I have about 7 cleared acres surrounding my house, as well as the roof of a 3 car garage. I thought of installing solar when I first moved in, but one of the factors dissuading me was energy storage for power outages. The other factor was my electric co-op. They offer Net Metering (I can tie into the grid and they'll buy my surplus so as to offset my electric bill down to $0.00) but they won't buy anything beyond that such that there is cash put in my pocket beyond not having an electric bill. And I'm still not sold on the cost-benefit aspect over time. It looks great on paper until the year arrives to replace and dispose of the depleted panels and the batteries. From a cash standpoint, it just doesn't make sense. The Life Cycle environmental impact is a separate (and valid) issue. I still might do a small array just to have cell phone and laptop charging capabilities in the event of an extended power outage (or just buy a packaged unit.) But the important stuff like 220v well pumps and heat and a/c and refrigeration are beyond the reach of solar (I think.) As an aside, my small electric co-op has built a few solar farms producing 13 megawatts. They set aside a chunk of that so members could buy blocks of solar energy (up to 1,000 kwh per household) and lock in those rates for the next 20 years. The main goal is to give members a chance to "Be Green" even if we can't (or don't want to) install our own solar. After only a few years, it is 95% subscribed. I don't know how many members have signed up. The subscriptions started with a ceiling of 250 kwh to give a maximum number of members a chance to participate (36,000 of us in 14 counties), so I suspect that when interest was not as broad as anticipated, they quadrupled the amount a given household could buy to 1,000 kwh, and then just about sold out.
Oursolar had nothing to do with savings it wasmore on the line of survival or sustainingwhaat little we could if tshtf. But that isn't really practical either since if tshtf those who have will be taken overby those who have not, Nobody will just sit around and go without in a outage. They will turn back into their primitive states and that includes civilized neighbors.But then again a comunity that sticks together may come outbetter but then again most aren't close to their neighbors they are like most people now they keep to themselves. Also we have lots of power outages here from storms.Already lost power several times this past few months once for a few days.
And outlawing Freon was supposed to remediate environmental impact. It's just a coincidence that DuPont's patent happened to be running out when the extent of Freon's damage was discovered. Again (as we all understand), this is why we are supposed to have a limited government. Power corrupts. That's not an off-topic statement, it is woven throughout so many of our conversations and frustrations. Solar would not exist beyond hobbyists were it not for legislation and taxpayer subsidies. edit to add: I just reread your comment. My response was sure a non-sequitur. Yeh, survival ain't pretty. My initial thought on installing solar was to remediate outages, but I have very few of them here (not even an annual event.)
I have mentioned before how pleasantly surprised I have been at the degree of reliability with my electric service. It has exceeded all of my expectations and negated my primary motive to install solar (emergency power.) The cities and developed areas seem to have much larger issues with reliability. There is a gated community in the developed area up at the interstate who is served by Dominion Electric (16 states, 7,000,000 customers) and Next Door is replete with "Is anyone else's power out again?" comments that are posted no less than every other month, and sometimes more often. Parts of The City of Charlottesville are also on that site, and they have similar reliability issues. Outages from my co-op (even brief ones) at my remote spot are less than annual events. After 11 years here, only once have I been inclined to get a generator, and that was a wide-spread problem when a major transformer went out at a power hand-off station. In fact, my service is about to get even MORE reliable. My electric co-op is running fiber internet to every single subscriber...if you get electricity from these guys, you will have access to fiber internet. Part of the process involves upgrading the entire distribution system. There are short poles on the system that hold the power lines above the minimum height requirement, but when you run a communication line at the required distance below the power line, that lower line is too close to the ground. So the short poles have to be replaced. Since the crews are out there anyway, they are replacing tall poles that look as though they may be in marginal condition (mostly where there are splits where the transformer brackets are mounted) so as to mitigate foreseeable failures. It's such a smart thing to do. I really like these guys. We've sent a crew to participate in electrifying a village in Bolivia. The pics & the videos of the celebration and the gratitude will bring tears to your eyes. I've attended member meetings just to keep my finger on the pulse and to participate in the Q&A process with our CEO. I'm highly impressed.
We've always had a generator,it is almost a must but it runs on gas. It really comes in handy at times.
I hope that all this emphasis on renewable energy and electric vehicles helps accelerate battery technology. It's just so much more convenient.
Me too but I think Biden justgave China one of the main places to mine the rare earth for it, Afghanisthan. Maybe they can come uo with another source?
We likely have sources here, but we also got snail darters and burrowing owls. The Lear Jet set doesn't want to upset our fragile ecosystem, don'tcha know.
I just saw a solar farm by the highway on the way to a friend's place. Don't remember it there before but I wasn't driving this time so I could look around. It had a for sale sign in front of it. ??? We have lots of wind mills around here. I still see them as a waste of tax money.
They're only a waste of tax dollars if you're not the windmill salesman. When an oil field kills a protected bird, it's an environmental disaster and you get crucified under the law. When a windmill kills a protected bird, it's just the price of progress.
When was the last time anyone had to remove a bird from the grill of their car? Has anyone seen a starling maneuver through tree branches while on the wing while fleeing from a hawk? If a bird can evade all the cars on the road and hungry hawks, a windmill should be a snap. I think it's a bunch of hooey!
Trees are known, familiar fixed objects. You have a windmill farm with all those spinning blades. I don't think birds are capable of recognizing the danger or even understanding what they see with them. The windmills are a fixed obstacle their path, and may attract birds as an apparent place to perch. *PING!* I see lots of websites with lots of high kill numbers (with pictures), and no websites refuting it. And these websites are from people who would embrace Green stuff. But I have no first-hand observations.
Ed the roads are not the birds flight path like the sky is. I know they have crashed a few planes over the years though. Captain Sully being one of the more famous crashes on the Hudson.
And we have bird dead on the roadsides here. most of them are thrown clear of the roads, I bet. But I have seen larger birds, like hawks, geese and turkeys along our highways. I even picked up a pheasant along the road for dinner once. It was so pretty and fresh killed. Spoiler alert: it was like a chicken full of broken glass.