On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 08:04:25PM -0400, Lee Haefele wrote: > I have a business that uses about 15KW around the clock, costing about > $1500/month. If I put in 50KW of solar panels and tried to store energy > from day to night, the panels alone would cost $250k, then probably add > 50-100% for a full installation with building modifications. My electricity > cost is in NY, approx twice the cost of many other states, but still if you > add any interest/time value of money, things need to change a lot before > this works.
Lee, that seems like an odd statement to make - given that shipping isn't all that expensive. If the cost is doubled in NY, then surely transporting $125k worth of panels from California (or wherever) is a cost-effective approach? As to the price of the panels alone, here's a random sample from eBay: http://tinyurl.com/rb4zo9 250kW for $700k - or about 140k for 50kW. Oh, and that includes an inverter, too, so you can sell the excess power if you want to. You can actually do quite a bit better than this price, too, if you shop around - but let's see what happens if we stick with the above figures. Given the low-cost business loans for this kind of thing, you'd pretty much break even on your payments - loan vs. cost of electricity - on a 7 year loan. With a cost of $1500/month, this system would take less than 8 years to pay for itself - and given the 12-20 year lifespan for solar panels, you'd be making from $70k to $220k in profit for running it. And that's *now* - not in 2015. Seems like for your business, the numbers already make sense. -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
