I live south of Madison. I'm just wondering if the technology has progressed to point where it be worth the effort..... notice I didn't say cost...
If it aint worth the cost, it aint worth doing.
Every time I run the numbers it aint worth the cost.
I did look up the price per watt on panels recently. Supposedly they were at $1.50 per watt. $1.00 per watt is supposed to make solar PV comparable to the grid.
Last time I checked our local prices, the total installed price was $8-10 per watt for a grid tie system. Maybe the economy has caused the prices to drop....
In my area I get five hours of productive sun per day year round. If I put up a 5KW systems we would get 25 KWHs a day. We used 40-45KWH per day on average so PV would provide over half of our power needs....
Except that I read the power loss on the system from the panels to the outlet was 40%!
Which I do find hard to believe but that is what Home Power magazine said. So in reality a 5KW system really only gives me 3KW at the outlets. Which is 15KWH per day out of 40-45 so a third of our power needs.
At $10 a watt that is $50,000 for a 5KW system! The state and Feds will pay a total of 65% which has me paying out $17,500 in the end. It would take a couple of years to get the full rebate from NC so in I would have to payout a good chunk of $50K for quite a while.
The installed price will have to have dropped to $3-4 per watt for PV to even get close to making money sense for us. A reduction of our power bill by a third saves us $40 a month. PV is going to have to get a heck of a lot cheaper to make money sense.
Watching Modern Marvels yesterday made me wonder why a Stirling engines, run off of solar heat, cannot be made to generate power. They are doing this with big plants but it just seems like you could do this with smaller house generation but I guess the "power" is not there....
Later,
Dan
