Running Your Electric Meter Backwards 526
kog777 writes to note a story in International Business Times about "net metering," or generating your own power without disconnecting from the grid. Forty states have laws allowing individuals to do this, and many of them offer subsidies and tax breaks for people who do. From the article: "When the sun shines bright on their home in New York's Hudson Valley, John and Anna Bagnall live out a homeowner's fantasy. Their electricity meter runs backward. Solar panels on their barn roof can often provide enough for all their electricity needs. Sometimes — and this is the best part — their solar setup actually pushes power back into the system."
Re:realities? (Score:4, Insightful)
In the end, I think the choice is whether you want to help make the world greener, or you just plain don't give a rats.. most people don't give a rats ass, and so solar panel prices will stay up. Maybe the goverment should make it mandatory that new buildings have solar panels installed (does that already exist)? Here in Aus, new buildings have to have solar powered heating and sunlights.. but then again, we live in an oven of a country..
Re:realities? (Score:2, Insightful)
Now, or you'll die waiting for the "perfect" system. You don't have to do it all at once. Start with some small panels to just run the pump for now.
OT, sick day scams... (Score:3, Insightful)
Surely I wasn't the only one who was bothered by this.
Re:Making money from electric co (Score:4, Insightful)
The forces of nature. That is, physics and economics. Physics because it limits the efficiency of storing energy in batteries to impractical amounts, economics because batteries that size are frickin' expensive.
Prepay your electric bill, or buy the electric co. (Score:5, Insightful)
All you have done is pre-paid your electricity for the next 5-10 years
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60 months worth of your electric bill, call it an average of $100 a month, is $6,000. If you "pre-pay" that by rolling it into your home loan ("Build me a house and make sure it has a pool and solar power!"), it will end up costing you more (rough guesstimate is $7,300). If instead of buying photovoltaic cells you buy shares in your local electric company, you'll get about $120 to $240 a year in dividends (power companies often have a 2-4% yield), and your while your photovoltaic cells depreciate every year and require maintenance, your shares will probably appreciate and you'll never have to patch them up. (You'll have to pay the electric company for those 10 months of the year that dividends don't... then again, you get the security of knowing you'll never have to pay them extra just because its cloudy.) When you move in 15 years, rather than uninstalling or replacing them at your expense, you can just sell them and take your profits.
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In the end, I think the choice is whether you want to help make the world greener, or you just plain don't give a rats
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I don't give a rat's hindquarters for Green theology but don't mind conservation. Thats why I buy shares in companies which own nuclear power plants. Its cleaner than solar and has economies of scale. Yes, I said cleaner than scale: the energy cost from constructing solar panels keeps them net-energy-negative for about a decade (!) and when they die out after just over a decade (!) you have to dispose of them, and per megawatt hour generated you'll have to dispose of a heck of a lot more solar panels than radioactive waste. I don't invest in solar companies because at the moment they still haven't licked the whole "Making our products net energy producers" problem and until they do my only hope to profit from that investment would be hoping solar's massive government subsidies continue and expand. While I think that is certainly possible, I feel that if the current or a future administration wants to dump a couple billion into the solar industry, my nukes will get a similar largesse.
Sidenote: If you have an aversion to nuclear power, I understand and accept that. I don't eat meat on Fridays in Lent and we can both agree that our separate faiths are mutually harmless. One piece of advice though. Spend your money on a decent job of insulating your house -- you'll require less kwh from the grid, and on a per-dollar basis you'll save more kwh spending on insulation (and installation) than you will on buying solar power.
Re:net metering to start your own backyard e-tradi (Score:1, Insightful)
You're going to need some equipment to do this, just running wires between both meters won't do. This would require significant investment, and things that wouldn't necessarily go unnoticed (an electrician installing 400 amp lines between 2 neighbours might ask some questions). And there will be losses.
During peak hours, Neighbour A buys from B at $0.35m and sells to utility for $0.40.
With 10% losses, you're basically breaking even here.
With a 400A service, they can 800,000kWh a year and make a profit of $80k!
If they had 200A service before, and moved to 400A (200A extra for this), they'd be getting closer to 400,000kWh (half of whatever you counted), and if you add some losses and such, and you'd only be doing profit off-peak hours (not 24/7), so less than half the profit you mentioned too -- minus the price of getting 400A service installed on both houses and all the equipment required.
And it's likely illegal to sell them back their own electricity indirectly (TOS?), and I wouldn't want to get caught doing it.
And that only works if they pay you for the electricity "generated" -- often they'll deduct from your bill, but won't pay for any extra, in which case one would have a 0$ bill, and the other would have a insanely high bill (more than both of you used to pay combined).
Not a good idea.
Re:It really does work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason taxes work when they do is that some things fall under the "common good". If we just asked everyone to pay only for services that benefit them personally, we'd have only private schools, few medicines, and likely no roads or traffic lights.
Some things just only work if everyone is forced to pay a bit for them. But look at the benefits in this case. If the government takes some of your tax money to pay all the people who want to make their own power, everyone benefits through lower load on power stations, decreased demand for power (which lowers prices!), decreased pollution and demand for foreign oil.
Obvious win-win.
Re:It really does work. (Score:5, Insightful)
That might be because taxation actually removes our money from our own use, whereas duplicating digital data does nothing of the sort?
You're right though, it's not stealing. "Taking money/possessions from a victim under threat of violence" Sounds more like armed robbery.
Re:realities? (Score:3, Insightful)
The only time when they should have a negative impact on the population of fish is when the reservoir is filling and you force a drought downstream.
But I agree - we need all the energy we can get and any combination of zero-emission sources is a Good Thing.
We need to hurry up on fusion.
Re:net metering to start your own backyard e-tradi (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:realities? (Score:2, Insightful)
However, I think I must dispute the cost angle. FP said the cost of his system was $65,000 ($31, 000 with CA rebates). Even at $31,000... A 1 yr CD is 5.25%, so your savings must be over hrmm, $1600 a year or you are demonstrably worse off economically. So, your electricity has to cost $1600 less just to make up the cost of what else you could be doing with that cash. Then, to actually recoup the $30, 000 in 20 years(I'll give that a nice lifespan), you need to save an additional $1500 a year on electricity.
Then, it depends on how optimistic you are about future solar technologies. Could they come up with a back-yard stirling engine for $15,000? Probably, I can get a car for that... How are photovoltaics going at that time? By waiting five years, you could have entered the market with a much more efficient, much cheaper system... or, not, you know, if the glasses aren't so rosy (or full - pick your methaphorical poison). You can count on at least incremental improvements; prices down, efficiency and life up, form factors - more varied, new breakthroughs that are not in production...
I agree that by spending money now you are realizing an opportunity to save money, but for most people this point it probably won't work.
Who has a $3100/yr electricity bill? $258 a month? Not me... Until the system is able to pump enough back into the grid to make up the difference (about $170 a month). I must admit it would be nice to get a check from the power company every month, though. I'll be looking when this is a reality and then it will make economic sense.
And these numbers are on a 50% discounted system... Which leads me to another topic, in that the good people of CA are already paying for solar, whether they install it or not. Kudos! So, everyone is a state with governmental subsidies in solar technologies is already buying solar,.
Re:It really does work. (Score:3, Insightful)
I fully support new power sources, and the very obvious cheap, long-lasting, safe, clean source is nuclear power. But greenie socialists killed nuclear power a few decades ago.
Re:realities? (Score:3, Insightful)
1 - the stuff is expensive, but the cheapest way is the grid-tied no storage setup like this, It's very common and has been done for decades, only recently have laws been passed to allow it in most places. Many have done it anyways and simply stopped the meter from spinning.
2 - It requires a lifestyle change. You cant be the typical American power pig. You have to reduce your consumption, replace things with higher efficiency, actually turn thing off. Having that quad core gaming monster with twin 21 inch CRT monitors on all day long can not happen. You need to scale things back, replace with more expensive but efficient items. That 42 inch plasma TV get's chucked in the garbage for a 37" LCD TV. Money spent on skylights to reduce the need for electrical lighting in the home until late in the evening, all electrical appliances need to be removed or upgraded to high efficiency items.
Most people refuse to make the lifestyle changes or cant afford it. Thus only the ultra rich can afford cheap power and lower utility bills. Ironic that those that don't car about dumping $100.00 for lunch care a lot to save $70.00 a month on electricity...
the cheapest Solar setup that will not do much for your load offset is around $7000.00 minus installation by a certified electrician that can understand the stuff.. your normal electrician does not.
Most people refuse to do the lifestyle changes.
Re:Price issues (Score:2, Insightful)
Investing in Nuclear Power is Risky (Score:2, Insightful)
But if you think that analysis is flawed, you can still work out a way to invest even more by switching to solar personally. Look at the calcualator at http://www.jointhesolution.com/mdolar [jointhesolution.com] for a low balled savings estimate (2.2% estimate of annual electric rate increase I thing) and 9% return on the invested savings.
Solar panels are now good for about 30 years, and if you rent from us, we handle the disposal and leave your roof in good shape. Note that since they are still solar grade silicon, they only need to be recycled. They are worth about $25/kilo as raw material.
Re:It really does work - NOT !!! --dreadful losses (Score:3, Insightful)
Baseline: 11.34c
101%-130%: 12.98c
131%-200%: 22.94c
201%-300%: 32.14c
over 300%: 36.96c
Baseline usage is 11.9 kwh per day in summer, 12.6 kwh in winter.
For me, before I installed the panels I was regularly running into the "over 300%" category, and that was one of the reasons that solar made sense for my particular situation.
Also, I didn't spend $65k on the installation, I spent $31k. If you take out a loan for this amount, you can pay it back entirely out of the electricity savings.
Don't take my word for it - the State of California has a very comprehensive on-line worksheet that will calculate how much energy an installation will generate based on your location. It will also give you the numbers about how to finance it, including accounting for lost opportunity cost by tying up your money in the panels. I reviewed the numbers after a year and I actually generated about 2% more electricity than the calculator said I could expect.
I didn't install panels to sell electricity. I installed them because I liked the idea of generating my own electricity, and it because it made good financial sense for me.
You see the economics as dreadful. I (who actually did the math very, very carefully) see the economies are a very good deal. The deal is only sweetened by the reduction in greenhouse gases that my installation triggers.
Frankly, you remind me of a person arguing that it's a bad idea to vote. You are only one person, you can't possibly make a difference, and think of all the lost money with people driving to polling stations and waiting to cast their votes. All true. And all very wrong.