I may have wrong information regarding tax credits & rebates but I thought there were fairly significant $$ available. I've seen figures as large as 65% (combination rebates/tax credits) toward the cost of energy efficiency upgrades (insulation/solar&wind systems).... And, as an aside....my current average energy usage is +/-900Kw/month. With a combination of solar & wind generation systems I can "create" (maybe capture is a better word....) about 800Kw/month for a cost in the neighborhood of $17,000...[Note: the $25,000 figure below seems high based on what I'm finding. Maybe his installation costs were high?] With better insulation etc I can perhaps cut my usage down to 700Kw/month and maybe less. I'm actively investigating the feasibility of adding some component of wind/solar to my house....any ideas or anecdotal information you guys can share will be helpful. ciao, Scott Nicholson Broker/Waterboy Discovery Realty Group 512-947-2688 KW Commercial www.DiscoveryAustin.com
----- Original Message ---- From: Fritz Holt <[email protected]> To: Don Cooper <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>; "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 10:31:03 AM Subject: RE: [ot_caving] Texas solar power Good information Wavy. - Fritz ________________________________ From:Don Cooper [mailto: [email protected] ] Sent: Friday, June 27, 2008 12:07 AM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Re: [ot_caving] Texas solar power A couple of things about solar panels: 1. They are very very expensive. 2. The current technology seems to only convert Infrared into electricity. Wide spectrum conversion is being done, but only on the panels that go into space - that kind of panel is 10 times more expensive. I know someone that put together somewhere around 200 square feet of panels. Something like 20 foot wide by 10 feet. It works great. This time of year, for 8 to 10 hours a day it generates 2Kw - around noon as much as 2.5Kw. (cooling them with a wate hose will momentarily boost them up to 3Kw) As long as the sun is out. Cloud shadow drops output to less than 1Kw. The cost - and he got them REAL chep - was about 25,000 dollars. Then consider a $5K gadget that puts that energy back on the grid. At even fifteen cents per kilowatt hour - how long do you think it will take for this to pay itself off? (Answer: Longer than those panels last - unless the cost for electricity exceeds .30 /per Kw hour) The government needs to SERIOUSLY consider MAJOR R&D tax credits, but until then Think Nuclear - WaVy On Thu, Jun 26, 2008 at 11:48 PM, RD Milhollin <[email protected]> wrote: This all smell like a plan of, by, and for the big corporate energy providers. What about using all the empty roof-top space INSIDE the cities, such as the roofs of malls, Walmarts, grocery stores, car lots, parking lots, strip-centers, individual homes, apartment buildings etc. I can see this as a job opportunity for the Barnett Shale "landmen" once all the drillable real-estate is leased up. They could go from roof-owner to roof-owner negotiating for "roof-rights" to set up solar panels for set amounts of time. Shrewd building owners could bargain for a certain amount of "free" electricity, since the juice coming off the roof is much more consumer-friendly than crude oil or natural gas brought up by wells on people's property. ________________________________ From:[email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 6:41 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [ot_caving] Texas solar power Well this is some info I found today pasted below. It comes from http://environmenttexas.org/action/clean-energy/transmission?id4=ES I was interested in the numbers they say would power all of Texas . Just FYI. Quinta Texasis the national leader in wind power and we have the potential to meet the rest of our energy needs with solar power. In fact, if we put solar panels on an area thirty miles by thirty miles in west Texas , we could generate enough electricity to power the entire state at prices competitive with new nuclear plants! But to bring all that clean wind and solar power from west Texas , we need to invest in our transmission grid. Right now, the Public Utilities Commission is deciding how much renewable energy transmission to build. The most ambitious plan they're looking at would create transmission capacity for almost an additional 18,000 megawatts of wind and solar power, which would reduce smog pollution from power plants by 13% and global warming pollution by 16%.
