On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:51:08 -0400, John Colvin
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tuesday, 11 June 2013 at 19:54:34 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
On Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:44:35 -0400, John Colvin
<[email protected]> wrote:
It's not ready to roll out as the energy of the future, but in certain
circumstances it's a good deal for an individual.
It's not a good deal for the taxpayers who have to subsidize it to make
it a good deal for the individual. Would you buy it if it was full
price?
-Steve
Probably not. However, the subsidies have done a great deal to get the
technology real-world testing in a variety of settings, as well as
providing cash-flow for practical R+D, especially with regards to more
down to earth practicalities. I would say it is - at the very least -
not a complete waste of money for the tax-payer.
P.S. I'm not buying it at all, my parents did as it represented a much
better investment than any bank accounts. In particular, the energy
companies pay quite a high price to buy the spare energy.
For my day job, our company actually does energy saving retro-fits (all
for refrigeration, but many companies do lighting and HVAC). It's an
interesting business. Typically the utility pays for most of the cost,
and part of it is from the government, but part of it is out of
practicality. If they can pay you to lower your energy costs, they avoid
having to build more power-plants because energy consumption is
continually growing.
But from what I've seen in Solar, it's more political than practical. Our
paybacks without subsidizing are usually in the 2-5 year range. And our
equipment is guaranteed for far longer. The incentive just makes it a
real easy sell (usually under 2 year payback).
We also sell to large companies that have humongous coolers/freezers
(think like home-depot sized), and these places can have less than one
year payback *without* incentives.
-Steve
