Interests > Living Off of the Grid & Survivalism

My Aunt the DUmbass?

(1/2) > >>

Wineslob:
This past Christmas I had a rather heated discussion with my WELL educated Aunt (has a Masters in biology). This why I found the argument so .....odd.
She is of the belief that she can put up a home solar array (just over 200 square feet) and "sell back" power to the utility co. She gleefully told me how she can't wait to see her meter go backwards and "stick it" to Big Utility. Now, I've done some searching and this is possible (sell back). HOWEVER the cost of said system is roughly $16K, and the best case payback is 30+ years.

How the hell can she be so friggin stupid?????    :???:

Thor:
Because she's not running the numbers. Instead, she's listening to or reading some commercial advertising or she's listening to some unscrupulous salesman. Sure, one can sell power back to the electric company. However, they'd have to be generating quite a bit of power. I don't see where a 200 Sq ft solar array could do that.

All in all, what she's saying is true, but the investment overrides the return, at least for quite a while. Let's say her average electric bill is $300/ month. It would take about 4½ years to see any type of return on it and that's assuming that she's generating enough electricity to break even.

Texacon:
Some of the stuff I've read about 'selling back' is that it is not regulated.  Meaning ... there's nothing in the law that says how much the utility must pay for the electricity you're sending their way.

Maybe that was just for Texas ... I dunno.

KC

LC EFA:
The parents of a friend of mine recently installed a solar array, taking advantage of our governments "Rebate" for doing so. That was somethig on the order of $20K.

Their outlay was circa $10K.

The solar system feeds directly into the grid - and they get their electricity from the grid (no storage and no provision for adding it). If the grid goes out so does their juice. The system can produce up to 12 kw. They have a average load of about 5 and a peak load of probably 6 or 8 with everything on. Thus given clement weather and their limited use of electricity they'll get a credit on their electrical bills.

Note that this isn't an off the grid technology AND that the government is chipping in approximately 2/3rds the setup costs.

All the people I know that actually live off the grid - mostly because of location - are very frugal with electricity , and use gas or other combustion for whatever they can.

DumbAss Tanker:
Power laws are highly specialized, and a combination of some fed law but primarily state regulation, so the rules on buying back are probably pretty different from state to state, though it's so widespread I believe there is an underlying federal requirement driving it.

A lot depends on her own energy usage.  If she is a complete green freak that takes cold showers and relies on a wood stove, primarily uses off-peak power and puts in peak power to the grid, and can shop and install the entire thing herself except the final hookup well, maybe she could eventually get ahead on it, but it'll still take awhile.  Since that isn't really the case for 95% of the people who put in solar arrays, it sounds like she's bought into a total wagonload of solar power sales bullshit.   

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page