November 7, 2011 at 3:19 pm
I installed solar power on my house in March 2011. If my energy usage continues to be about the same as it was over the previous year, then the solar panels will cover 100% of my electric use over the course of a year. I live in Oregon where we get lots of rain and cloud cover - but not (usually) dramatic winters.
How soon will the system pay off? That depends on quite a few factors. I ran several scenarios. However, to give you an idea: If local electric costs continue to go up as quickly as they have been, then the system may pay for itself in 11 or so years.
For me it is nothing but a moral issue. So, taking a risk that I will loose money or at least not break even for many years was not even a choice for me. I spent my savings on this. Your welcome.
It is my understanding that the cost of solar panels has dropped dramatically in the last 5 or 10 years. People who buy solar now are creating a market for solar and making it possible for the cost to continue to drop in the future for other people to buy it. Similar, I imagine, to the pioneers who first wired their houses for electricity. Only now it is about saving the future and not about me. This is why I tell people all the time, "Your welcome!" 😉
Cost aside, it sure has been great fun over this summer making money every month! My system is tied into our local utility grid. The electric company keeps track of when I make more electricity than my house uses and visa versa. During the summer months, I make more electricity over-all than I use (even with the air conditioner going) and so I have gotten $20-$35 electric credits each month. Of course, I will use those credits over the winter. But it sure has been fun so far.
Your welcome.
November 7, 2011 at 3:38 pm
JJ B (11/7/2011)
If you are interested in monitoring your electric usage, you may want to check out the following, The Energy Detective (TED) which I installed in my house. I have mixed opinions about it, but I think I would recommend it:http://www.theenergydetective.com/
Basically, you/an electrician hooks a thingy in the electrical box and then you install some software. You can then get incredible information about your electric use by the month, day, minute and second. You can also learn a lot about how much electricity various individual things use by turning them on and off and watching how the reading changes.
Good luck.
You said you have mixed opinions about it. What is the downside?
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
November 7, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Eric said in regards to the TED:
You said you have mixed opinions about it. What is the downside?
Downsides:
Setting it up was not as easy as they made it sound. I had to have the electrician come out twice. However, the problems may depend on your particular set-up. I'm not sure if my situation is typical or not. I suspect my situation is more typical then they claim.
And they were not 100% up-front about which hardware is needed. So, I had to purchase one extra piece and doing so set me back time-wise so that the system was not set up in time for my "solar party" that I threw to celebrate the getting solar panels.
Once I got past all the headaches of getting the TED system set-up (and we are talking lots of headaches), then there is the little matter of accuracy. The first month was right-on when compared to my electric bill. The next few months have been off by more than 1%. The TED company claims that their device is accurate within 1%. Accuracy is important...
Also, I think their wireless display unit, while super-cool, is not really wireless and they either shouldn't advertise it as being so or should clarify what they mean by wireless. (It is wireless in that it gets data from the TED system wirelessly. It is NOT wireless in that the unit has to be plugged in and there are issues about where it can be plugged in and loosing warrantee if you don't keep it plugged in.)
On the plus side:
I may be able to live without it being as accurate as they said it would be. It is still fairly accurate - maybe within 10%?? (I'm still figuring it out). I still get fabulous live information and (mostly accurate?) historical numbers which I can download and analyze in Excel to my heart's content. And as explained more below, the TED may be better than nothing.
Also, with TED, I get to see live information on a display so that I don't have to turn on my computer to see what is going on in my house. It is fascinating to watch the numbers change not just when over-head lights go on and off, but when I turn the stove on at various levels or run the blender, when the fridge turns on, when the house is quiet at night and nothing seems to be on, but you know stuff is... etc. By seeing the electricity cost in the display unit, TED may help convince family members to turn off lights -- help make a game of it because everyone will see the $$ being spent at that moment, right there in the living room if you want.
For me, TED is now the only way I can monitor total electricity generated and used now that I have solar panels. The electric company only reports net electricity numbers. In other words, my monthly electric bill no longer tells me how much total electricity I used nor how much electricity my panels generate. And other systems out there require internet connections and were terribly expensive. One of the things I love about TED is that it is a one-time cost and a reasonably affordable one at that.
I need a few more months of data to see how accurate (or not) TED is before I have a final opinion on whether I think it is a good product or not.
Hope that helps.
November 7, 2011 at 6:56 pm
To Steve's point about bandwidth - Good point. Although, is it the wattage we're concerned with, or is available bandwidth and its cost already something to be concerned about apart from green considerations? Frankly, I never considered the wattage expended in data transmission lines.
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“Politicians are like diapers. They both need changing regularly and for the same reason.”
November 8, 2011 at 7:19 am
We've talked about CPU and power usage at the server and network infrastructure level, but the bulk majority of utilization is at the client level. Stuff like Flash, Java, Silverlight, and streaming video are chewing up computing cycles big time on 100 million PCs and devices. I'm not saying it's wrong (technically or environmentally); I'm just saying that's where the aggregate power consumption really is in terms of the economy as a whole and the environment. Optimizing the power consumption of corporate network and applicaiton servers is really more of a corporate level financial concern. Really I don't beleive that the IT industry is a major contributor to greenhouse gasses when compared to other things like manufactoring or the heating and cooling systems in households and office buildings.
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Instead, seek what they sought." - Matsuo Basho
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