Even though Im 75 and suffer with that dreaded disease Geezerits, I still get excited about new technology. I might put solar panels on my roof just to see how well they work. It wouldn’t bother me if the solar panel installation wouldn’t pay off in the years I have left. I thought about buying a used Citicar (this was a.battery powered car from the mid 1970s). I wanted to measure the power consumption and cost for my around town use and compare it with the cost of a.gasoline vehicle. I wanted to buy a Prius when they first hit the market and would still like to own one, but my needs dictate a minivan. I am thinking about a Chrysler.Pacifica hybrid minivan.
I like the idea of saving energy, particularly since as a.geezer, I don’t have a.lot of energy. A couple of years ago, I bought a used Black and Decker battery powered lawnmower to see how well a battery powered lawnmower would work for my yard. It does a reasonably good job, although the batteries make it heavier to push than the aluminium deck.gasoline push mowers we own. A lot.of.parts are unavailable for the Toro mower I bought in 1988 with its Tecumseh engine, the Homelite-Jacobsen I bought in 1992 or even the used Black and Decker CMM 1000 I bought used.two years ago. I may have to buy a new mower this year and will have to decide whether to buy an updated battery mower with the lithium Ion battery or purchase a gasoline mower.
When I think about energy saving appliances, I think about becoming a single parent and having to give up the house in the.country with added responsibility. I bought a house near my work that needed a lot of attention. I planned on remodeling the kitchen the following year, so I bought a used manual defrost refrigerator. When I did replace the refrigerator with a self defrosting refrigerator,.my electric bill went up. I would bet that old Westinghouse manual defrost used less energy than today’s.equivalent energy.saving self defrost boxes, but I don’t want to go back to the old days of defrosting a refrigerator.
I am also excited by new technology. I’m wild for graphene (I’m a materials weenie). Just because I like a technology, like residential solar energy generation, does not mean I will spend money on it. I am profoundly selfish, and insist that there is a strong likelihood that it will pay off for me. The reason I want it to pay off for me is to make it attractive for the next owner of my house. If it isn’t attractive as an electricity generator, it will devalue my house. I will need as much money as I can get together to live in the Old Folks Home where they will change my diapers. Or, I will need to bribe my children to change my diapers. Either way, I should plan to,have as much money as possible to ensure that Mrs JT and I can can live a dignified life for as long as we can.
Well for my house, the upfront costs of $65000 is over $32000 more than I would pay for electricity for 30 years. Now there is an $18000 federal rebate that would reduce my losses to $14000 but there is no possible payback for this systems. I would also have to cut down my shade trees that protect my house from the summer sun and increase my heat load costing more money and possibly having to increase the size of my a/c system.
I know I am not going to buy any Tesla stock.
Tesla bought out Solar City, a large supplier of rooftop solar systems…Tesla also makes “Power Walls”, large lithium ion batteries made to store all that solar power enabling completely off-grid living…
It occurred to me that this could be an effort by Tesla to sell mor of the batteries they produce in their new battery factory.
If I had the money to have a solar roof and a powerwall to stockpile the harvested energy, I think I would just invest it and let the interest pay for my electricity instead.
We seem to be so eager to invest a large sum of money in solar cells when a smaller investment in insulating the attic better and caulking the windows might yield similar returns.
We seem to be so eager to pay a premium for a hybrid car when we could simply learn to let our cars coast towards that red light up ahead.
If you can afford a Tesla and the solar roof and powerwall to charge it, you can most likely also afford to relocate to a new home that doesn’t require that long daily commute to work.
The commute might be shorter for one family member, but not necessarily for all. I could move close to work, but the cost of a similar home would be a lot more than I would get for selling my home. This would also mean trading suburban living for city living. I’m also happy with my neighbors. I might be happy with new neighbors, but I wouldn’t know until I moved. I left my last job because I would most likely have had a two hour one way commute after a couple of years due to a merger that occurred two years ago. I’m close enough to retirement that I didn’t want my wife to quit and find a new job if I was only going to work a couple-a-four years anyway. There are a lot of things more important to me than a short term 108 mile daily commute.
Rephrase to Solar HAS become more affordable. This roof system isn’t worth it in my opinion…but solar panels in the right location is affordable and worth it. 20 years ago solar panels were easily 5 times what they cost today. As more and more people buy solar, other companies start manufacturing them they introduce new techniques and costs start dropping.
Fine…but that doesn’t explain why TV’s have dropped…or LCD screens in general have dropped…or why disk drives have dropped. Why has fiber-optics dropped?
You’re forgetting (or not mentioning) efficiency. Better magnets in motors, core materials in transformers makes them more efficient than their predecessors. We’re also far better at managing and transmitting power using a combination of microprocessor controls and PF correction than in the past.
The explosion in electronics was a combination of miniaturization that allowed computing power in small form factor and technology improvements that lowered the cost to manufacture them. Circuits that could do the work required and cost less per unit…
If solar can combine similar efficiency improvements (e.g. more power per area) and lower cost to manufacture, it will see a similar explosion in commercialization. I think it’s already happening just the very early stages which are sometimes harder to recognize the slope as it’s short relative timeframe.
A friend bought a roof full of solar cells. He owns an all electric home, and he can reap the benefits of the sun year-round. I have gas heat, hot water, and cooking. Our secondary HVAC unit is a heat pump, but we rarely use it. I would essentially use solar for lighting, and I’d rather get efficient LED bulbs.
Many of the electronic items you mention had a large drop in cost when the one time costs for design and initial tooling were paid off.
I found out why Solar City’s calculator required me to have a $7000 battery. I currently have electricity delivered by National Grid but buy it from an independent supplier. The electricity only costs me about 2/3 of what the delivery charge is but the independent suppliers are not required to buy back your excess solar output and Mational Grid is not either unless you buy it from them.
Still, deducting $7000 still makes it a huge money losing proposition for the customer.