Quote:
Originally Posted by brk-lnt
Sorry, but solar power is nothing but a stopgap toy. The technology needs an improvement by about 2 orders of magnitude (beyond anything that has been done or hyped so far) in order to be truly viable.
Not to mention the average payback time on a solar investment is about 12-15 years. The average lifespan of the batteries is about 6 years, and the panels about 10. It's a losing battle.
But, if you ignore all the facts and want to live like it's the 1800's, solar power is a good way to get a false sense of satisfaction.
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Amazing how misinformed some people can be.
While it is true Arizona and California do get more solar power than NH, we get plenty here. The country with the most solar electric capacity per capita (Germany) gets LESS solar insolation than NH.. Plus, since solar output is higher at lower temperatures, while NH has less hours of solar than the SW, we get more solar electricity produced per hour of sunlight!
The payback is about 12-15 years - taking into account the 30% rebate (off your income taxes) by the federal government; however, the panels last longer than 10 years. brk-Int is seriously uninformed. Most solar panels are warrantied to product 80% of their rated power after 25 years - in fact, they average 90% of power (solar companies do not want to be paying warrenty repairs and set the bar low.
Spending 25K for a solar system should give you about 35K worth of electricity. We can't tell exactly, because it depends on what the electric utilities rates do - though lately they have been going up an average of 100% every 10 years (actually, faster than that recently). So TODAY, in NH, solar is already cheaper than the utilities (though I admit the Federal 30% rebate is currently responsible for this benefit). Ah...our tax dollars at work. With solar prices coming down, it should be just a few years before solar is cheaper without the rebates.
As to its viability in NH... my off grid solar home (heated by solar thermal too) is close to done...and my two next door neighbors are currently off grid solar too. After our initial investments (and sizable rebates) our fuel costs are $0 a year, which is how I like it.
If living with power produced on site, not subject to power outages, is living in the 1800's, then they had a good thing going back then. I'm not sure why brk-Int wants to mislead about solar power, but what (s/)he says is quite misleading