Yesterday tammy said it was too bad going green was so expensive, most people couldn’t afford it. There’s some truth to that. There was a meeting here in town the other day, and one of the topics was a proposal to charge people with photovoltaic systems $15 a month to cover infrastructure costs. Apparently right now most of them have a bill of only $6 a month — to pay for administrative costs. Many pay nothing for electricity because they get credit for the electricity they give to the grid during the day, and that offsets what they use at night.
The argument for charging them more is that 60% of electrical bills for non-photovoltaic customers goes to maintaining and replacing power lines, transformers, computer systems, etc. — everything necessary to carry power into people’s homes. So at present these customers are subsidizing the customers with photovoltaic panels. One fellow said if that changes no one would install solar panels. As things stand now it will take him 17 years to recover the cost of his system. If he has to pay an extra $15 a month, the payback time would increase to 34 years.
How does it work where you are, KB?
November 1, 2014
And then there’s the Federal 30% residential tax credit for solar. How long would the payback period be without the subsidy?
I only vaguely knew about the tax credit, because it doesn’t apply to us. No doubt about it, solar is expensive. But it is neat to have it if you’re off the grid — generators are noisy.
That’s a great point. Between camping “off-the-grid” and losing power at home, we’ve used our generator more this last 12 months than ever before – by far. When camping, we run it to make sure our batteries have enough charge, but, it sure is a relief to turn it off.
Individuals cannot have large solar panels in India. What they have are small ones that heat up a tank of water for hot water purposes which saves some electricity. Individuals can own windmill turbines and supply to utilities but most are owned by industries looking to save taxes by putting in windmills. We have just started to look at these two alternatives in a serious way with solar suddenly becoming the toast of the country.
India is a natural for solar energy. The panels for heating water sound like the ones on our roof.
Remember the boiling water from them? The Sun Works.
The batteries use the photovoltaic panels:
i’m sorry. but i find it hard to believe that the mega electric companies are that hard up. here where i live … their profits are like the OIL industry. and we all know how much money they make.
it it comes to that… i don’t see how the ‘little man’ who just wants to live simply can be allowed to.
?? This post was about how expensive is it for individuals to generate their own electricity using photovoltaic panels. It was a response for your comment in the last post.
We don’t get our electricity from a big corporation. It’s provided by our local Department of Public Utilities. They say right now 25% of our electricity is from renewable energy, and they’re aiming for more.
wow. ours is no where near 25%. that’s impressive.
and knowing my lack of techno knowledge… it’s quite possible i misunderstood the whole thing here. LOLOL.
all i know about ours is that some years back they were made to give everyone a small refund! ?? made? or chose to for some reason. i really don’t remember. that’s when it was noted that their ‘profits’ were astronomical.
their only competitors are rural electric companies.
i must say though… in storms… i admire the linemen who get the power back on so quickly. I think they’re remarkable and brave. so i don’t complain about the cost.
deregulation here in NZ changed the face of many utilities including electricity and gas but I don’t understand most of it expect when the house power system “board” goes out and I find that the landlord has to call an electrical company who spend what seems hours talking to various bodies about which bits are to be rectified by whom and why…
I seem to remember there are solar-power subsidies but not sure how that works…
And I think local bodies have a lot of say in various aspects as well…but it’s not something I’m terribly interested in as a tenant…
We’re tenants down here too, so I haven’t paid much attention. I just had to look up how it works down here in town. And we’ve lived here 40 years!
In Aus the big polluters have recently got law passed so that the solar people subsidise the polluters.
Which means that more people will try and opt out altogether, diminishing the polluters profits more and more. They’re done for – but I hope they die before the planet does.
Wow! I’m with you, I hope enough people vote with their feet to make a real difference.
Jean – My husband is the utilities guy in this house but I know that we come out ahead every month (and we paid back the cost of installation quite quickly partly due to the various subsidies). My recollection is that we pay no extra fees due to our solar panels. Because we live in the trees, we always have an electricity bill despite the solar (it’s very small in the summer and bigger in the winter). I’ll ask my husband about the details this evening. Your post has me curious.
I would love to get photovoltaic or solar panels, but they’re far too expensive. They still cost thousands of pounds each and we just can’t spare that kind of money.
Yes, photovoltaic can be very expensive without subsidies, but some people save money by getting solar heating panels — like the ones on our roof — to heat their hot water.
We have more panels than is needed for just hot water — we’re trying to use it for heating the house through the radiant heating pipes in the floor. Andy says if he lives to be 150 we may recover our money for that! It does seem to be working, though, and it’s a great project for Andy to play with.