Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Please Freep Mail me if you'd like on/off
Well, solar panels and home power generation has gotten a lot cheaper and easier in recent years. It's possible to buy prebuilt kits instead of rigging up everything on your own. Projects like these seem like a logical next step. The sun does pour down a lot of energy whether we want it or not, and the more of that we can capture, the better.
Very interesting. I wonder what the monthly rent is.
It seems that they were in the news constantly about 5 years ago.
Some housing developer around here is using solar power as a selling point for their new homes. They claim the panels should handle the electrical demands and even sell back power to the utility.
Now if most people decide to heat their home this way and those new kind of hybrids become popular and we build a lot of nuclear power plants, the United States will far exceed the Kyoto protocols without any sacrifice whatsoever.
The new kind of hybrids (coming soon) have a battery that can run your car 40 miles before gas power takes over. People just have to charge their car each night. If you didn't have to buy gasoline to cover the first 40 miles you drive a day, how long between refueling could you go? I figure I could go for months. People who live relatively close to work and have stores and other services within a few miles might need to refuel only for special trips.
They will have to pay me to put those ugly @$$, black crap on my roof.
For years I said that solar/electric would only become widely available when the electric utility companies figured out a way to meter the sunlight. Their method seems sound.
Or, they could lease the equipment rather than selling it.
bttt
Solar Panel Bump
Except that there is no battery. No storage at all of the energy supplied from the home to the grid.
The power utility would have to determine what is the steady-state supply from these solar energy sources to determine to what degree it can stand down any generators.
Up here in the mountains looks isn't a problem and our house is already passive-solar with the entire south-facing side of the house nothing but windows...and we already have a solar hotwater heater installed by the previous owner.
This plan almost sounds too good to be true.
Personally, I would prefer to own my own equipment, stayed tied into the grid and not worry about some third asshat party trying to take my money. The future is in Nukes, not solar power. Nuclear energy is the cheapest and cleanest available. We just have to finally get enough of the marxist, communist, green BS and force the government to relax the regulations on building nukes. It is ridiculous that we sit around and take the crap dished out by liberals. When are we going to grow a set and fight back.
BTTT
You said -- "Interesting concept. Color me skeptical but I wish em' luck."
My daughter in New Mexico had to go solar; there were no "poles" going that far out in the woods. They would have had to pay for the electrical company to install miles of it (prohibitive). So, they're all solar now.
Regards,
Star Traveler
"If you live in Alaska, Tennessee, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, or South Dakota, the Citizenre Solution is not an option for you yet. "
Since I have about 2 feet on snow on my roof right now, it isn't an option, period. Power generation in Alaska is a funny thing, wide open spaces, very few people.
Oh well, my RV is solar powered. Since it is only used i the summer, that seems to work out for the best.
Update on the "Citizenre" aka Affordable Photovoltaics solar panel rental scheme: A very skeptical article here from a guy in the solar biz asks a lot of questions and gets precious few answers from the company.
http://www.renewableenergyaccess.com/rea/news/story?id=47419
It seems like a good source of energy. But green? I wonder. According to the global warming alarmists, we are in trouble because greenhouse gases are trapping some extra portion of the sun’s energy. Well, if all over the place, solar cells will be trapping much more of the sun’s energy than CO2. And as harvested, the energy will ultimately wind up as heat, trapped in the atmosphere. Anybody considering this?