At 11:01 2-7-01 -0500, Dan Minette wrote:
> > The real price for installing it will be even lower because of subsidies
> > from the national and local government and power companies.
>
>Let me quibble here. Other rate payers will foot the bill for the power
>company subsidies and tax payers will foot the bill for the governmental
>subsidies. The cost doesn't go away, it is just transferred to other
>people. That's important in considering the full cost.
I certainly can't disagree with that, but...
I wasn't referring to the full cost to society, but to the cost for an
individual home owner who wants to install such a system. He will get a
bill from the company that installs the system, and a message from whoever
pays the subsidies to tell him how much he will receive in subsidies. The
"real price" as I used it is the bottom line: invoice minus subsidies, IOW:
the amount of money that will disappear from the home owner's bank account.
>I didn't even include installation costs in my assessment. Solar boilers do
>sound cost effecient, I wonder what is keeping them from being used
>extensively. According to Charlie's numbers, the return on an invenstment
>in a solar boiler is about 20%. That's not bad. Cut it in half and it
>still makes sense. If it is that good of an investment, why aren't more
>people installing them?
A few possible reasons:
- Costs. Installation will cost between NLG 4,500 and NLG 6,500 (subsidies
not included). For the average consumer here, that's still quite a lot of
money (for Joe Average: 2-3 months worth of salary).
- Reluctance to install it because of limited efficiency ("I'll get one
when they have become more efficient").
- Eco-stupidity: "no need for that stuff; there's nothing wrong with the
environment, so we don't need all that pro-environment stuff".
- A "not out of my pocket" attitude: "Hey, if the government wants me to
use those things, why should *I* pay for it -- if the government wants me
to have one, let *them* pay for it".
Sun boilers turned out to be more popular than I expected, BTW. By the end
of 1999, there were 42.500 sun boilers installed in the Netherlands. The
growth rate has stabilized to ~8,500 additional installations per year. The
goal is to have 1 million sun boilers installed by the year 2020.
Hm. That growth rate will have to go up dramatically, or else we're not
gonna make it... I suppose most of that growth will come from installing
sun boilers in new houses (lot cheaper too: NLG 3,500).
> > So far, 5 projects (a total of over 200 houses) have been completed;
> > average reduction in energy consumption in these houses is 45%. A few
>dozen
> > similar projects (for a total of 10,000 houses) have already been started.
> >
>
>OK, lets assume this is true.
Do you have any reason to assume these projects really don't exist???
>Why are there only small pilot projects for
>these houses?
Er, because this is a small country, and therefore our financial resources
are limited? It's not like we have the US' annual Defense budget to work
with...
Besides, isn't small scale a characteristic of *pilot* projects? And as I
pointed out in a previous post, these five projects were started to prove
that it is possible to build energy-efficient housing.
>Why isn't every new house built this way?
It's all still new: the first project was only finished in 1998. Then there
is the problem that there aren't all that many companies that are
specialized in this; they simply can't keep up with the rate at which we
build new housing.
Further, already existing plans for housing development will still be
carried out, because it would be too expensive to change those plans now.
I do expect to see a substantial increase in the number of these
energy-efficient houses, though.
> > Something else that is heavily promoted (and is quite succesful) is Green
> > Electricity (electricity from renewable sources). The price per kWh is
> > higher, but you don't pay Energy Tax over it. Because of that, switching
>to
> > Green Electricity will cost the average household a mere NLG 2.50 per
>month
> > extra...
> >
>Out of curiosity, how do you have neighbors obtaining power from different
>sources? You can't have two sets of wires, that's prohibitive. I'm
>guessing that its handled with accounting.
Yep. When I want to get Green Electricity from an other company, I'll still
get my electricity from the old company, but the invoice will come from the
new company. The whole thing is then settled between the two companies.
Jeroen
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