Getting solar at the house

[gnihcraes]

Cars keep changing too, TV, phones. Keep waiting and you'll never find the right time to jump in on things. Good or bad. Risk we take.

[tmleadr03]

Cars keep changing too, TV, phones. Keep waiting and you'll never find the right time to jump in on things. Good or bad. Risk we take.

Exactly. My smart phone is now dumb compared to this years line up. But it is only one year old.

[rockhound]

They will size the system based on your usage and usable roof area.

figured that, but based on my usage i am not sure we can get enough panels to offset the IREA bill.

[HoneyBadger]

Well my point was that I think now is not quite the right time to jump in if you want to be self-sufficient at a reasonable price. As I said, it is pure speculation, but my personal decision is to wait a few more years on this one. Just like flash memory 5 years ago was super expensive: You would pay $40 for a 1 GB (class 1) SD card, and now you can get a (class 10) 32 GB SDXC card for $30. Besides, who knows what kind of subsidies solar power will have in the future...

[tmleadr03]

Well my point was that I think now is not quite the right time to jump in if you want to be self-sufficient at a reasonable price. As I said, it is pure speculation, but my personal decision is to wait a few more years on this one. Just like flash memory 5 years ago was super expensive: You would pay $40 for a 1 GB (class 1) SD card, and now you can get a (class 10) 32 GB SDXC card for $30. Besides, who knows what kind of subsidies solar power will have in the future...

If you do that you will never enter the market.

By the end of next year I am sure we will have 1TB SD cards for what we pay for 16GB now at the rate they are going. So now isn't the time either by your definition.

[HoneyBadger]

If you do that you will never enter the market.

By the end of next year I am sure we will have 1TB SD cards for what we pay for 16GB now at the rate they are going. So now isn't the time either by your definition.

Maybe I'm just not being clear. I think there WILL be an appropriate time to enter the market, but that time has not yet come.

With my example above, I recently bought several 64GB class 10 SD cards because the technology has advanced enough and the price has come down enough for it to make sense for me to purchase them. Maybe in a few years solar technology will be at that "sweet spot" where technology has advanced enough to meet my needs, while the price is low enough to meet my needs. Of course that purchase point is different for each individual and depends greatly on what their goals and expectations are. My goals and expectations were to be able to use the SD cards as ultra portable hard drives, and even though we've had 64GB flash memory devices for a few years now, the price point was too high for me to justify their purchase until recently.

Same thing applies to solar. If your goal is to offset some of the cost of your electric bill, then from what I've read above, there are some reasonable options for doing that and they are available now. If your goal is to completely power your own home for less than $15,000 I don't think there is any point on the technology vs price curve that will meet your goal at this time, but as technology changes and prices drop, sometime in the future (near future) it will be possible to meet your goal.

[Gman]

As solar panel efficiency is improved, our appliances and devices that consume electricity also become more efficient so that there's less demand.

Photovoltaic technology has been around for a long time. There's big money in making it more efficient....and we still haven't improved that much. Higher efficiencies are usually the result of using more exotic materials and/or construction methods and the cost increases substantially. The trade-off is usually less efficiency but at much less cost so that the break-even point is 10 years out instead of 20 or 30.

No more timeshare offers please. My cynicism is firmly back in place.

[Firehaus]

When this gets incorporated into solar cells it will be a game changer.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technolog...-material.html

[HoneyBadger]

When this gets incorporated into solar cells it will be a game changer.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technolog...-material.html

Cool stuff!

and.... carbon nanotubes?

[gnihcraes]

If it helps any, I do know of a person, who went completely off the grid out in Brighton, he still has to supplement with excel and propane heat. He never was able to completely go off grid. (running a normal household) Sure you can cut back to nearly nothing all the way around and probably make things work.