electricity.
Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I found interesting was that, while December was bad for solar power, he says:
Basically, his solar power does what it's supposed to more often than not. But then again, we've always known that about solar power, the big problem with solar is the large up-front capital cost of installing it.
(Or other strange things, like my mother just moved into a retirement community and her housing rules say solar panels are not allowed because they're unsightly, but directTV antennas and satellite dishes are just fine. One must have priorities I suppose. Television is obviously more important than renewable energy.)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The dishes are allowed because federal law says that they have to be:
http://www.fcc.gov/mb/facts/otard.html [fcc.gov]
Given time and lower installation costs, I would imagine that similar legislation will be applied to solar cells.
Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
"but directTV antennas and satellite dishes are just fine"
After a couple of legal battles, there are some federal laws that say that banning antennas and dishes in a housing development is not permitted. Many developments try to do it anyway but you can fight it if you know the right laws.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
Dishes are allowed because someone paid the FCC to enforce the right to install one. If you can come up with a solar panel that generates ad based revenues and is steeped with kickbacks and non-compete contracts, someone will pay the FCC to enforce the right to install those on your moms roof too.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not just being paid off - external television antennas were part of those laws too.
The whole thing is disgusting to me though. We're not living in any semblance of a free country when your neighbors can tell you what things you can and can't have on your property simply because they don't look pretty.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
If you equate 'free' with "allowed to create negative externalities", then yes, we are not living in any semblance of a free country. But your lost externality is a necessary part of preventing all those other externalities that you would hate, such as loud music.
That said, I agree that 'prettiness' is a difficult externality to quantify, and enforcement of non-quantifiable things is perilous.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
You're right, and I already choose not to live in those areas. However, it's still insane for any property owner to have to submit to such things. That's almost akin to saying that the Chinese don't really have any problems with their freedom because they can simply leave if they want to.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Let alone the man did it half assed.
I used to have a solar home. Step 1 is knowing your EXACT load before you start.
Step 2 is to understand the solar rating for your location, then cut it by 1/4 and use that number.
The man did neither. he should have a 35-50% excess for summer and have a 10-20% lacking in winter. Supplement that with a single decent wind generator and your intertie.
Finally your biggest step to solar is you REDUCE YOUR CONSUMPTION. We bought all low energy appliances and got rid of silly
Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a half assed install that was doomed from day one, and now he's bitching about it.
Of course, technology marches on, and there will no doubt, with higher efficiency panels available at lower prices in the coming years. Alas, that's the price one pays for being an early adopter. But when I look at my power bill, I still have a nice, warm feeling inside.
... he is?
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Informative)
Firstly, he's not bitching about it. To quote TFA:
Secondly, if you look at the article [extremetech.com] he wrote when the system was installed, you'll see that he looked into a variety of options and chose the one that he felt fitted his situation best. It is estimated to pay for itself within 10 years, which seems perfectly sensible to me - as he points out, he's pumping money into an asset that increases the value of his house rather than simply giving it away to the electrical company.
I don't see how it's half-assed, it's working perfectly well, it appears cost-effective so far and he says he's happy with it. You don't seem to be trolling, I don't think, but your post just fails to make sense.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Informative)
He is a PG&E customer in Northern California. That's how he spends $400 a month on electricity.
PG&E = Pricks Grabbing Everything
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Funny)
Who the hell uses that much electric power?
His other hobby is recycling aluminum.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
My January bill was $170.00 for Upstate NY That was for electric and Gas, in a building over 100 years old. That is Not in any way energy-star complaint.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
do you live in an apartment or a house? the author lives in a house, so that immediately makes their power needs much greater than say a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. the author also states:
here in Southern California our tiny 2-bedroom apartment easily costs well over $100 a month to keep reasonably cool (80 degrees) during the summer. part of this is probably due to the building's old AC system (it was just upgraded 2 weeks ago, but we haven't really used it yet), but it is also partly due to the side of the building our unit resides on. also, for whatever reason my room is usually about 7~8 degrees hotter than the rest of the apartment, so to get my room down to a tolerable temperature the rest of the apartment needs to be cooled down even more.
heating is cheap compared to cooling, which can use a ton of electricity. and the greater the volume of space you need to cool, the greater your power expenditure. it would be silly to compare the electric bill in an apartment unit in NY to that of a house of California.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually it's usually the opposite - Air conditioning is almost always powered by electricity and AC load can't always be reduced with insulation (e.g. heat-generating devices need their heat removed regardless of external insulation), while heating has numerous options - gas, oil, electric, wood, downstairs neighbors, solar thermal (much cheaper and easier than PV), and upgraded insulation.
Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
I live in Canada. The weather today is -25c or so. My power bill never exceeds $46/CAD a month when I have a window AC unit going in the summer, and my gas bill never exceeds $70/mo.
The # of kWh/mo he's using would suggest to me he'd be a lot better served putting the time and energy into replacing bulbs with CFLs, turning off computers that don't need to be on, and buying higher efficiency appliances rather than those solar panels. .. or both, of course.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Funny)
Man, you BOTH must have either HUGE houses, electric heating systems, or stupidly high power taxation in your area.
My last electric bill, with a family of four, 6 PC's and sundry other electronics (server, smoothwall linux firewall running on an old PC, my Desktop, the wife's Desktop + two laptops + networking devices connecting all the above) only amounted to $250.00 in November. I expect December's bill to come out only slightly higher. $400.00 for Electric is INSANE.
I live in the Buffalo NY area, so Solar is out of the question for me (clouds, many trees in the region and, oh yeah, SNOW) so while an article like this is nice for people that live in desert areas, for the rest of us it's basically worthless.
Dang blast it, it's nearly 2010! If Science isn't going to give me a flying car the LEAST it could do is provide me with a "Mr. Fusion" to power my house!
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Informative)
The house I currently live in was powered with solar panels here in Southern Ontario before I bought it. The guy who sold it to me took the panels with him. They did just fine at consolidating his hydro to the point where he was paying almost NOTHING to the power company. They're not worthless at all. A large investment that might take longer out here to recoup costs, but definitely not worthless.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
Depending on the orientation (North, etc) of the windows, replacing inefficient single panes with double panes that have some reflective properties that can lower the solar gain significantly. With the economy in shambles, you can get construction work done at a great discount. Depending on the number of windows you need done, you can get them for about $300-$600 a window.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Interesting)
The house is less than 2 years old so it should be decently insulated though the windows are only single paned.
So it's not.
Exactly. I'm amazed to read that some new houses in the US are so badly insulated that they have single paned windows. In Netherland people stopped doing that in the '60s or '70s.
Mind you, my previous house was from 1913, and before it got renovated, it had single paned stained glass windows, with wind blowing through gaps around them. Impossible to heat, so in winter I wore an extra sweater and lived next to the heater.
After it got proper insulation (including ugly windows, unfortunately), I hardly even needed the heater in winter. Good insulation matters a lot.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. At that latitude, the angle you mount your panels for operation would be steep enough for most snow to slide off. Also the dark color of the panels means that the snow will melt off there first. Although the snow may eventually build up at the base and block the rest from sliding off.
2. Amount of Sun. It's all about the solar insolation measurement. The feds have been logging this data for 30+ years and averaged the amount of annual sunlight in several areas in each state.
http://www.solar4power.com/solar-power-insolation-window.html [solar4power.com]
The above link is a good chart for this. The average for cities in New York is about 3.5, which equates to right around 3.5 kWh daily output for each installed 1,000 watts of generation capacity. That isn't the best, but it still is plenty. Germany has the largest number of installed PV arrays, and they are just as, is not more cloudy than New York.
I operate a 10 kw solar PV array in perpetually cloudly Seattle. We're going to see a payback of right around 10 years. Solar works just fine for us, although we do expect greatly reduced output in the winter months. The longer days during the summer, due to the high latitude, helps make up for some of that though.
http://www.jbdg.com/solar.html [jbdg.com] My array.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Informative)
He spends so much because he pays a premium to buy electricity from renewable resources.
And the house is his home office, so he doesn't have an employer paying for energy used during the day.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The objections of the world are just that. They are in shacks, eating raw organic foods (if any at all).
The US's energy consumption per capita is through the roof. There is an idea that there has to be curve of diminishing returns where your energy use to work and sleep in a house tops out.
I don't know what Mr. Gore is running to produce a bill like that. It is obscene, even for an American.
Re:$400 a month? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yea, yea, powering a 10,000 square foot house that functions as the home and office of a guy worth in excess of 100,000,000 dollars...How dare he use a ton of electricity!
Seriously.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
His point is that you should try to live carbon-neutral, not that you should live like a caveman. He pays a premium for his power so that a portion of it has to come from renewable resources, and he puts money in to carbon offset funds. That's more than I do, and my bill is 1/10th of his.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, Al Gore should be living in a small, average house, or perhaps an apartment if that more matches the average person, just so he can be close to the national average of electricity use regardless of his actual net worth or funds.
Oh wait, that's stupid.
If he's gonna promote agreements like the Kyoto Accord then yes, he should. If he expects the wealthy countries to be more like the average why shouldn't wealthy individuals?
It's not stupid, it's hypocritical.
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Re:Don't be stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
Al Gore's carbon footprint should be measured against people with similar incomes, not against the average Joe.
No, it shouldn't. If Al Gore insists on promoting things like the Kyoto Accord that measure country's carbon footprints independently of income, then he should expect the same on an individual basis. Anything less is total hypocrisy.
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Re:$400 a month? (Score:5, Insightful)
He does fly by regular carrier. He does not own a private jet.
That's not to say that he never, under any circumstances, flies in a private plane. When he does he buys carbon offsets -- not ideal of course, but the best you can do under the circumstances.
One of the Achilles' heels of conservative ideology is the inability to distinguish between practicality and expediency. It's always more expedient to travel by private plane. It's sometimes practical.
Cindy McCain got a lot of heat by saying that private plane was the only way to get around Arizona. The liberal reaction was the same kind of BS you're spouting here. Of course, she didn't literally mean you couldn't get from Phoenix to Flagstaff without flying, but as public figures the McCains do have to do a great deal of travel over a rather large state. As a Senator, John McCain spends most of his time in Washington, and if flying in a private plane means he gets to see more constituents, it's a sensible and pragmatic choice because it maximizes his productivity.
It's like the difference between driving a one ton pickup truck because you're a rancher and need to get feed out to your cattle through the snow, and driving the same kind of truck as a commuter vehicle. Environmentalists don't think it is morally wrong for a rancher to drive an F320. They don't think it's morally wrong for a cement truck to have a 400 horsepower engine and get 6MPG. Individuals commuting in a vehicle that got 6MPG would be a different thing.
As an environmentalist, I'm not even against sports cars. I'm just against sports cars as commuter vehicles. If you enjoy driving your Ferrari Enzo on the track at 8MPG, that's fine by me. But maybe you might want to look at an Audi A5 as your regular commuting vehicle.
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The author is missing something... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's an important step that this guy missed: cutting consumption. I have a roughly 3000 square foot house, and the most I've used since August '07 is 700kWh in a month... and that was a month when I had visitors for basically the whole month, so we used a lot more power. My average is around 500.
Now... we don't know how big this guy's house is, or how many people live there. But really... 1,635kWh? That seems pretty excessive for any reasonable house. Maybe if he's got a bunch of servers on all the time, and has electric heat, and lives in a cold climate, but it still seems high.
Insightful (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know about the position in the US, but in Europe there is a market in energy efficient ap
Re:Insightful (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes the panels will drop in cost, but you are forgetting that Electric bills are going to go UP in price over the same time. 10 years from now, he can generate the same amount of power, and save more money than he does today.
Of course, those that wait will have a MUCH quicker payback, since their equipment goes down in cost, and rates go up. But then again, you probably don't own a computer, do you? Cause there is always one that is faster/cheaper coming in another few months. Sometimes you just gotta jump in.
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ROI? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why didn't this follow up article include a Return on Investment number? It would be nice if he would have included the cost of the install and compare it to the difference in his electric bills. I'm curious to see how long it will take the install to pay for itself.
Re:ROI? (Score:5, Funny)
Why didn't this follow up article include a Return on Investment number?
For the same reason that you NEVER EVER add up your receipts when you are restoring a car. It is sure to make you cry.
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ROI is about 12.5 years (Score:4, Interesting)
I went back to his original article (the instalation). He said the estimate is that his anual utility bill will drop from 4400 a year to 1100 a year.
So I made a few assumptions.
#1-his power use will not increase. Not really likely but a future increase shouldn't change the ROI on his current investment.
#2-Utilities will just keep pace with inflation (assumed 2%)...power costs will stay porportinally expensive in the future. This is probably not ture as power prices tend to increase slightly faster than inflation. So this assumption will tend to increase the ROI.
#3-I assume he is financing it through his mortgage at about 5%
Therefore when I calculate out to 25 years I find that he would spend about $141,000 in power over the 25 years without slar. With Solar he would spend $35,233.
The Payoff date comes at about 12.5 years.
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fixed angle panels are sub-optimum (Score:5, Interesting)
Who ever installed the panels mounted them directly flat on the roof. That is bad.
They need to be angled for the best sun during the time the power need is greatest. Ideally they would be adjustable semi-annually/quarterly/monthly for the best angle. And if fixed would be biased toward the point of worst number of sun days and power need.
Doing a suboptimal installation and not accounting for sun angle is not a good installation and should be perform at a fraction of potential output.
A sun-tracking system is better (Score:5, Informative)
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It Will Pay Off in 9 Years (Score:5, Informative)
That article has a lot of consumption and billing numbers for each of utility and homegrown power, but it's hard to get exact performance comparisons because the numbers don't exactly measure the same things. There is no exact start and end date, just month names, and approximate mentions of offsets into them, not lining up generation and billing dates in either the solar generation half-year or the time before drawing from only the utility. And practically no data on income from overgenerating, selling back to utility or grid.
But there is enough data to make rough comparisons. They say [extremetech.com] their January/utility bill was $446, but their December bills are the highest (all of which extra usage was billed in the highest rate, 300% of the base rate). So let's say their average bill used to be $450:mo, or $5600 annually. However, they said [extremetech.com] up front that their annual bill is about $4400. We'll take the average of $5400. Now their July-December/solar bill is $389.39. Even if we call that $400, and so their annual/solar bill is $800, they're saving $4600 a year. They paid [extremetech.com] about $55,000 before rebates, about $37,000 after all rebates. Their utility bill savings pays off their installation investment in $37,000 / $4600 = 8.04 years. Pessimistically, they should be paid off in 9 years.
These systems have a minimum lifetime of 30 years (if you don't invest in an upgrade during that time). Even if energy rates stay the same in those 30 years (probably not, probably higher), that $4600 for 21 more years is $96,600, or 2.6x the installation cost. Total return is $133,600 on $37,000 investment, so 3600% Return on Investment over 30 years. If you invested that money in a compound interest account (either savings or some investment with an average annual return reinvested), you'd have to get 15.43% annual compound interest to turn $37K into $136K in 30 years. Conversely, if you took out a 30 year mortgage on your home at today's average rate of 5.63%, you'd net 9.8% benefit. Which means that it's worth mortgaging (part of) your home to invest in these, with a fraction of your old utility bills paid as mortgage interest, and getting $78K more ("profit", really utilities savings) after 30 years, with no out of pocket.
That could be even better than they say. Their reasons [extremetech.com] for failing to maximize their roof generating area don't seem compelling: "it would get a little crowded up there". Other than access to the panels for cleaning, who cares how crowded it is? It looks like they could double their area. Which would give them closer to zero Winter bills, but overkill in Summer that exceeds what's left (if any) during Winter, which exceeds their "zero annual bill" maximum for reselling overgeneration to the utility at retail rates. So probably about 1.5x the area would give them Summer overgeneration that would equal their Winter utility draw, netting zero bills. It's got to cost less than 1.5x to install just more area, because labor and shared components (especially the inverter that sells power back to the utility) are a substantial cost that doesn't increase at all at that rate. Say it costs 1.2x, or $44,400, but they save the full $5400 annually. That's still about the same time in payback (about 2% longer), but 3.7x the return. And the "green feeling" is complete.
Re:A waste of time (Score:4, Informative)
Because this is a follow up article. The first article includes the Roi figures along with the fact that California Rebated half the cost of the system ($36,000.00 dollars), which explains his up front costs of $36,000.00. Not bad for the size system he had installed and yes I've read the first article and understood the reasoning for the selected installation method, which was to reduce peak Energy Usage during Peak Summer Cost. That's right, his goal was to cut the summer cost of energy during the most expensive part of the year from PG&E (his uutility company).
Note that PG&E has a variable Rate cycle that has the greatest impact during the summer cooling period. This is why he wanted to reduce his summer electric costs, which the system did quite successfully.
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Re:Do you get credited for extra power? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that only happened in Soviet Russia.
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