51–60 of 85 posts
The problem is that this is a tax dodge for rich middle class people - at one time selling your solar energy back to the grid you got 8% return for 20 years guaranteed by the government. Even after the scheme was amended its a nice little subsidy for richer people it's the poor sods on key/coin meters that are paying for this.
That is an oxymoron. By definition, middle class is in the middle, not rich.
It doesn't sound like it is sustainable to have these subsidies for very long: - At current rates the Feed-in Tariff pays you 14.9p for every kWh you produce, whether you use it or not. The Feed-in Tariff is TAX FREE and RPI Linked. - Export your excess electricity to the grid and earn an additional 4.6p/kWh. ( http://www.hanergy.co.uk/why-solar/feed-in-tariff )
Calling it a subsidy seems weird to me. Every state I've lived in will pay you if you generate more electricity than you use. You are providing power back into the grid, of course you should be paid for it. That doesn't sound like government support to me.
It doesn't sound like it is sustainable to have these subsidies for very long: - At current rates the Feed-in Tariff pays you 14.9p for every kWh you produce, whether you use it or not. The Feed-in Tariff is TAX FREE and RPI Linked. - Export your excess electricity to the grid and earn an additional 4.6p/kWh. ( http://www.hanergy.co.uk/why-solar/feed-in-tariff )
Calling it a subsidy seems weird to me. Every state I've lived in will pay you if you generate more electricity than you use. You are providing power back into the grid, of course you should be paid for it. That doesn't sound like government support to me.
I find this article bit too skeptical. Solar panels improved a lot in recent years, and you can break even with investment even in UK without subsidies. My friend in Czech Republic is a software developer. He works from home and his house is not connected to grid. He has 12-volt house grid with dozen car batteries. His office has 2 LED screens. Everything is powered by solar energy, except once a week he runs a gener…
I don't own a toaster, dryer, kettle, microwave or massive television. I have LED lighting everywhere as well and have programmed my family to turn the lights off.
3 children, 2 adults, 2 guinea pigs = £230 a year in electricity!
Not bad for a tech family.
only problem is losses associated with 12v wiring.
I probably don't have to fish out €6000 either for my needs.
Britain isn’t known for an abundance of sunshine, but Hanergy’s solar panels are designed to generate electricity from ultraviolet rays rather than sunlight. Seems to me that these solar panels are designed to generate government subsidies more than anything else...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, I used some online calculators that predicted how much electricity I generated based on the size of the array, the amount of electricity I used, and how much I could make selling the electricity back, as well as rebates, etc. I can't remember the actual link for the calculator, but it was pretty thorough. Of course, there was a lot of guessing that needed to take place, like the rise in electricity prices, etc.…
One of the things we did was spent a year prior to panel installation reading our meter every day to figure out what our daily power usage was. We then replaced some really energy expensive appliances (and old refrigerator, some incandecent lighting, and ended up with an average of about 24kwH per day)
I became aware of this because last year I was hit with an electricity bill of $300 in a month because I ran a space heater every morning. After I did more investigation I realized I was paying about $40/month in electricity keeping my dual-CPU 8-core Xeon server running 24x7. The box alone ended up pushing me into the highest tier, so I was paying the highest rates for the last 5-6 days of the month, so it forced me to reevaluate my electricity use from the ground up.
I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year. However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have…
Hmmm, that seems broken. I installed 5.2KW of panels on the roof of my Bay Area home in 2002, at the time panels were a lot more expensive but the subsidies were better too, I ended up paying just about $20,000 for the complete system (after rebates and with all parts, labor etc). The system is grid tied (meaning it feeds back into the grid) and we switched our billing to a watt for watt basis (not time of use as my…
Using this calculator, pick a zip code in the Peninsula, I put in a 4000 watt system, estimate my bill to be $200/month, assume 2.5% increase in electricity prices per year, and assume I pay in cash. This gives me a 15 year payback period. At $100/month, it's a 24 year payback period.
The problem is that this is a tax dodge for rich middle class people - at one time selling your solar energy back to the grid you got 8% return for 20 years guaranteed by the government. Even after the scheme was amended its a nice little subsidy for richer people it's the poor sods on key/coin meters that are paying for this.
> rich middle class people That is an oxymoron. By definition, middle class is in the middle, not rich.
I was going to make a point that the middle class, being in the middle of the income-population pyramid, are more wealthy than the average. Interestingly, in the UK at least, 71% are middle class, which spoils that [0].
[0] - http://britainthinks.com/sites/default/files/reports/Speakin...
I'm super excited about the promise of solar panels, because my house has unobstructed exposure to the sun, and I live in the Bay Area, so we get sunshine 300+ days per year. However, every time I revisit the math, it never works out. Even if I purchase it myself, the payoff times are never less than around 17-20 years, depending on how aggressive I project the rise in electricity rates. Given that solar panels have…