permaculture

[neshura <neshura@gmail.com>]

Monetizing solar costs is actually even more complicated if you want
to get right down to it -- this was a more back-of-the-envelope
calculation -- and frankly, my solar-array-sizing skills are a bit
rusty. Since the maintenance costs, transmission, and distribution are
virtually nil for a homeowner installation, all the cost is in the
amortization of the up-front capital investment. Since it isn't
possible to say with certainty how much insolation will fall on an
actual array or what the lifetime will be, all costs of solar energy
given in cents/kwh (for comparison to utility bills) are quite likely
to be bogus at best (including mine).

On the conservative side, for an imperfect American house in a
weeny-sun area like Virginia that isn't usually considered a good
area, let's put in a -2- kW array at $3,200, which in the winter pulls
down around 8 kWh per day and in the summer 12 kWh per day (which is
realistic). The indication from the citations that I've found around
the web is that the panels will last 20 years at least.

Still back-of-the-envelope for here, I'm looking at 4 cents a kilowatt hour.

More costs -- energy storage, infrastructure, wiring, etc. -- or the
possibility that the alloy degrades over time and really is only good
for 10 yrs.

But in pure price comparison with existing solar silicon, there's no
question that, if the tech isn't crazy talk and smoke, it opens up
otherwise marginal insolation areas to competitively-priced solar.

Myself, I like the shade trees too much to put in solar.


On 2/16/06, John Schinnerer <john@eco-living.net> wrote:
> Aloha,
>
> > ...and a sunny 12 hour day of full production,
>
> This is completely unrealistic globally.
>
> > A more reasonable scenario of 6-8 hours of sun for only part of the
> > year still looks really good financially.
>
> This is realistic for a fair portion of the Southwest in the USA - for
> spring through fall only, not for winter (Nov-Jan).  Not realistic for
> anywhere else in North America except some areas in summer only.
>
> cheers,
> John S.
>
> --
>
> John Schinnerer - MA, Whole Systems Design
> ------------------------------------------
> - Eco-Living -
> Whole Systems Design Services
> People - Place - Learning - Integration
> john@eco-living.net
> http://eco-living.net
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