Switching To Solar Power – One Month Later 730
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."
Not a month (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Informative)
It was arranged so that PG&E will never have to pay you money.
There is also a $5 "connection fee" each month, so your smallest possible annual bill will be about $50. I used to hit that with a 4kW array (minute-by-minute stats are available [dfsmith.net]).
Eh (Score:5, Informative)
So he saved about $330/month. It cost him $36K (which really cost $50K, but let's say). So it'll take 109 months to get back the money, or 9 years, not adjusting for inflation and investment opportunity cost. Let's say that brings it up to 12 years. Not including maintenance and repairs. It might even need complete replacement at that point. At 50K, which is the real cost, we're talking more like 16-18 years.
That's still a bit too long an investment for this to be really practical. Prices need to come down to about a four year payoff before I'd be really interested.
On another subject, I'm kind of glad to see someone who actually uses more electricity than I do. :)
Re:That last paragraph says it all (Score:3, Informative)
Depends on how fast those assets depreciate, and the long-term maintenance costs.
Re:DC - AC - DC (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Solar is not a good choice if you want to save (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Eh (Score:5, Informative)
From the Article:
These particular panels were guaranteed to deliver 90% of their rated peak capacity for at the twelve year mark, and 80% at the 25 year mark.
Re:Wait to winter time when there is less sun to s (Score:4, Informative)
Working against that, you need to amortize your capital costs and pay for maintenance. Still, in some parts of the country, solar can indeed give you a reasonable mortgage length and IRR [daughtersoftiresias.org]
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
I guess that the statistics [wikipedia.org] would disagree, but why let facts get in your way!
Re:Do the math -- is he really saving money? (Score:5, Informative)
He says he put in $36,000 and will save $3,300 per year in payments to the power company. Now the historical annual rate of return of an S&P 500 index fund is 11.3% over the last century, so $36K put there would return over $4,000 -- enough to pay the $3,300 to the grid, have $700 left over and of course, still keeping the principal.
You're comparing apples and oranges here. If people always invested solely based on maximizing the expected average rate of return, then bank CDs wouldn't exist, bonds wouldn't exist, real estate and REITs wouldn't exist, etc. In reality, people are balancing the expected rate of return against variability. The reason bank CDs are paying something pathetic like 4% right now is that the banks have to guarantee that they'll pay you 4% on your money. The bank is essentially charging you for insurance against negative variability. Although there are a lot of unknowns involved in buying PV (what will electric rates do in the future? how much will the technology improve), they're a lot less than the unknowns involved in stocks. My S&P 500 index fund is down 19% from its peak value last year. There's a reason that most people build a balanced investment portfolio that includes both stocks and bonds; it's because mixing volatile and nonvolatile investments is a way of maximizes your expected rate of return for a given amount of risk that you're willing to accept [wikipedia.org].
And grid power might go up, but only so far. Because eventually the grid power hits the solar price, and the grid itself starts putting in solar sources at that price -- because it's cheaper.
Your logic doesn't work. When you own a PV system, you're part of "the grid itself." When I'm at work during the day, my PV panels are pumping energy into the grid, which is selling it to other customers. In my area, grid power has hit the solar price, for a south-facing roof with no shade; that's why I, a homeowner with a south-facing roof and no shade, have put in a PV system. You seem to be assuming that if rates go above a certain threshold, the entire state of California will suddenly magically cover itself with PV panels, because that will be the right thing to do according to the laws of supply and demand. That doesn't make sense, for a couple of reasons. First, there are huge variations in the price of land, the local cost of electricity, the amount of sunlight, which way people's roofs face, and how much shade they get. Second, there's a barrier to covering every house with PV panels, which is that most homeowners are short on capital. Your idea that the whole grid would suddenly go solar at some threshold is like imagining that everybody will suddenly drive a hydrogen-powered car if gas goes over $6 a gallon. We're talking about a massive infrastructure that doesn't change overnight.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:1, Informative)
A big risk that many people don't consider when this topic comes up is the safety of the linemen working on the grid. Consider the following example. My house is well equipped with solar cells. This particular afternoon is bright and sunny, and I'm generating more than enough power for my home. Just up the line, however, an old tree has rotted out, and it's picked this particular afternoon to give up on life. It comes crashing down and lands on the power line, snapping the line as it plummets to the ground. The power company shuts off the next transformer up the line (thus cutting the feed to the snapped power line), and sends out a lineman to repair it. The lineman works swiftly, and the repair is complete a short time later.
What happens when the lineman makes the final connection and closes the gap? Under a normal situation where the power flows only one way, nothing, as the power's been cut off at the transformer upline. Once he's done and has moved to a safe distance, the power company turns the transformer back on and life continues. However, if my excess power is being fed back in to the grid, SURPRISE! The line is live the instant the final connection is made. The lineman gets a nasty (and likely fatal) shock.
For this reason, allowing your customers to feed their excess power in to the grid is actually quite dangerous. With power flowing one one way and equipped with a modern dispatch center software package, it's very easy to tell what parts of your grid have power and what parts are out. Simply start at each of your sources and work down the line, checking each device to see if it's active. Many systems allow you to ping the various devices on your electrical grid just as you'd ping a computer, so you can rapidly check whole sections of grid. It's also quite easy to prevent shocking your linemen: if you issue the command to turn on a transformer, and the dispatch system shows a worker downline, the worker has to give the okay before the command is executed.
When power flows two ways, it becomes FAR more difficult to ensure the safety of your workers, as any endpoint on the grid could be either a source or a sink, and many of them are outside your control. Tracking which parts of your grid have power and which don't requires every single node on your grid to have a wireless connection to dispatch, which is absurdly expensive at this point. While there are ways to work around this, they're not cheap to implement or maintain. This cost would have to be passed on to the customers. Some power companies have decided that it's worth the cost and risk to allow the their customers to feed power back in to the grid. Other's have decided it's not worth it.
solarnetwork.net (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, because we all know the government always does everything in the most economical and efficient way, right?
You may want to take a look at this paper [oecd.org] about health care in France. It comes from a very trustworthy source, the OECD, and presents some surprising data. Although public health care in France is "universal" in the sense that almost everybody is covered by the public health care system, 92% of the French people have additional private health insurance.
Let me quote from the summary: "The public system is facing chronic deficits and recent cost-containment policies have not proved very successful. The government has signalled an interest in reforms that would redefine the role of public and private insurance, shifting some responsibilities from the former to the latter."
I just quoted this paper about health care because I had it on hand, and you mentioned health care, but I admit that electric power is more of a "natural monopoly" than health care in some ways. I think emergency health care should be guaranteed by the government, because when you suffer an accident you are in no position to negotiate, but health care does not need to run wires all the way from the power plant to your home.
So, yes, I think there is need for some regulation in electric power, but from all I have read, California is hardly an example of a well-conceived deregulation. I think there are many ways of creating a better system for private utilities. You cannot say that all deregulation is bad based on just the California example.
Re:Solar is not a good choice if you want to save (Score:3, Informative)
Solar is NOT a way to save money and every sucker who is drawn in by this idea will be turned off solar for a long time.
Depends on the future cost of utility-supplied electricity though, doesn't it? Buying solar panels for your roof is like buying a futures contract on electricity: in return for your money, you are (more or less) guaranteed a certain amount of electricity for a certain amount of time at a certain price. Whether or not you 'save money' depends on what the alternative price will be over that period. If you thought that electric rates were going to go up significantly in the near future, then solar panels might be a nice hedge against that.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Grid tie equipment is required to have automatic disconnection systems. Also, the linemen can pretty much wave a wand at the lines to see if they are live or not...
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Well done on assuming that Europe is one big member state with exactly the same health care, unemployment and whatever other statistics you want to quote.
No, France, Germany and the UK have completely different medical services, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. And that's just 3 countries, out of 27 in the EU alone.
They also have quite different levels of unemployment, but none of them are even close to the 35% you're quoting, they're more akin to about 6% or 7%. In fact, Slovakia is the highest at around 10%, still nowhere near what you're quoting. I'd like to see some sources for that bullshit.
What's more, you speak of the medical care in these countries as if it's vastly inferior to your own just because it doesn't always work out for the best for some people - yet you don't seem to realise that in the USA (I'm assuming that's where you're from based on your lack of knowledge about the EU) if you don't have health insurance, you're basically fucked if you get hit with anything worse than a bacterial infection or a broken bone. Sure, you might live, but you'll spend the rest of your life trying to pay that ridiculously bloated medical bill.
I'm not saying things are better in the EU, I've yet to see a "perfect" medical system, but to talk about it as if it flat out doesn't work is ludicrous. Quite frankly the British National Health Service is one of the best things to ever happen to the country, despite is flaws and failures - the fact that it's still around after more than half a century proves this and the first politician to suggest scrapping it is going to be performing political suicide.
Re:The Breakdown (Score:3, Informative)
Try considering the opportunity cost! $36,000 in "initial investment" could also get you 4% a year in a 5-year CD with no risk... that's $120/mo! You can probably get double that if you take on a little risk in the stock market. If you're only saving about $100/mo then your "break-even" point suddenly runs all the way out to, what, twenty-thirty years?
And if you have any debt to pay down with more than a 9.2% interest rate, you'd probably want to do that first... and if you can pick up any decent tax advantage via 401(k) contributions or IRAs or ESAs or HSAs or other things like that, those probably are a better deal too.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
Second, NEC ampacity standards are for tolerable voltage drop, not wire overheating. A 200A-rated line will actually carry a lot more than 200A.
That is backwards! The NEC ampacity tables (310.16, 310.17, etc.) are concerned with conductor heating. That's why there are:
Separate columns for different wire temperature ratings
Reduction factors for higher than normal ambient temperatures
Different tables for single conductors and multiple conductors in a raceway or cable
Adjustment factors for more than three current-carrying conductors in the same raceway or cable
The only exceptions to the temperature-based ratings are for 15A, 20A, and 30A circuits. In most installations these must use at least 14AWG, 12AWG and 10AWG conductors (respectively), even if the Section 310 tables otherwise permit a smaller conductor.
Re:Solar is not a good choice if you want to save (Score:3, Informative)
This is not necessarily the case...
Say for example your in the market for a new home. You plan on spending $250K to $350k. You find a great house for $300K. --> 30 yr mortgage @ 5% is ~ $1610 per month. (bankrate.com/mortgage calc...) Now say you find decide to have a full solar array installed as part of the cost of your new home. Let's say your a real geek and decide to get the mother of all solar arrays for $50k. Your home now costs $350K --> 30 yr mortgage @ 5% is ~ $1880 per month. The difference is $270 per month. Loyd Case's March bill is $348.26 and his June bill is $11.34; that's a difference of ~$337. Your solarage may vary :-) Now you begin to see the real cost-as-a-percentage -of-your-home. Which is probably closer to zero even before consideration any grants/rebates/etc. from the government. (which is composed of oil zealots, by the way)
Since you have the MOASA you'll probably pay 0. You may decide to sell it the excess to your neighbors if possible. That's probably too much trouble. You being the uber geek that you are will probably decide to use those excess Kwh's to power you garage electrolyzer whereby producing your own hydrogen gas which powers you fuel cell car. And since you have finally achieved the uber uber geekdom that you have always aspired to you can live happily ever after.
enufsaid.
That's not the "real" reason.. (Score:3, Informative)
There's a reason that they exclude energy from the consumer price index -- it's because energy prices are extremely volatile.
No, it actually has quite a bit of stability.. in its skyrocketing trend.
It skyrocketed during the gulf war in 1990, and pretty much stayed at that price afterward, and it continues to skyrocket today.
The reason it's excluded from the CPI is to allow politicians to claim the economy is just fine when people are pawning off their furniture to get to work each week.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Informative)
Government regulation and funding can be a hit or miss proposition, depending largely on what level of government is running the institution.
With roads, for example, the funding and management can be federal, as in the case of Interstate Highways, state, as in state routes, county, city, etc, or can be public-private parterships, as with some toll roads.
Libraries are almost always managed at the county or city level, and quality varies widely. In Arlington County, VA, for example, the library system is top notch -- libraries carry not just books but a huge collection of CDs and a pretty good collection of DVDs with a searchable online catalog and reservation system. You can reserve anything in the system online and have it sent to the branch of your choice for pickup. You can also extend the borrowing term online (except for DVDs) without worrying about late fees (which are trivial anyway).
The Chicago Public Library system, on the other hand, has only recently put its catalog online, and I don't think there is an automated reservation system yet. After moving from Arlington, where I was a very active library patron, to Chicago in 2006 I found the library here practically useless. I hope things have improved and someone can tell me I'm wrong.
State universities and colleges are of course state-funded and -managed, but they get massive financial resources from their endowments and philanthropic fundraising activities. The University of California system in particular has one of the most efficient and sophisticated fundraising operations in the country.
As an aside, it's easy to assume that the richest and most famous schools -- your Harvards and Yales -- have the most effective fundraising, but that's not really true. When you're at Harvard and can raise a couple hundred grand in a week just by opening the mail there's not much pressure to increase your efficiency or sophistication. If you want to see the state of the art in higher-ed fundraising, have a look at Stanford.
It's not that government run enterprises don't work, it's just that they tend to work better when there's a public-private partnership going on. Most projects in general live or die on the strength of the management. It's much easier for a completely public project to suffer complete managerial incompetence. There are a lot more agonizingly inefficient DMVs than smoothly functioning ones (hats off to IL in this case, at least in my experience). Have a look some time, for example, at the University of the District of Columbia.
There's no question in my mind that the government has to step into healthcare at least to control the spiraling costs. But neither is there a question that the private medical sector will and needs to continue to exist. Universal state medical systems elsewhere, e.g. Cuba and Canada, do a great job of achieving quality relative to the cost, but they also benefit greatly from advancements made in the US. And those advancements are purely down to the private medical sector.
All the same, I'm a college educated professional, I have a good job with insurance, and I know that I simply can't afford to get sick. I know I'm not alone. And that is a problem that will likely need government regulation and/or ownership to solve.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:2, Informative)
The hell the public portions of healthcare work okay.
Medicare is mediocre at best. The only reason that most places take it is because they don't have much choice. You'll get the bare minimum services you need on Medicare, but not much else (ie. if there are two possible courses of treatment, one which costs 500 dollars and has a 50% positive outcome and one that costs 15.000 dollars and has a 60% positive outcome, you'll get the first one, because medicare won't pay for the second, whereas most private insurances will.)
MedicAid programs are mostly completely broken, consider MaineCare (Maine's Medicaid), which pays something like a penny on the dollar of it's supposed reimbursment rates...that is, when it pays at all.
Now, if you want to talk about government provided healthcare, the active-duty military HC is actually repectable, but the VA HC is abysmal, Walter Reed is not an isolated incident,
Some of the state provided health care can be quite decent. Hawaii leaps to mind, but then, they shift a significant portion of the healthcare insurance burden by mandating employers offer private insurance, which leaves them better able to cope with the remaining population. If you want to see what state healthcare is like elsewhere, I suggest you go ahead and saunter on down to a free clinic and take a look around.
In short, government healthcare doesn't really work, it's just a ponderous behemoth that keeps going on inertia. Given a little more time with nothing done about it and it's going to fail.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Inverters designed for feeding excess power back into the grid not only must maintain phase lock but usually have provisions to continuously detect if the line has lost external power. If the utility power drops for any reason then the inverter disconnects and stops feeding power back into the line.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
currently power generation is more valuable during the day, because thats when it is most used (especially in A/C dominated CA.)
That is the likely reason for a retail price compensation OK for solar generated by day. The solar is likely displacing more pricey natural gas, for cheaper coal/nuclear. Also possibly reducing net line load from the factory during peak draw...
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Australia has a typical 37.5-38 hour work week (excluding lunch, so 40 hours including a 30ish minute lunch) and record low unemployment.
And public health care.
And a pension system for those who cannot work.
And an economy kicking the US's...
Re:Hail (Score:4, Informative)
We have a motorised wooded shutter over our glass skylight. They work similiar to a roll up garage door, they are slated of wood which when "open" are rolled up into a cylinder (below the roof so it's not visible) then when "closed" they form a solid wooden surface which absorbs hail stone & fallen debris blows better than a run of the mill blockout steel roller shutter which would typically deform and/or buckle under similiar loads.
They come in the poor man's windy handle version in addition to the lazy man's motorised version.
My insurer covers panels automatically in it's storm damage cover. Might be worth shopping around depending on your countries offerings.
Re:Where to buy "retired" PV panels? (Score:3, Informative)
And the only places you see them on Craigslist very much is where home-solar installs are common,,, which means California & the desert states.
Also another option is to look for B-grade panels--these are either cosmetic blemish or non-UL panels. The potential problem there is that these panels may not qualify for gov't rebates (assuming you are going to do a qualifying system). Even though they are new, they may lack the usual warranty as well. http://www.sunelec.com/ [sunelec.com] has some at the moment, look in the yellow panel that has the title "World's lowest price $2.98/watt". A grade-A 180W panel would cost around $800, where the non-UL panels they have are priced at $550.
It is also an option to build your own by buying cells and connecting and building an enclosure for them, but this has consequences too. The cost of cells to build a 180W panel is around $300 on eBay right now, but DIY panels will not qualify for any rebate programs. Most people who try to seal their home-made enclosures end up with moisture or mildew problems, so the most-dependable way seems to be to use non-wood materials and to provide small venting on the top and bottom while preventing rain from entering through the top.
Humidity seems to be the arch-enemy of all photovoltaic panels.... The humidity itself kills the panels (both home-made and commercial) and the humidity comes from clouds , so if you get a lot of rain you won't get much from solar power anyway, and maybe should consider hydro instead.
~
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
Utility companies, private or public, are limited in the revenue or profit they can take. They actually have to ask to increase rates more then a couple percent and if they post profits more then a certain amount (usually 6%) they are forced to lower rates.
It is a trade off for the monopoly they have. I think it is very fair to the consumer and probably a little unfair to the company.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
It was arranged so that PG&E will never have to pay you money.
There is also a $5 "connection fee" each month, so your smallest possible annual bill will be about $50. I used to hit that with a 4kW array (minute-by-minute stats are available [dfsmith.net]).
$5 * 12 = $60
Or does your electric company abide by a ten-month calendar?
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Disinformation and selective quotation at work. Do you work for the USA private health insurers?
Let's check:
To really inform slashdot readers you might add that more than 80% of private health insurance is done by ... not for profit, and that the share of not for profit vs for profit has increased by 10% over the past years. It might help USA citizens understand a few things about how private "for profit" is really working.
"private" health insurance covers less than 25% of costs, 75% comes from the mandatory public system.
And in the special case of France, the private not for profit insurance has nothing to do with government efficiency as always there's some ideology and creative accounting at work ("chronic deficits" is a political choice). Administrative costs of health insurance are 6% in France vs 15% in the USA, if you want to increase waste you know what to do.
For reference I cannot choose my private complementary health insurance provider which is the one of my employer by law (private market ? eh eh), I pay around 30 euros per month for it.
Re:Eh (Score:3, Informative)
Standard mono and polycrystaline panels easily last 25 years. Yes, there is a drop in the power they produce... light bleeching destroys everything, frankly. But standard panels are fairly resilient and you can count on 25 years with moderate degradation. Really they work forever, they just get less and less efficient. The panels are only half the cost of the whole system. Replacing panels is easy, it's the initial installation that's a bitch.
The new-fangled stuff... solar built into roof material, or drapes, or windows, or flexible plastic... that stuff doesn't usually last very long and usually has horrible efficiency. I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot poll. Go with standard mono or poly panels.
They definitely last more then 2-3. My poly panels have been installed longer then that and I have not noticed any significant drop-off yet.
-Matt
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Informative)
It may not be perfect, but I feel it's a heck of a lot better than the mess that's the USA healthcare system.
You don't say where you are but I live in the USA and have had quite an experience with healthcare here. As a college student without insurance I was hit while riding my bike one day after my classes. I was medevacted [wikipedia.org] by helicopter to the hospital where I got treatment while in a coma. I spent about a month in the hospital before I was moved to a rehabilitation house [wikipedia.org] where I lived about 1 1/2 months while getting therapy. When I left the house I moved into my mother's house. I went to the hospital 2 days a week for more therapy for a couple of months. My medical bills totaled more than $120,000 yet all that was spent despite no one, doctors, hospital, or rehab house knowing if they would see a dime from me. Actually while I was in the coma the docs told my family it would be a miracle if I lived and as a student I wouldn't have been able to pay. Even today more than 10 years later I'd argue with them about my being alive is a miracle, my life has been more like a living hell.
Even without my experience, I have an idea how medical practice is in the USA, my mother is a lab tech in the hospital I was taken to, actually that's how she found out, a coworker asked her if she knew me. I also have a sister who's a nurse. As it is now, by law a hospital has to provide medical care in an emergency in the US even if the patient has no insurance.
Don't get me wrong, I don't believe the USA has the best health care system in the world for everyone but I do believe a free market, which the US does not have in health care, can lower costs and make medical care affordable for more people. Some people say France has the best system but the Organization For Economic Co-operation a Development [oecd.org], OECD, disagrees. In the report "Private Health Insurance in France" [oecd.org] it says "While France has a universal public health insurance system, the coverage it provides is incomplete and the vast majority the French population has private complementary health insurance."
Falcon
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm "down under" in Australia.
We have private complementary health insurance here as well which is also partially subsidised by the government (a ridiculous proposition put in by the Liberals (read: conservatives) to win votes) a considerable amount of people have taken up the complementary health insurance as you get tax breaks for doing so if you are a high income earner but in a lot of cases your are not any better of as you are often in the same hospital with the same doctors, only you're paying hefty bills & foot a hefty excess whereas the patient in the bed next door pays zip.
I think some of the biggest problems with health care and utilities arise purely from the fact that they become a political hot potatoes and the currently democratic process both here & world wide (USA/UK/etc) is set up to favour the present not the future.
If party XYZ completely fucks up, it is largely inconsequential and time just moves on, John Howard was only finally voted out here after completely destroying our workplace laws costing many people their jobs and was also, in a manner of speaking, corrupt - he routinely lied to the voting public whilst lining the pockets of groups whose votes he needed.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Informative)
It's required by law. An inverter which does not disconnect when the grid goes down is illegal. There are also access laws... there must be an outside disconnect switch in clear view or near the house's outside panel. There are also laws (in CA) governing panel grounding, fusing, breakers, and other safeties.
-Matt
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:5, Informative)
Social Security? IRS? Medicare? Please... there is nothing transparent about government waste. If it weren't for market based funding there would be no improvements in the health care system. Who do you think is going to do drug research for free?
Try Europe where you can get 35 hour work weeks and 35% unemployment. There everyone has the same mediocre health care and they STILL have to have insurance if they want any care beyond antibiotics or the setting of a broken bone.
Just a few minor corrections:
Re:health care (Score:3, Informative)
There was a big campaign to oust him over the Iraq War, but alas, he got voted back in after that. Even after lying about it. Howard has also broken various international laws (this may be a good read for you, one aspect of the racist campaign he ran "fear the foreign people" basically, whilst breaking international law by preventing a recuse vessel from using the nearest port The Tampa Affair [wikipedia.org]).
Howard was undone by making the majority of working Australian's jobs turn from secure to insecure.
Previously a full time permanent job was all but bullet proof short of you underperforming or a company going bust. He changed that to be that companies can fire people without giving a reason and don't have to pay them redundancy payments either when they do it! That was the nail in his coffin. Not sure if the debarcle got much media attention internationally though.
His stance that global warming was 'nonsense' didn't really help him much either. He was also refusing to sign the Kyoto agreement in a time when the average Australia was becoming environmentally conscious and learning all about what damage the support systems to our lifestyles are doing to our planet.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Global Warming (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, we're being killed by drought, more than 70% of the country is in severe drought, only the east coast cities are okay, and it's creeping in on the edges there even.
But you know what? That's just the biggest drought ever recorded. That's not climate change!
Currently there's more than a battle over water - it could be called a war. It's got all the pieces of a brewing civil war:
- Guns (People having armed standoffs over water supplies)
- State vs State Hatred (Queensland is hoarding off the flood planes daming off trillions of kilolitres which would normally flood down into NSW irrigating millions of hectres of farmland)
- Explosives (Several water control weirs have been dynamited & blown up to restore waterflow to rivers)
- Violence (confrontations & bust ups with contractors as they build water control weirs)
- Guerilla Warfare (Dynamiting of facilities at night)
- Hoarding (See QLD v NSW point above)
All beause we allow companies to buy water rights.
Here's a common situation: Joe blow owns 100 Hectares and has a well to the undergroun aquaifer. Bank5 owns 100 Hectares nearby - Bank5 can drill umteen number of wells and pump out all the underground water it likes seening as it has the money to drill numerous wells, but Joe doesn't have thousands to drill well after well and is left with no water. Joe then buys water rights for 5,000 litres from the local river. However Bank4 has paid for 400,000 litres from the river & has installed a water control weir to obtain it. Downstream there's no water left for Joe. Joe doesn't get a refund & his cows are now starving as he has no grain to because irrigation has failed & no water for them to drink.
It's sad, yet according to the government it's okay. Our largest river system, the Murray-Darling runs through three states and is a complete shitfight of a politcal mess - no one wants to give an inch.
Sydney nearly ran out of water last year because of a lack of rainfall, our largest damn was down to 37% despite their being Level 3 (quite harsh) water restrictions in place across the state & in the city. We were saved by rain, another quarter like it had been and lord knows what would have happened. I can't even image what would happen to a metropolis of several million with no water.
Re:penny smart pound dumb (Score:3, Informative)
No, energy payback is *much* shorter than that (See this [nrel.gov] DoE paper for example). And as the article states guaranteed energy production is 90% after 10 years and 80% after 20.
Re:Insane energy usage. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Global Warming (Score:3, Informative)
Australia is running out of water due to incompetence. I have on my desk the Victorian Desalination Project IfEoI which appears to be written so that only one company can provide a solution. They keep talking 3.1 billion dollars yet the plant is only 4 times larger than the Tampa FL plant that cost $150 million. They also want to take the desalinated water and pump it very far uphill and far away to be stored yet the plant size will be able to meet the daily demands of the city which is all much closer to sea level. It cost $.035/kl to pump water up 100 meters based on current prices and assuming 100% efficient pumps. I have spoken to 3 companies that could provide a solution yet not one of them will be submitting to the local governments paper game since they are convinced they can't win. A billion dollar project is going to cost the average Victorian family about 1000 not including costs dealing with interest.
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:4, Informative)
Hear, hear.
I too am a member of an electric co-op, Bluebonnet Electric Co-op [bluebonnetelectric.coop] in Central Texas. As a Libertarian, I personally find their business model the best of both worlds. Being for profit, so that they seek to minimize inefficiencies, and being controlled by the members.
They're even cool enough to have information on their website on what it takes to have personally owned renewable power sources tied into the grid. [bluebonnetelectric.coop]
Re:Why can't he sell it back? (Score:3, Informative)
Residential power in the US is typically delivered through three wires - hot, hot, and neutral. There are 240V available between the two hot lines. The neutral line is at ground potential (it is coupled to ground at your main breaker panel) and so there is half that voltage, 120V, available between either hot and neutral. 240V circuits (the double circuit breakers in your breaker panel) are typically used in the US to power large loads - baseboard heaters, water heaters, stoves, air conditioners, hot tubs, etc. 120V circuits (the single breakers) are used for everything else. It's often referred to as "Split-phase electric power [wikipedia.org]".
Re:The Breakdown (Score:3, Informative)
I'd imagine he'll make back anything he put into the solar panels the moment he sells his house. Having no hydro bills would be a massive selling point for a lot of people, he'll probably get better than market for his house because of it.