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#11
April 17th 04, 05:14 AM
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Jan Panteltje wrote: On a sunny day (Fri, 16 Apr 2004 06:40:16 GMT) it happened wrote in : ou also have to take into account the degradation of the system capacity over time. That would be 80% of capacity I think. And yes, you could take the kWh price of 25 years ago, that of today, and draw a line, it will point up, extrapolate to + 25 years from now ,and you have a value. The other thing that will help is the inflation, you can roughly say that money halves in value every 10 years. This has 2 effects, now, if you did have a loan for the solar cells, and you pay 2% of your income, in 10 years this will be only .5 % and in 25 years the amount you have to pay will look ridiculously low. From this we can see that borrowing is not a bad idea perhaps. Also that still leaves you with all the cash you can spend on other things now. JP Your figures are off, and are unrealistic. You said money halves in value in ten years, yet you mention 2% today and .5% ten years from now, a factor of 4, not 2. And using the numbers: 2% of one's salary to pay off a $17K mortgage over 25 years works out to an annual salary of $72,000. Most people making that kind of money are at the high end already, and won't see the same kind of percentage increases that people starting out will see. It is unrealistic to think that, on average, people making $72,000 today will be making $144,000 ten years from now. If they are already making $72,000, they are also likely older, (maybe 60 as a guess) and won't live to see the payback, if it does come. What is needed to make solar economically viable for the masses is a drastic reduction in the cost of solar - or a huge price increase in the cost of utility provided power. That does not mean that there are no individual cases today where solar is attractive economically, nor does it encompass those who can't connect to the grid. But it's a non-starter for better than 99 percent of the people who can connect to the grid. The number of people who are grid connected and are economically ahead with solar is exceedingly small. Even Solar Guppy, who clearly has expertise in this area, posts a 16+ year payback period - and that's without considering mortgage, degradation, maintenance etc. over time. Investing in solar today, with the concept of breaking even 34 years down the road, is an asinine financial move. Betting on an earlier computed break-even point due to rising energy cost is damn near a sure thing - but still an asinine financial move, unless you have some idea of when the break-even point will be. In most cases, when you run the numbers, you'd be better off playing black jack at the casino. At least there you have a close to 50% chance of winning. For most people who run the numbers, solar is clearly a no win situation. I wish proponents of solar would be more like Solar Guppy, or the guy in california at the site I posted. They lay it out, based on actual measurements. The guy in California is WAY ahead of the game, because it would have cost him about $90,000 to connect to the grid. He itemizes his entire system - solar, wind, hydro - with the price of everything. Solar told us his system cost, capability and price per utility generated kWh, and provides good info on his site. If you haven't been to their sites, I recommend taking a look. |
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