Quote:
Originally Posted by Lanny_MacDonald
There are homes all over California and Arizona that produce a SURPLUS of electricity and sell it back to the grid, just from solar panels alone. If communities could invest in, or be built around, a biogas plant, that would make the community become self sufficent and be able to sell their own energy surplus to other customers. The idea is possible today, there just aren't enough breaks for consumers to make them attractive or worth the effort.
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Interesting.
I expected that installations like this could produce a surplus when it was sunny, I would just wonder what to do to store that energy for use at times when there wasn't enough juice being produced (I realize there are ways to do it at the grid level, but is it practical for a home?)
My thought was, similar to Cowperson's way of thinking, if you are trying to convince people to all invest in a biogas plant they won't do anything, even though in the long run it would be to their benefit. They will look at the short-run costs and decide it isn't feasible. But if you could get lots of people to put one or two solar panels on their roof (by offering tax breaks, or long term financing applied to their tax bills so it doesn't slam them all upfront), that would put an initial dent in energy demand. If you do things so that there isn't as much sticker-shock it is my belief there will be much more buy-in. This is especially since the results on the environment may not been seen for decades. It is tough to try and get people to pay/suffer upfront when the results of their sacrifice won't be seen for years.