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| Just because something is legal to do doesn't mean it is the smart thing to do. |
Interesting video on the wind/solar power for our future. https://www.prageru.com/video/...-with-wind-and-solar Integrity is doing the right thing, even when nobody is looking. | ||
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quarter MOA visionary |
Not me. | |||
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Ammoholic |
Wind and solar have their place, and I'm for it minus the subsidies. I'm curious about harvesting tidal energy as well as expanding nuclear. Jesse Sic Semper Tyrannis | |||
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| Staring back from the abyss  |
On an individual level, it's a do-able thing...if you can afford it. Nationwide? No way. I recently had a local solar outfit out to give me a quote. For the complete system, including panels and a 10Kw battery (enough for roughly a few day of running just my freezers and fridge), it would run me $30K ($23K after taxes). Yeah, I can afford it, but that's a big chunk of change for not much energy. I passed...for now. ________________________________________________________ "Great danger lies in the notion that we can reason with evil." Doug Patton. | |||
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Member |
My neighbor just installed solar panels on his roof, and his last electric bill was zero dollars, nada, none. It looks like an expensive system, and I don't know what the payback ratio is, but zero electric bill sounds nice to me. Lover of the US Constitution Wile E. Coyote School of DIY Disaster | |||
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Void Where Prohibited |
I've looked at solar power; the numbers just don't do it for me. Not enough savings for the expenditure for me. My neighbor across the street just put in solar panels. He told me it cost him $50K and he's generating $150 of power in a good month. That's an awful long ROI. "If Gun Control worked, Chicago would look like Mayberry, not Thunderdome" - Cam Edwards | |||
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| Get my pies outta the oven!  |
That’s great and all but what’s the cost for this system? If it was $50,000 and he’s got a $600 payment for the next 20 years, his electric bill ain’t $0.00…it’s $600 | |||
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| Member |
I’m fine knowing EV cars will actually work way better for 75% of the population that’s most people realize. I don’t think it will be better for the environment and it certainly won’t be cheap. Electricity is going to go up in price and unlike when gas goes up and you limit your trips everyone needs electricity every day. I have posted before how many minerals it takes for one car battery and the amount of materials it takes per windmill or solar panel and I just don’t see how sustainable that is either.This message has been edited. Last edited by: 1s1k, | |||
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| Member |
I imagine tidal energy would be very interesting, harvesting the energy from the sun and gravity from the moon. How cool is that. But I imagine the engineering, investment, and maintenance involved would not be practical. I like nuclear a whole lot but don't trust humans enough to run them with enough safety. After watching a 3 Mile Island documentary and with the Chernobyl and Fukushima accidents, I'd rather keep using fossil fuels since those technologies don't kill people, force them out of their homes, and prevent them from ever living there again. That kind of situation is intolerable to me. Lover of the US Constitution Wile E. Coyote School of DIY Disaster | |||
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Shall Not Be Infringed |
ZERO electric bill sounds great, but the ROI (Return on Investment) is key here... I don't have any idea where 'Nowhere the Constitution is honored' actually is (which would be critical in order to estimate seasonal electricity usage), but using Gustofer's example of $23K net cost after taxes/subsidies, and my $175 electric bill I just paid, the ROI is over TEN years!  ____________________________________________________________ If Some is Good, and More is Better.....then Too Much, is Just Enough !! Trump 2024....Make America Great Again! "May Almighty God bless the United States of America" - parabellum 7/26/20 Live Free or Die! | |||
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Member |
The price per watt of putting a few solar panels on your roof is very different from the price per watt of filling a field (or a bunch of fields) with them. From what I can find, the operating costs and amortized construction costs of utility-scale solar plants currently result in a cost of generated electricity in the range of 2-10 cents per kWh depending on how good the area is for solar and how high operating and construction costs are in the area, and the cost has been steadily dropping about 20% per year since the 80s. That doesn’t mean solar is the total answer, there are still a number of issues besides cost, but it does seem to be cost-competitive as a part of a grid’s overall generating capacity. | |||
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Itchy was taken |
No. Hybrid at best. I am a firm believer in redundancy. _________________ This space left intentionally blank. | |||
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| Member |
Additionally, the opportunity cost of that money instead invested in a reasonably diversified portfolio with an average compounded return of 8% should be considered (although one could invest more aggressively if desired). Especially given your home insurance is almost guaranteed to increase to cover damage to the panels, and the fact panel efficiency degrades over time and these need to be kept relatively clean. ------------- $ | |||
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| Member |
ROI on solar is 12 to 30 years depending on the system. The average American moves every 5 to 7 years. Most people will never see their ROI. | |||
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| Banned |
System failure ie blackouts and loss of the grid are a fact. Think TX in 20 degree weather and the pipes in your ceiling freezing then bursting. The EV car would have drained it's battery days earlier with nothing left to even charge the phone. All because TX wasn't hooked into the national grid well, freezing weather with ice stopped the windmills and there was no power. None. Nobody spec'd deicer circuits in the blades and they had to shut them down. My house IS total electric and the four times we've been without power for more than 24 hours we had propane camper equipment running for heat and cooking, grille on the deck as our primary stove evenings, all the frozen stuff getting grilled before it's lost, ice stuffed in the frig and freezer, etc. It's deer camp with water boiled for camp showers or a wipe down in the sink. Certainly more civilized than a 14 day FTX in the box at Polk but the women folks get cranky. So far we haven't been forced to rely on wood heat - I have a stove in the LR with about two cords backup now. And now it's tornado season - May isn't easy around here. Fortunately we have the new pool filled so semi potable water is just out the back door which would last 2 months and a good rain will put 6" in it overnite. We get about 66k rainfall on the roof area alone. For all the talk about how it's sustainable it's not. A tornado in 01 hit the substation and we were down 9 days. Any exposed infrastructure - lines, substations, poles, etc is vulnerable to high winds and summers across American are nothing more than a repeat of how cheaply made and easy it is for wind to blow it all down. 75% can't live with EV's, walking 2.5 miles to the nearest grocery store isn't feasible for 35% of the population. Obese, crippled, and prey to thugs sums that up quick. It's exactly the recipe that got Ferguson into riots - their own city council kept approving another liquor store permit but their grocery stores were losing money on theft and lack of police protection. Like Walgreens or Targets in San Fran - they just shut them down and sorry, not sorry. No power in a metro area would result in no stores and burning neighborhoods inside of ten days. We can suffer it, they will go up in flames, we see it every election cycle. Small town America will do ok, the bulk of the population will be living Katrina style in their cars parked on the side of the road no gas, no gas pump, and after the looters get down on the ring roads it will resemble the road out of Kuwait in DS I. Dependency on electricity is a joke. Track record of that every year are hundreds of more examples how it fails, not how it's resilient. | |||
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Tinker Sailor Soldier Pie |
And wouldn't most of that equipment need to be replaced or updated in that time? ~Alan Acta Non Verba NRA Life Member (Patron) God, Family, Guns, Country Men will fight and die to protect women... because women protect everything else. ~Andrew Klavan | |||
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Member |
My b-i-l has a very large farm near Toledo,OH on Lake Erie. Very flat out there. A couple years ago we visited & I asked him why he didn't have a big wind turbine like everybody else. It seems like every big farm, school, etc has a turbine. He's always been a very smart farmer. He never spent money on anything he didn't need, but when he bought something, it was always the best. Which is probably why he's rich. He said that he & his neighbour, who also owns a big farm, studied everything they could find on wind turbines when. they became popular out there. He said that even with all the gov money & subsidies, all the tax credits, selling electricity back to the grid, then keeping up with routine maintenance, the thing would never pay for itself. Never. Now this was a couple years ago, and the industry is advancing all the time, but we're not there yet. ------------------------------------------------ "It's hard to imagine a more stupid or dangerous way of making decisions, than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong." Thomas Sowell | |||
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I Deal In Lead |
Then consider that ROI is simply the break even point and think about how much money you could have made on the $20K~$30K investment in the 15 to 30 years it takes to get to ROI. Essentially it costs you around $200,000.00 over the ROI period to have solar panels. Getting solar panels is a terrible investment. | |||
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Member |
Our utility company (the city) instituted a $30 fee just to be hooked to the grid, and then lowered the KWh rate to less than 9¢ per KWh. They said that the cost of the grid traditionally was baked into the cost of the power, but that solar has upset that dynamic. Now they charge you upfront with a hookup charge. What this has done is eliminated the free ride of solar installations. With the low cost of power and high cost of being connected to the grid, my ROI would be 28 years. Pass. Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well. -Epictetus | |||
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| Member |
In that I saw nothing that would make EV impossible or for that matter impractical even with the current grid. The likelyhood of having a full “tank” when the power goes out is very high with an EV so you can save that mileage for necessary trips. The people that have to be at work might have to take a few vacation days to save the miles for necessary trips. If people are that physically disabled they probably don’t go to work so they will have plenty of range. | |||
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