Quote:
Originally Posted by ken0042
Very true. Where solar really has merit is from more of a "grassroots" perspective; where a lot individuals get together and start a large movement. What I mean is this- the south side of my roof of my house is probably around 400 square feet. That is big enough that I could probably produce enough solar energy to satisfy most of my own electrical needs. Tied into the grid I could produce electricity to the grid during the system's peak times (which also happens to be my personal low times), and then pull back during the non-peak hours.
The problem is for me I would need to put out $10-20K to save myself $50 per month. This approach is inherently more expensive because each house requires its own infrastructure like the grid connection; whereas with a solar farm there is only one.
So if gov'ts want to help produce greener power; perhaps some sort of incentive could be given to home owners- as opposed to spending the money to build this huge farm.
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This is actually a system that has clear merits, although yeah, it requires some government intervention to work. First of all, you basicly have to force the power companies to buy your electricity, because otherwise they're not going to get into this. This has been done in Germany, and yeah, a lot of people have gotten their own little solar plants. (I understand that the infrastructure issue wasn't as big as you'd imagine, although countries may of course vary.) Since people get money from the extra electricity they sell, it helps offset the cost of the system for them. For the power companies... well they buy energy and sell energy and make a profit, so they're not too unhappy.
The other thing is, individuals don't necessarily do this for the economical reasons but for environmental reasons, and they certainly aren't looking for profits that are anything close to what an investor would. In other words, it's a politically practical way of getting private money for building more solar power.
Also, with the law in place, it opens up possibilities for other future developments. For example, farms can produce quite a bit of energy from, well, crap
