More BS from the greenies...

[HoneyBadger]

Why would you buy a new home with no A/C?

I thought that was pretty standard these days.

Oh, and I'd kill to have a $90 bill. On a slow month it usually runs me around $150 and when the heat or AC are really working it is just north of $250. Sucks in the summer because the water bill is usually around $275 so I'm forking out over $500 a month just for utilities.

I guess when you have an older, less efficient home and like to keep it about 68 degrees year round then that's the price you pay.

Climate in this area is pretty moderate and it was an extra $12k to get A/C, which I thought was total bullshit (especially for such a tiny house). In the evenings it usually cools down as soon as the sun goes down and we can open up windows and take advantage of a good breeze to cool things down. We have a window A/C unit in our bedroom that we used about a dozen times last August when it was unusually hot and Mrs HB was 38 wks preggo.

Thanks for the input Not_A_Llama.

Holy shit, Ray.

[ray1970]

$12K is definitely too high. When I had mine put in the whole bill was under $4K.

[TRnCO]

I don't know but "green energy" producers such as turbines spread all over kingdom come and huge fields of solar sure ain't very appealing to the eye. Such as huge foot print with wind turbines that for no other reason is why I hate them.
As far as energy use and cost, my wife and I had a new house built almost two years ago and we didn't have AC installed. BUT living at 6800' and out in the country, it seems we are always cooler than places in or around the city, so we also simply open curtains and windows at night and let mother nature cool the place down, and close 'er up tight for the day. Works pretty good. I've never had an electric bill over $100, and that's with two levels of house at 2000' per level.
In the winter I burn wood, so that's my primary way of heating to avoid large electric and propane bills. 500 gallon propane tank gets me through a year, easy.

[HoneyBadger]

$12K is definitely too high. When I had mine put in the whole bill was under $4K.

I'll just drop this link here for you to see the ridiculous prices for glorified apartments in this little farm town:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale...ct/15_zm/1_fr/

Or how about this gem: 1330sqft with no A/C and very basic appliances and features:
http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale...ct/15_zm/1_fr/


Hell, you can barely buy a trailer in a trailer park here for what a modest home would cost in most places.

[Not_A_Llama]

Well, I am saying solar is not the way to go, not in broad application like envisioned by greenies and Obamabots. If Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are successful in dramatically lowering the cost of launch then solar power satellites become viable and change the equation because they can safely beam the collected power through clouds via continuous wave microwaves (not pulsing like your microwave oven).

Solar is certainly an option and should be used in areas where you can count on low cloud cover (like Nevada, Arizona, much of Colorado, Hawaii, etc.) but it's highly uneconomical in most developed areas of the world. IIRC, BP or BT make a big deal about solar power generation at their London HQ, even to the point of having a board in the lobby providing a running tally on the power generated by their solar panels on the roof. What they don't tell you is how much of that electricity they're burning to run the fancy board or (and thiis is the kicker) that they run light bubls up to the solar panel to keep it illuminated so it can show electricity "production".

I'm all for solar and wind generation where it makes sense -- however, the numbers don't work in most circumstances without a HUGE deus ex machina.

A couple perspectives that fill in the narrative.

Of all the renewables, I like solar best. It's not there economically right now, we spend a lot of taxpayer money on the ITC/PTC, and it'll take a lot more investment to develop the technology. It gets philosophical past that, but I personally think it's probably good to have a power resource that you can shove in the middle of nowhere, that produces electricity when you need it most.

Solar doesn't make a lot of sense in places like London. That said, it does make lots of sense in warm, sunny climates. Places that need A/C, which is a very strong driver of electric demand. It ends up being a self-regulating question with placement, predicated on economics. I think we all like that.

Wind is getting to the point that it's almost as cheap as fossil fuel, without subsidies. We did spend quite a bit to get it there, but that's done. Wind doesn't answer the question fully, it makes power when you don't really need it the most, and it does need fossil or other fuel to fill in the gaps. But it's pretty damn cheap, and even our off-peak loads are a real thing. Hell, if consumers had access to better tariffs that gave transparency into the timing of energy prices, you might even see changes to how we use electricity, which I think is a better way to do things. You do get screwy things in places like Texas, where producers are running their turbines, even when they have to pay money (negative pricing) to put their power on the grid. That's the only way they get their production tax credit (PTC) money.

Lots of companies make PR plays to show they're "green", and fossil fuel producers are no exception. If I'm leading a firm like that, though, given the possibility of peak oil and losing the main revenue stream, it makes sense to genuinely become involved; renewables are a hedging strategy.

[Not_A_Llama]

Solar has great potential in the areas where it makes sense, like the big, empty deserts of the world. In the most populated portions, not so much. If someone can solve the demand/production levelling issues, it might , make more sense. The big issue I have is that it doesn't make sense from an economic standpoint, and transmitting power from the areas of production to the areas of greatest consumption is horribly inefficient. Perhaps a decentralized power distribution system using something like Bloom Boxes, powered by natural gas would make more sense. Smarter guys than me, please chime in!

To be entirely fair, electric transmission is pretty efficient. I haven't looked at a tag in a while, but a hundred miles on a 345kV doesn't lead to more than a few percent loss.

The corollary, of course, is that nobody like electric generation in their backyard, be it fossil, renewable, or *gasp* nuclear. So really, you need to truck it into your population centers from the sticks, anyway.

I think in the next couple decades, you'll see solar come to be a large component of peak generation. Wind will fill in a big part of offpeak, particularly in winter. You'll need to have something sitting in the back to fill in the troughs. I had hopes that nuclear could be that, but Fukushima has dashed the possibility for maybe a generation. Fortunately, cheap natural gas has impelled a lot of marketplace participants to build very very large CC gas plants that spin up very quickly. They're perfect for that role.

Bloom boxes, Tesla Powerwalls, and rooftop solar are all potential elements of a more resilient/efficient/economical grid, but there's need for a more comprehensive discussion about policy to integrate these new resources onto a grid that is very old and very dumb.

[Wulf202]

Imho going back to pud and getting rid of xcel would be a huge step forward

[erock]

I would like to see solar developer be more responsible for making up kVARs for their projects.


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[Gman]

The only place where alternatives make sense to me, is in Europe where they use hydro for primary production and wind when available to pump water back to the reservoir to store the energy until it's needed.